Board of Trustees

Karl-Ludwig Kley
Chairman of the Executive Board, Merck KGaA

Karl-Ludiwg Kley studied law in Munich and completed his training in Hamburg and Johannesburg. He earned a doctorate in law from the University of Munich and  is a honorary professor at the Otto Beisheim School of Management (WHU). Besides an intense management career, he has gained considerable recognition with publications in the field of business administration. Before his move to Merck, Kley was CFO of Lufthansa AG and held a number of management positions at Bayer AG. Kley is a member of the executive boards of several renowned companies alongside his role at Merck.

Wolf Lepenies
Rector em. Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Institute for Advanced Study

Scientific writer, biographer, and sociologist Wolf Lepenies is the former Director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. He is known for his writings exploring the bankruptcy of European intellectuals, and his book-length analysis of melancholy. His academic career includes countless roles and memberships at the Collège de France, Princeton, the Sorbonne, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Kyoto, to name a few. Among the distinctions, the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, the Theodor Heuss Prize, the Leibniz Medal.

Jürgen Mlynek

Professor, President, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, Berlin, Germany

Jürgen Mlynek studied physics in Germany and France before he moved into research management. Main fields at research are experimental quantum optics, atomic physics, surface physics. He served as Vice-President of the German Research Foundation and later as President of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. Since 2005, he has been President of Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the largest association of research centres in Germany. For his own research, Mlynek was awarded the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Helga Nowotny
Professor emerita of Social Studies of Science, President European Research Council (ERC)

Helga Nowotny is President and founding member of the European Research Council. Her work as a researcher includes more than 300 articles published in scientific journals on topics such as social studies of science and technology, macrosociology and the impact of the life sciences on society, and several prizes like the J.D. Bernal Prize. Her teaching career has included, among other, positions at the Institute of Advanced Study in Vienna, King’s College, Cambridge, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the University of Vienna.

Kõji Omi
Founder and Chairman, The Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum, Kyoto

Koji Omi is the founder and chairman of the Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum. Having held several prestigious assignments at universities, international organizations and the Japanese government, this former Minister of Science and Technology, Minister of Finance and founder of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, is one of the key figures in the country to make Japan a science and technology-oriented nation.

Ernst Th. Rietschel (Chairman)
President em. Leibniz Association

Ernst Theodor Rietschel is a German chemist trained at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and the Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg. Since the 80’s he was invested of leading roles in institutions like the Borstel Research Institute, the Lycée Francais in Hamburg, the Leibniz Association, where he was president until 2010. For his work he was awarded prizes including the “Ordre pour le Merite” from the Republic of France,  the Grand Prize of the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology, and the First Class Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Sebastian Turner
Founder Falling Walls Foundation

A political scientist with a masters degree at Duke and a honorary professor at the Berlin University for the Arts, since the 80’s he has founded several companies, like the trade journal “Medium” and the first independent communication agency in East Germany then merged into the group Scholz & Friends. He is also involved in several non profit initiatives like the Einstein Foundation, the Art Directors Club, the Berlin School of Creative Leadership and the “science for children” project “Haus der kleinen Forscher”. He was one of the initiators of the Falling Walls Conference in 2009.

Ingrid Wünning Tschol
Senior Vice-President and Head of Health and Research, Robert Bosch Stiftung

Ingrid Wünning Tschol received her PhD in Biology from the University of Tübingen and did postdoctoral research at MIT and State University of New York. After careers at the German Research Foundation and the European Science Foundation, she joined the Robert Bosch Stiftung in 1999. Wünning Tschol was and is a member of numerous national and international committees. She served as Vice Chair of the European Research Area Board (ERAB), which directly adviced the European Commissioner for Research from 2008 to 2011. She currently chairs the EFC-Research Forum and is a member of the Steering Committee for ESOF 2014 in Copenhagen.