Martin Kahanec

executive director

his primary research interests span economic policy, labor and population economics, migration, EU mobility, ethnicity, and reforms in European labor markets, on which he has published extensively in leading international journals and publishers. 

Martin is a professor and former Dean/Head at the School/Department of Public Policy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. Founder and Scientific Director of CELSI, Bratislava. Elected member and Chairperson of Section Committee “Economics, Business and Management Sciences” of Academia Europaea.

His current and previous research and teaching appointments include the University of Economics in Bratislava; Harvard University; United Nations University in Maastricht; Bonn University; Bruegel; and IZA. Martin has served in many advisory roles for European institutions, national governments, and international organizations.

Miroslav Štefánik

výkonná riaditeľka

currently serves as the director of the Institute of Economic Research of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He has more than 15 years of experience in economic and social research with a strong emphasis on empirical research.

Miroslav focuses on the labour market, and educational policy-related topics, such as active labour market and training program evaluation, as well as analysing and predicting labour market skills needs.

Within Slovakia, he is actively participating in the creation of strategic documents related to public employment services, VET and educational policies. As a member of various advisory boards, he contributes to evaluations of several strategic documents in his field of expertise.

His strength lies in processing micro-level data, designing indicators, extracting policy-relevant information and drawing practical recommendations.

Monika Rychtáriková

výkonná riaditeľka

is a professor at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, STU in Bratislava and the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven in Belgium where she serves also as the head of the Design and Engineering of Construction and Architecture, Sint-Lucas Brussels and Ghent Campuses.

Her scientific activity is mainly focused on research in building and room acoustics, and on solving questions related to sound perception by people.

She is the author of over 120 scientific publications in the Scopus database, with over 800 citations.

During her career, she coordinated several research projects, currently e.g. HORIZON-MSCA-DN “ActaReBuild” (2.5 million EUR).

She trained 9 doctoral students and currently, 8 work under her supervision. In the past, she was the chairman of the European Technical Commission for Building and Room Acoustics and a member of the board of the Belgian and Dutch Acoustical Society. Since 2017, she has been the president of the Slovak Acoustic Society. In May 2016, she received the award of Female Scientist of the Year 2015 in Slovakia and in 2016 she presented at the TEDx Bratislava conference.

Gabriela Pleschová

výkonná riaditeľka

leads the Centre for Scholarship and Teaching in the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University Bratislava where she also serves as an associate professor in the Department of Pedagogy.

She is a graduate of Oxford University (2012, MSc. in Education) and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019). Since 2003, she organises workshops and development courses for higher education teachers.

Gabriela has served leader of three Erasmus+ Strategic/Cooperation partnership projects in the area of academic development, internationalisation, peer learning and mental health.

Her academic publications resulted in more than 470 citations (scholar.google). She is Board of Trustees’ member of the University of Trnava.

Silvia Pastoreková

výkonná riaditeľka

General Director of the Biomedical Reasearch Center of the Slovak Academy of Science.

Ján Mazúr

výkonná riaditeľka

served as CEO of the Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava (2019-2024), and currently leads the strategy department of the City of Bratislava.

He holds a Phd from the Faculty of Law of Comenius University in Bratislava and he studied public administration at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

He teaches and participates in research at Comenius University in the field of commercial and financial law (APVV, Horizon 2020). In 2017, he also took part in the International Visitor Leadership Program in the USA focused on quality and improvement of the justice system.

He is the author and co-author of several mainly academic publications. He has long been involved in urban policymaking, as well as ethics and integrity issues in the legal profession and public administration.

Martin Kahanec

výkonná riaditeľka

is a professor and former Dean/Head at the School/Department of Public Policy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna.

Founder and Scientific Director of CELSI, Bratislava. Elected member and Chairperson of Section Committee “Economics, Busines and Management Sciences” of Academia Europaea.

His current and previous research and teaching appointments include the University of Economics in Bratislava; Harvard University; United Nations University in Maastricht; Bonn University; Bruegel; and IZA.

Kahanec has served in many advisory roles for the European institutions, national governments, and international organizations.

His primary research interests span economic policy, labor and population economics, migration, EU mobility, ethnicity, and reforms in European labor markets, on which he has published extensively in leading international journals and publishers.

Matej Kačaljak

výkonná riaditeľka

is a university lecturer, researcher and lawyer. He is the head of the Department of Financial Law (KFP) at the Faculty of Law, Comenius University in Bratislava.

He is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University in Bratislava and the Faculty of National Economy of the Economics University in Bratislava and has been active in higher education since 2009.

He is the author of several dozen scientific and professional publications in the field of financial law and public finance and a member of the Commission for Law Making at the Constitutional Law Committee of the National Council of the Slovak Republic for the field of financial law.

He regularly lectures and consults on legislative and practical issues with professional associations, courts and the financial administration.

Lucia Hlavatá

výkonná riaditeľka

as completed her doctoral studies in political science and further focuses on Higher Education , (not only) in social sciences. Her primary focus is on active learning methods, both in small and large groups (academic debate, collaborative methods, etc.), AI in teaching, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Among others, within the ENLIGHT alliance, she leads trainings on Challenge-based Education methodology. She also coordinates the course “Innovative teaching that inspires good learning”, primarily intended for PhD students as well as for experienced university teachers. In 2022, she received a certificate from the British association SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) for the successful completion of a two-year course “Effective teaching for Internationalisation”.

She currently works at the Centre for Scholarship and Teaching, at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University Bratislava, within which she was a member of several Erasmus+ projects (IMPACT, HOSUED, BELONG). As part of the ongoing courses “Innovative teaching that inspires good learning” and “Inclusive teaching”, she serves as a lecturer and coach.

Her latest publications focus on internationalization and the use of active learning methods to improve students’ argumentation skills.

Vojtech Chmelík

výkonná riaditeľka

works as an associate professor at the Department of Materials Engineering and Physics, Faculty of Civil Engineering, STU in Bratislava.

His research and teaching activities are focused on the problems of building and room acoustics as well as the subjective perception of sound. He has been a representative of STU in a consortium of several international projects.

He is currently a project manager in the HORIZON – MSCA – 2021 – DN “ActaReBuild” project and leads 4 Ph.D. students dealing with issues of acoustic comfort in outdoor and indoor environments. Since 2017, he has been the secretary of the Slovak Acoustic Society.

Vojtech is the author of several dozen publications in the field of building acoustics, room acoustics, and sound perception.

 

 

 

Alexandra Bražinová

výkonná riaditeľka

is a professor of epidemiology. She leads the Institute of Epidemiology and serves as a vice-dean at the Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava.

She authored many scientific publications, more than 120 are listed in the Web of Science, having over 50,000 citations. Alexandra is a member of the international work group Global Burden of Disease and the Council of the Government of the Slovak Republic on Mental Health. She coordinates the Slovak training site of applied epidemiology of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Alexandra completed research stays at the University of California in Berkeley, the George Washington University and the Georgetown University, in the USA. In her research she studies epidemiology of communicable and noncommunicable diseases.

She has led national and international research projects, financed by grant schemes of the European Commission, World Health Organization, Slovak Research and Development Agency, Vega and others.

Mária Bieliková

výkonná riaditeľka

is a leading Slovak researcher in computer science and artificial intelligence focusing on human-computer interaction analysis and user modeling.

In 2020, she founded the Kempelen institute of intelligent technologies  (KInIT), an independent and non-profit research institute connecting academia and industry.

Her activities contribute to the circulation of talent and to getting Slovakia on the European AI map. She was a member of the European Commission’s Joint Research Center Board of Governors and the High Level Expert Group on AI. Prior to KInIT, Maria was a full professor at the Slovak University of Technology, former dean and a lead of the PeWe research group (PeWe.sk).

Miroslav Beblavý

výkonná riaditeľka

is an economist, scientist, and innovator. He is the CEO of Zhiva, a startup focused on behavioral health interventions with an emphasis on management of chronic diseases.

He is coordinator of the European Commission’s network of experts on the economics of education, an adjunct professor at Sciences Po in Paris, and a columnist for Denník SME. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of St Andrews and has served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies.

He co-founded the Institute of Public Policy at the Comenius University’s Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, where he was an associate professor until 2014.

Emília S. Beblavá

výkonná riaditeľka

is the head of the Institute of Public Policy (IPP) at the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava.

She has completed several study stays, such as at Georgetown University, Yale University, Harvard University, and at the World Bank. She worked as a researcher at CPHR; from 1998 to 2009, she served as the president of Transparency International Slovakia.

She is a co-founder of the Behavioral Lab of IPP. She is the author of several dozens of scientific and professional publications, primarily in the field of anti-corruption policy, political-administrative relations, and behavioral experiments in the public sector. She cooperates with the healthcare start-up Zhiva.

Emília is also a co-founder of Therapolis.

Renáta Hall

executive director

has over 20 years of experience in the area of higher education (HE) and research policies. She started as a student leader. She conducts research in HE policies and holds PhD from CEU in Vienna.

In the Slovak Accreditation Agency for HE she led the biggest student satisfaction survey satisfaction in Slovakia. She served as advisor to two Prime Ministers (I. Radičová, E. Heger), junior minister of education (M. Fedák) and to different political parties.

She manages projects – the biggest: the World Bank Loan – enhancing HR capacity in the labour and education sectors (5 mil. eur) and Learning Makes Sense (1,5 mil. euro) – proposed the reform from preschool to tertiary education. She has regular public appearances.

Renáta works in Therapolis as its Executive director