Excellence Award Committee

The Excellence Award Committee is the key advisory body supporting the functioning of the Bodossaki Excellence Award institution.

The main tasks of the Excellence Award Committee include submission to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees of a recommendation on the active fields of each cycle of Excellence Awards; the preparation of the respective draft call for approval by the Board of Trustees; the sending of invitations to submit nominations; the receipt of such nominations; the establishment of the Selection Committees; the evaluation of the nominated candidates; and the submission to the Board of Trustees of recommendations regarding the persons to be awarded.

The Committee is composed of ten members, of whom eight are from the academic community (at least two for each scientific discipline) and two from the Foundation’s Board of Trustees – namely, the President and the Vice President – as ex officio members of the Committee.

The Committee’s academic members should be foreign (non-Greek) professors at universities abroad or foreign researchers at large research centres, active in one or more of the four fields covered by the Excellence Awards (Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Technological Sciences, Biomedical Sciences, Social Sciences).

The Committee will have four of its academic members, one from each of the above four scientific fields, appointed as co-chairs. The appointment of co-chairs is decided by the Board of Trustees, after the Committee has delivered an opinion. Each Excellence Award cycle will be co-chaired by two co-chairs, one from each active field included in the cycle.

In the new era which was ushered in with the announcement of the Bodossaki Excellence Award for the year 2024, the Excellence Award Committee consists of eight foreign, globally acclaimed scientists who have won the highest distinctions in their respective fields, among whom are Nobel Prize laureates, recipients of the Spinoza Prize and the ACM Turing Award, and prominent members of scientific academies. The eminent members of the Committee of Excellence are the following (in alphabetical order):

  1. Sir Richard Blundell, David Ricardo Professor of Political Economy, Department of Economics, UCL, CBE FBA
  2. Arup Chakraborty, Institute Professor; Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics, & Chemistry, Core Faculty Member and Former Founding Director, Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, MIT, Founding Steering Committee Member, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, & Harvard, Member NAE, NAS, NAM
  3. Daan Frenkel, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, ForMemRS, Member KNAW, AAAS, TWAS, NAS, Academia Europaea, Recipient of Spinoza Prize
  4. Shaffi Goldwasser, Director, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, and C. Lester Hogan Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley, RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, and Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, Recipient of ACM Turing Award
  5. Frank Grosveld, Professor Emeritus, Former Head of the Department of Cell Biology, Erasmus MC, FRS, Member KNAW, Recipient of Spinoza Prize and the Louis Jeantet Prize
  6. Paola Ricciardi-Castagnoli, Scientific Director of Toscana Life Sciences Foundation and Chief Scientist of Menarini Biomarkers Singapore, former Chair of Immunology and General Pathology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Founder and Scientific Director, Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A-STAR Singapore, Member GNAS Leopoldina, EMBO
  7. Daniela Rus, Andrew (1956) and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT, Member NAE, AAAS
  8. Jean Tirole, Honorary Chairman, Foundation JJ Laffont-Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), and Scientific Director, TSE-Partnership, Recipient of Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Excellence Award Committee also includes, as ex officio members, the President of the Bodossaki Foundation’s Board of Trustees Ms Athina Dessypri, and the Board’s Vice President Theodoros Theodorou, Professor at the School of Chemical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens and Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE).