‘The Young Academy of Europe Prize, first introduced in 2017, is awarded annually to early to mid-career professionals in recognition of their outstanding achievements and contributions to key areas of the YAE. In 2019, the YAE Prize was renamed the “André Mischke YAE Prize for Science and Policy” in honour of the YAE Founding Chair, André Mischke. The prize is awarded to support and promote: science, evidence-informed policymaking, science communication, as well as future-generation scientists and scholars in Europe.’

Renaud Jolivet is Full Professor at the Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology, and Chair of Neural Engineering & Computation at Maastricht University. He additionally holds a courtesy appointment at CERN, the particle physics laboratory. He is an elected member of the Board of Directors at the Organization for Computational Neurosciences, and the inaugural Chair of the Science & Technology Committee of EBRAINS, the European research infrastructure for neurosciences. In 2023, he is also a Neurotech Fellow at the Foresight Institute. He has worked in Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK. His work focusses on the brain’s heterocellularity and on neurotechnologies to interface with brain tissue.

Over the last decade, Professor Jolivet has also been active in science policy at the European level, first within various working groups of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), before being elected to the board of the Association for one term (2018–2020). From there, he served as the MCAA representative on the board of the Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), and as External Policy Advisor (2019–2022). This work has led to a number of policy documents published by MCAA and ISE (e.g., on research precarity) and to a number of policy workshops and sessions. Since January 2022, he is the representative for individual researchers and innovators at the European Commission’s ERA Forum, where he was nominated by ISE, MCAA, EuroDoc, EuroScience, and the Association of ERC Grantees. There, together with his colleague Professor Dr Agnieszka Wykowska, he brings the voice of researchers to the table where the future of European science policy is crafted.

Renaud Jolivet delivered his acceptance lecture on ‘Spanning boundaries between science and policy’ during the Academia Europaea’s 34th annual conference, on 11 October 2023.

Moniek Tromp, outgoing Chair of the Young Academy of Europe, gave the laudation. She is the Chair of Materials Chemistry at the Zernike Institute at the University of Groningen.