Falling Walls Falling Walls Science Summit 2023

Academic Publishing: Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation with Laura Hassink

Laura Hassink, Engi Hassaan

2022 Breakthrough Conversations

In this Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversation, digital participants had the chance to engage in a live conversation with Laura Hassink. She talked about her role as Managing Director for STM Journals at Elsevier and the current challenges and developments in academic publishing. The interview series provided an intimate personal atmosphere, in which high-level guests, speakers and panelists of the Falling Walls Science Summit 2022 talked about their individual research, career paths and experiences.

The Falling Walls Breakthrough Conversations are supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and Springer Nature.

Laura Hassink

Elsevier

Laura Hassink is responsible for Elsevier’s portfolio of 2,650 journals managed by more than 24,000 editors, who collectively publish more than 560,000 research articles a year. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of Publishing Transformation, overseeing operational support for its journals, improving and innovating the publication experience for authors, peer reviewers and editors. Laura has also been instrumental in accelerating Elsevier’s substantial progress in open access publishing, with the company now offering more than 600 gold open access journals, as well as open access publishing options across all its portfolios.
During her 25 years with Elsevier, she has also served as the SVP of Product Management for ScienceDirect and Journal Branded Solutions as well as the SVP Physical Sciences in STM Journals and held positions in Strategy, Business Development and Journal Services. Since 2015, Laura has been active as a board member of the Dutch Publishers Association, Mediafederatie and as Chair of the Media Voor Vak en Wetenschap (MVW). She currently serves as Chair of the MEVW Open Science Forum. Laura has a genuine passion for understanding the needs of the research communities we serve and maintaining the highest quality and integrity standards in scholarly communications.

Engi Hassaan

Springer Nature

Engi Hassaan is an associate editor at Nature Communications handling submissions in structural biology, biophysics, and biochemistry. She earned her PhD at Phillips University in Marburg, focusing on comparative analysis of fragment binding to protein using X-ray Crystallography, SPR, and NMR. During her PhD she also worked at the Helmholtz Zentrum in Munich, AstraZeneca Gothenburg, and ETH Zurich. Prior to her PhD she worked at Procter & Gamble and Nawah Scientific. She studied Pharmacy and Biotechnology at the German University in Cairo, where she obtained her masters degree in Drug Design.

Further Activities to have a look at