Vietsch Foundation Medal of Honour 2022 awarded to Natalia Manola, OpenAIRE

The TNC22 stage hosted on 14 June 2022 the ceremony for the 2022 Medal of Honour by the Vietsch Foundation. The award was presented to Natalia Manola, CEO of OpenAIRE, by Antoinette Vietsch, treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation and sister of the late Karel Vietsch.

“The Board of Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation chose to award the 2022 Medal of Honour to Natalia, as a recognition of her continuous and successful dedication to management of OpenAIRE across many years of project activity, making it now an independent, stable, and sustainable legal entity,” said Valentino Cavalli, Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation, explaining the rationale for the choice.

About Natalia Manola

Natalia is a research associate at “Athena” Research and Innovation Center and the University of Athens, Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, with several years of experience as a Software Engineer and Architect in the Bioinformatics commercial sector.

Natalia is the managing director of OpenAIRE since 2009, a pan European e-Infrastructure supporting open access in all scientific results, the coordinator of OpenMinTeD an infrastructure on text and data mining, and is now involved in the implementation of HELIX, the Greek e-Infrastructure for research. She has expertise in Open Science policies and implementation, and she currently serves in the EOSC Executive Board and the Open Science Policy Platform, an EC High Level Advisory Group to Commissioner Moedas to provide advice about the development and implementation of open science policy in Europe.

Vietsch Foundation

The Vietsch Foundation was officially established on 28 February 2014 by the will of the late Karel Willem Vietsch, former Secretary General of TERENA. As a charity (ANBI) under Dutch law, the foundation is capable of making and receiving grants that satisfy the objectives and purpose of the organisation: to support research and development of advanced internet technology for scientific research and higher education. The Board of Trustees of the Vietsch Foundation are the custodians of the foundation assets and core values and implement them by funding initiatives and projects that have the greatest potential impact with minimal cost.

To learn more, visit https://www.vietschfoundation.org

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