Eveline Crone new ERC Vice-President
Eveline Crone, Professor of Neurocognitive Development Psychology at Leiden University, has been elected as the new Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC). She will be in charge of ERC activities in the domain of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Crone will take up her duties on 1 January 2020. She has been a member of the ERC Scientific Council since 2017. Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, Carel Stolker, is extremely pleased with the appointment: ‘This is fantastic news. We in Leiden are very proud, and it is great news for the social sciences and humanities throughout Europe.’
Budget of 13 billion
The ERC is chaired by a President (Jean-Pierre Bourguignon) and has three Vice-Presidents, who are also the Vice-Chairs of the ERC Scientific Council. They represent the three ERC domains: Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering, and Social sciences and Humanities. Crone will be responsible for the third domain. The ERC has a budget of over 13 billion euros, which is used to fund many excellent researchers each year, also in the Netherlands.
Making dream projects possible
Since 2005, Eveline Crone has been head of the Brain & Development Laboratory at Leiden University, in which approximately 25 researchers investigate how children and adolescents make decisions and how this relates to brain development. She has obtained several large research grants from Dutch research funding body, NWO, and the ERC.
Crone had the following to say about her appointment: ‘I’m really enthusiastic about serving the ERC because this organisation has proven itself to be a European success story. The formula works: The ERC wants to give top researchers the opportunity to carry out their dream project, selected on one single dimension: excellence.’
Many awards
Crone has received many awards for her research, including a Top Achievement Award from the National Network for Women in Science and the Award for Science and Communication. In 2011, she received the Early Career Award from the Society for Psychophysiological Research in Boston. She has published over 200 articles in scientific journals, and her work is well cited. She published the Dutch book ‘The Adolescent Brain’, for the general public. Since 2013, she has been an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017, she was awarded the Spinoza Prize, the highest award in Dutch science.