Budapest Forum

Year: 2021

  • Hermano Sanches Ruivo

    Hermano SANCHES-RUIVO was born in 1966 in Portugal. Coming from a business background, he founded multiple NGO’s committed to the defense of Europe in France and was first elected Councilor of Paris in 2008 by Bertrand Delanoe.

    As a major support of Anne Hidalgo during the 2014 municipal elections in Paris, Hermano SANCHES-RUIVO was appointed Councilor in charge of Europe and, in 2020, Deputy Mayor in charge of Europe.

    Since June 2020, he was nominated member of the European Board of the Global Covenant of Mayors, spokesperson of PLATFORMA, as well as vice-president of the European commission of France Urbaine. In September 2021, he was appointed as a representative of cities in the Conference on the Future of Europe plenary.

    In 2010, he was appointed Comendador da Ordem nacional do Mérito (Commandeur Knight of the Portugal National Order of Merit).

  • Heather Grabbe

    Heather Grabbe

  • George Tilesch

    DR. GEORGE A. TILESCH is President of the California-based PHI Institute for Augmented Intelligence. He is a senior global innovation and AI expert, executive, and consultant, primarily in the transatlantic space. For over 20 years, George has been active as a cross-sector and cross-industry conduit between AI ecosystems worldwide and as a trusted advisor for world leaders. His global senior executive and strategy consulting leadership track record span decades with government leaders on all continents (USA, EU, Dubai…); Microsoft, Ipsos, and Fortune 50 Tech corporations; international organizations and global think tanks (World Economic Forum, Club de Madrid); startups/scaleups; and global social innovation leaders. Dr. Tilesch is also the co-author of the 2020 book BetweenBrains: Taking Back our AI Future, a Top 5 national bestseller in Hungary. As a C-suite advisor, researcher, convener, keynote speaker, and guest lecturer at major universities, George is headquartered in Silicon Valley and circling the globe in pursuit of delivering on PHI Institute’s mission. He is an Advisory Board member to Harvard’s Experfy platform and the AI Ambassador of the John von Neumann Computer Society.

  • Gianluca Misuraca

    Gianluca Misuraca is founder and Vice President on Technology Diplomacy and International Relations of Inspiring Futures (IF), a global advisory consultancy in Strategic Foresight, Social Innovation and Digital Governance with headquarters in Lausanne and Seville.

    He is also an advisor to several International Organizations, and development institutions worldwide. Among his key assignments he is currently leading, on behalf of the European Commission’s Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) and DG CONNECT, the multi-year facility support initiative “International Outreach for human-centric Artificial Intelligence” (InTouchAI.eu).

    As part of his academic roles, Gianluca is the Executive Director of the Master on Artificial Intelligence in public services (AI4GOV) led by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Design of Politecnico di Milano and a Research Fellow at the Department of eGovernance and Administration of Danube University Krems in Austria. Furthermore, he is a Special Advisor on Democracy in the Digital Age for Re-Imagine Europa (RIE).

    Contact: gm@inspiringfutures.ch / gianluca.misuraca@gfa-group.de / gianlucacarlo.misuraca@polimi.it

    LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gianluca-misuraca-4a04a61/

    Twitter: @gianlucamisu

  • Gergely Karácsony

    Gergely Karácsony

    Gergely Szilveszter Karácsony is the Mayor of Budapest, Hungary.

    Karácsony worked for the Medián market and public opinion research company as a research manager. He became Director of Research in 2007. Between 2002 and 2008 he was a political advisor at the Prime Minister’s Office. In addition to that, he worked as a teaching assistant at the Corvinus University of Budapest from 2004, an assistant lecturer from 2007 and an assistant professor from 2008.

    Karácsony became a member of the newly formed Politics Can Be Different (LMP) party in 2009. During the 2010 parliamentary election he served as campaign manager of the party. He became a Member of Parliament from the Budapest regional list (3rd place). In May 2010 he was elected deputy leader of the LMP parliamentary fraction. As a result, he left the Medián firm. He is a political scientist, he previously served as member of the National Assembly (MP) from 2010 to 2014 and Mayor of Zugló from 2014 to 2019.

  • Ada Ámon

    Ada Ámon

    Ada Ámon is the Head of Department of Climate and Environmental Affairs at the Budapest City Hall.

    Ada Ámon is Chief Advisor to the Mayor of Budapest on Climate Affairs at Budapest City Hall and head of the city’s newly established climate department. She is committed to improving the lives of Budapest’s residents through an ambitious programme of urban building renovation and integrating large-scale renewable technology. In 2015, she joined E3G – Third Generation Environmentalism – an independent climate change think tank as a senior associate leading the Central Eastern European climate programme. She has been the director of the Budapest based ENERGIAKLUB Climate Policy Institute and Applied Communication, a leading central European energy think tank, specialising in energy efficiency, renewables and climate adaptation. Prior to this, she worked as a consultant for the London-based International Institute for Energy Conservation (IIEC) and as the energy coordinator of CEE Bankwatch. She was initiator or/and board member of many energy and climate-related international programmes and cooperation. Ada Ámon is one of 3 women recognised in the Women in Energy category of the EU Sustainable Energy Awards 2020 for their commitment to push energy efficiency into the mainstream, as well engage and empower citizens to play their part in the clean energy transition.

  • Gábor Kemenesi

    Gábor Kemenesi

    Gábor Kemenesi is an assistant professor at the National Laboratory of Virology, Szentágothai Research Centre. His main research interests are viral zoonoses, more specifically the study of bat-borne and mosquito-borne viral pathogens. He is involved as a principal investigator in the work of the Action Group for Coronavirus Research set up by the Government in response to the Covid crisis. He is running a blog of his own dedicated to the Covid situation and he is a regular contributor to the Covid-19 newsletters edited by MTA’s Section of Medical Sciences. In 2021 he became a member of MTA’s Presidential Committee for Sustainable Development. He has received several awards and prizes in the last couple of years, among them the Junior Szentágothai Prize in 2016, the János Bolyai Research Grant and the Junior Prima Prize (in category “Hungarian Science”) in 2019 and the Pro Communitate Prize in 2020.

  • Enrico Letta

  • Emese Lafferton

    Emese Lafferton

    Emese Lafferton is a historian of science and medicine in the Department of History at Central European University. She previously held research fellowships and taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. Her research explores medical and scientific traditions in Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on biopolitics, the history of ‘racial sciences’ and psychiatry in the Habsburg empire and its successor states in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her publications include a monograph entitled Hungarian Psychiatry, Society and Politics in the Long 19th Century released by Palgrave Macmillan later this year and an edited volume Race, Science and Medicine in Central and Eastern Europe around 1900 (Thematic issue of East Central Europe, 2016/1-2). She is member of the Editorial Board at the European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health (Brill).

  • Ellen Ueberschär