2020 Jury

Chair - Isabel de la Mata

Dr Isabel de la Mata is currently the Principal Adviser for Health and Crisis Management in the European Commission. Previously, she worked as Counsellor for Health and Consumers at the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU, as Deputy Director General for Health Planning at the Spanish Ministry of Health and as Advisor to the Vice-Minister of Health. In addition, she has been a member of the Standing Commission of the Regional Committee, the Pan-American Health Organisation, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.
Dr de la Mata graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of the Basque Country in 1983 and holds post-graduate degrees from the University of Leuven and Paris. She is a specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health.
 

Andrea Ammon

Dr Andrea Ammon, MD, MPH, was appointed Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in June 2017.
From April 2011 to April 2015, Andrea Ammon was Deputy to the Director and Head of Unit for Resource Management and Coordination. From May 2015, she was ECDC’s Acting Director.
Andrea joined ECDC as the Head of the Surveillance Unit in 2005. The unit was responsible for developing ‘The European Surveillance System’ (TESSy), implementing a long-term surveillance strategy for the European Union, evaluating the ‘Dedicated Surveillance Networks’ (DSN), performing step-by-step transfer of DSN activities to ECDC, revising the EU case definitions and producing an Annual Epidemiological Report on infectious diseases in the EU.
Prior to joining the ECDC, Dr Ammon served in several roles at the Robert Koch-Institute, in Berlin, Germany, most recently as Head of Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology. In this capacity, she maintained and further developed the German national surveillance system; coordinated the national outbreak response team for current and emerging infections; coordinated emergency planning for influenza; directed the national ‘Field Epidemiology Training Programme’; coordinated epidemiological research programmes in infectious diseases and provided scientific advice for government Ministries, Members of Parliament, and the public.
 

Barbara Kerstiëns

Dr Barbara Kerstiëns, MD, MPH, is the Head of Unit in the unit responsible for ‘Combatting Diseases’ in the People Directorate of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation at the European Commission.
She has a long experience in international public health, working for Médecins Sans Frontières, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Development and Cooperation prior to joining the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation in 2012, where she has consistently worked in medical research and funding.
Barbara Kerstiëns received her MD from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, a Postgraduate Certificate in Tropical Medicine from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
 

Maria Podlasek-Ziegler

Maria Podlasek-Ziegler, worked as a publisher, translator and author in Warsaw (Poland), before joining the European Commission in 2007, where she has been working in the field of education and youth.

Oxana Domenti

Prior to being appointed as WHO Representative to the European Union, Dr Oxana Domenti served as Senior Advisor to the WHO Regional Director for Europe on multilateral affairs.
Before joining WHO, Dr Domenti was Ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Switzerland, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Moldova to the United Nations Office at Geneva (2018-2020), the World Trade Organization and other international organisations based in Geneva.
Dr Domenti was a member of parliament in the Republic of Moldova (2009-2017) and served as President of the Parliamentary Health and Social Security Committee. As a parliamentarian, she also chaired the European and Central Asian Branch of the Global Parliamentary TB Caucus.
Prior to being elected to parliament, she served as adviser to the President on social development issues (2003-2009), and at the same time was a member of the Governing Board of the National Health Insurance Company and of the National Social Security Agency. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the development of social and health policies at national and regional levels, particularly in the area of health financing, tobacco control, TB, primary health care, and access to medicines.
She holds PhD and MSc degrees and received her academic training in Economics at the Academy of Economic Studies of Moldova, on European Social Security at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, as well as in Public Health at the University of London.
 

Iveta Nagyova

Dr Iveta Nagyova is the Head of the Department of Social and Behavioural Medicine at Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice, Slovakia (UPJS; sbm.upjs.sk). She is also the President of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) and a member of the European Advisory Committee on Health Research (EACHR) at WHO/Europe. She graduated in Clinical Psychology at UPJS, obtained her PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and received a postgraduate training at the University of Oxford within the Oxford International Primary Care Research Leadership Programme.
Her research interests are in biobehavioural and psychosocial innovations in disease prevention and management, non-pharmacological interventions, and behavioural insights in public health. She is involved in academic publishing, the supervision of PhD students, and knowledge translation.
 

Basil Rodriques

Basil Rodriques is a graduate of Columbia University, New York, with specialised discipline in Public Health, Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health and clinical interventions. He has served in several capacities with UNICEF across multiple continents and countries.
Over the past 30 years, Basil has worked in China as well as all other countries in the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific region. He also served in the capacity of Senior Adviser for Emerging Infectious Diseases in UNICEF, New York. He served as the Regional Health Adviser covering the East Asia and Pacific region and currently serves as Senior Regional Health Adviser, Systems and Policy for the Europe and Central Asia region, where he provides technical leadership with support to country programmes.

Antoaneta Angelova-Krasteva

Antoaneta Angelova-Krasteva has been Director for Innovation, International Cooperation and Sport at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) since 2016. Her main activities relate to the areas of education, academic and business cooperation, research and innovation. In the field of sport, she focused strongly on promoting physical activity and fostering cooperation across Europe and beyond.
Antoaneta joined the European Commission in 2008. She has occupied various positions across the European Commission and dealt with external relations and enlargement, internal security and police cooperation, cyber security, stakeholder relations and international affairs. Prior to joining the European Commission, Antoaneta worked as a Bulgarian diplomat in Brussels. She is a graduate in political science of Sofia University, with training and qualifications in European studies from Germany (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung) and the UK (Sussex University).

 

Irene Norstedt

Irene Norstedt works at the European Commission where she is the Acting Director responsible for the People Directorate within the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. Irene is also Head of the Economic and Social Transitions Unit. Irene has been at the European Commission since 1996, and was instrumental in the creation of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) in 2008.
From 16 December 2014 to 15 September 2015, Irene served as Acting Executive Director of the Innovative Medicines Initiative.
Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked for the Swedish life science company Biacore AB and at the Swedish embassy in London.
Irene studied biotechnology and polymer science, and holds a Master of Science (MsC) in Chemical Engineering.
 

Herald Ruijters

On 1 February 2017, Mr Ruijters was appointed Director of the European Commission’s Directorate B - Investment, Innovative and Sustainable Transport in the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport, while at the same time continuing as Head of Unit responsible for the Trans European Network (TEN-T) until 1 April. He assumed the role of Head of Unit in 2009 and was directly involved in developing the TEN-T Guidelines. He previously worked in the same Directorate-General from 2005 to 2009, where he promoted the implementation of TEN-T projects in cooperation with the European Coordinators. He also helped to develop road safety policy from 1997 to 2005. Before coming to the Commission, he held various positions in the Netherlands related to transport. Mr Ruijters holds degrees from Nijmegen and Amsterdam Universities in both French literature and European Studies, and completed post-graduate degrees at the European University Centre in Nancy, in European Law, and in Business Studies at the University in Leuven.
 

Monika Kosinska

Monika Kosinska joined the WHO in 2014 to lead the Governance for Health Programme. Before joining the WHO, she was appointed Secretary General of the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) in 2007, the largest public health civil society organisation in the European Region, where she led the civil society engagement in public health governance in the European Union context. She was appointed to the High-Level Group on Administrative Burdens, or the ‘Stoiber Group’, in 2012, and was the representative of public health civil society in other EU stakeholder mechanisms including as part of Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
She was actively involved in the EU Health Policy Forum from 2008-2014 and was Chair of the Action for Global Health network from 2008-2010 and of the Civil Society Contact Group from 2010 until 2014. Previously she worked in the private sector internationally, as well as for the UK National Health Service. She started her career working for the municipality of Liverpool in the United Kingdom, including with the Liverpool Capital of Culture and Healthy Cities teams. Monika Kosinska has a master’s degree in International Peace and Security from King’s College, London, United Kingdom.
 

Karin Schindler

Dr Schindler works in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Health Care and Consumer Protection. She is head of the division which deals with issues related to maternal, children, adolescent and gender health and nutrition. She was previously a researcher at the Medical University of Vienna, where her main research interest was nutrition in the context of disease, including obesity, diabetes, disease and age-related malnutrition. She co-founded Nutrition Day worldwide, a project to raise awareness of disease- and age-related malnutrition in hospitals and nursing homes. Dr Schindler also worked at WHO/Europe, where she helped prepare for the Vienna conference. She is a nutrition scientist trained at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Anette Schulz

Anette Schulz, Master of Education in Health Promotion and Education, is a senior consultant at University College South Denmark, and manager and chairperson of Schools for Health in Europe network foundation. Anette is the author of several books on school health promotion, social inclusion, and health inequality. She has more than 20 years of experience working with health promotion on both at national and international level. Her work ranges from giving lectures and keynotes to developing and managing projects related to health promotion.