Valentin Bogorov
Strategic Customer Success Consultant, Clarivate

Valentin Bogorov is a strategic customer success consultant at Clarivate. He has over 11 years of experience advising libraries, universities, research organisations, and government agencies on bibliometric analysis and data-driven decisions to promote research excellence, innovation, and impact. Valentin is based in the UK and has worked with Clarivate customers and partners in over a dozen of countries. Prior to joining Clarivate he held a number of positions in public policy and administration consulting, working with major international organisations, including the World Bank, the European Commission, and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development. He did his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and taught at Concordia University, St. Paul. Valentin is passionate about empowering scientists, research administrators, and librarians to navigate and thrive in the evolving global landscape of research and innovation.

Dr. Nicola De Bellis
Bibliometric Office, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Nicola De Bellis is the coordinator of the Bibliometric Office and an adjunct professor of information science at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He graduated in philosophy and obtained a PhD in the history of science in 1998, with a doctoral dissertation on Renaissance encyclopedias that was later developed into one of the first accounts of the history of citation analysis. Since joining a medical library in 2002, he has worked at the intersection of service-oriented and research-based interests in information science, history and philosophy of science. His work group currently supports research evaluation, open science activities, and gender-related projects at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, focusing primarily on advanced quantitative and qualitative analyses and reporting. He also collaborates with the CINECA consortium to develop nationwide bibliometric indicators within a CRIS environment.

Dr. Simone Di Leo
Sapienza University, Italy

Simone Di Leo is an Assistant Professor at Sapienza University of Rome with a focus on quantitative economic analysis. He has a PhD in Industrial and Management Engineering. He is specialized in micro-data analysis and data quality in higher education institutions in Europe. His main research fields are scientometrics, non-parametric analysis and systematic literature reviews.
Personal website: https://simonedileo.github.io/
Google Scholar page:  https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uXEtOBsAAAAJ&hl=it

Dr. Elizabeth Gadd
Loughborough University, UK

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is Head of Research Culture & Assessment at Loughborough University. She chairs the International Network Of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group and is a Vice Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). She co-authored the UKRI-commissioned report, ‚Harnessing the Metric Tide: Indicators, Infrastructures & Priorities for UK Research Assessment‘ and was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management and Leadership.

Angela McGuire
Elsevier

Angela McGuire works in the Research Collaboration Unit at Elsevier and is responsible for driving projects centered around deriving insights and methods for demonstrating societal impact. She partners with higher education institutions to facilitate development of new tools and methods with a view to achieve better outcomes for the research evaluation community.
Angela has come to Elsevier after 20 years in the higher education sector including her PhD at Flinders University and most recently as Senior Data Analyst in the Research Office at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Angela’s interests lie in developing new ways to measure and demonstrate the societal impact of research. She loves to see insights turn into action, is always open to hearing new perspectives and is keen to collaborate to find innovative solutions to tackle the problems of our future.

Menico Rizzi
Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy

Prof. Menico Rizzi was elected Rector of the University of Piemonte Orientale, Italy, in 2024. He has previously been a member of the Governing Board of the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR) in the period 2020-2024 where he was in charge for coordinating the Agency’s activity in the medical area, Doctoral programmes and research on research assessment. In the period 2022-2024 he has been a member of the Steering Board of the global initiative CoARA. Full professor of Biochemistry at the University of Piemonte Orientale, he held the positions of Coordinator of the Evaluation Board of the Universities of Piemonte Orientale and Genova, Italy. Expert at the World Health Organization for the International Nonproprietary Name (INN) program and member of the task force for the development and  implementation of the ‚African Union – European Union Innovation Agenda‘. Speaker/organizer in National and International congresses and in International schools under UNESCO patronage. Prof. Rizzi ’s research activity focuses on infectious diseases linked to poverty and resulted in more than 140 publications and in the award of competitive grants.

Dr. Jürgen Wastl
VP Research Evaluation and Global Challenges, Digital Science

Jürgen Wastl is VP Research Evaluation and Global Challenges at Digital Science and brings in his experience from his previous role leading the consultancy team supporting research institutions, funders, governments, and other institutions with research capabilities to make more and better use of data to inform their strategies and decisions.
Before joining Digital Science, he headed the Research Information team at the Research Strategy Office at the University of Cambridge with responsibilities for activities in research evaluation and reporting as well as managing and implementing software tools and research identifiers (e.g. ORCID) for Academics and Administrators and was responsible for the provision and implementation of analysis (including network and collaboration analysis) for Collegiate Cambridge.