Prof. Dr. Sam Arts
Dept. MSI, Faculty of Economics and Business
KU Leuven, Belgium

Sam Arts is Professor at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation at KU Leuven’s Faculty of Economics and Business. His research lies at the intersection of science, technology, innovation, and firm strategy. His recent work uses natural language processing (NLP) methods to analyze scientific publications and patents, examining the emergence and impact of new scientific ideas in publication text and the role of scientific ideas in technological progress. His research has appeared in Management Science, Organization Science, Research Policy, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and Strategic Management Journal. More information is available on his personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/samarts/homepage

Prof. Dr. Iana Atanassova
Director of CRIT laboratory
Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, France

Iana Atanassova is Professor of Natural Language Processing at the Université Marie et Louis Pasteur in Besançon, France, where she heads the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et Transculturelles (CRIT). She is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) since 2021 and works at the intersection of computational linguistics, information science and scientometrics. Her research focuses on information extraction and semantic annotation of scientific texts using linguistically motivated methods, machine learning and artificial intelligence, with a particular emphasis on the linguistic analysis of citation contexts and their rhetorical and functional roles in scientific articles. She has published widely on citation context analysis, including work on the linguistic patterns and rhetorical structure of citation contexts and on the interpretation of multiple in-text references. She currently leads several interdisciplinary national and European projects, among them the ANR project InSciM, which develops models and tools for analysing and annotating scientific uncertainty across disciplines.

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 encyclopaedias 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 and holds a Ph.D. (Doctor Europaeus cum laude) in Management and Industrial Engineering. His background combines management engineering, data science, scientometrics, and performance analysis, with a particular focus on public services, data quality, efficiency measurement, and policy evaluation. His research integrates quantitative methods, nonparametric frontier techniques, bibliometric analysis, and artificial intelligence to support evidence-based decision-making and innovation. He has authored various peer-reviewed international publications and has participated in several national and European research projects, including ETER, RISIS, and Rome Technopole initiatives. He has been a visiting researcher at Université catholique de Louvain and contributes to the scientific community through teaching, editorial activities, conference organization, and peer review for leading international journals. His work bridges methodological research and applications across universities, public policy, and regulatory studies.

Anja Edmeades
Solutions Consultant, Clarivate

Anja Edmeades is a Strategic Solution Consultant for Research & Analytics at Clarivate, working closely with universities and research institutions across the DACH region. With 20 years’ experience in the industry, she specialises in research evaluation, bibliometrics, and helping institutions leverage data to inform strategy and best practices.

Dr. Elvira González-Salmón
Universidad de Granada, Spain

Elvira González-Salmón is a PhD candidate at Universidad de Granada. She holds a bachelors degree in International Relations (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and a History of Politics and Society Masters (Utrecht University). They enjoyed a JAE-intro fellowship at the Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos (IPP-CSIC). Her research focuses on gender inequalities within academia and how they affect research agendas. In 2024 they were a visiting scholar at the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics (Delft University of Technology).

Benedikt Schmal is a competition economist with a strong record of turning complex analysis into real-world impact. His portfolio spans research, consulting, and policy engagement.

He is co-founder of FORMOE – Forschungsforum Mobilitätsökonomik, a research and policy initiative connecting economic analysis, public debate, and strategic advice on transportation and mobility.

His consulting profile includes freelance consulting in science and transportation, work as an external advisor for a public affairs consultancy, and policy-oriented engagement at the intersection of economics, regulation, and strategy.

He has held leadership roles at the Walter Eucken Institute, completed fellowships at George Mason University, and published in leading economics journals. His goal is to make economic research useful beyond academia.

Kathryn Weber-Boer  has a background in archaeological anthropology and experience as a research intelligence analyst and scientific information specialist. As a computational social scientist, Kathryn has worked to better understand the use and perception of research, and to focus attention on research integrity to strengthen the research ecosystem. She has worked on alternative researcher-level indicators, non-traditional metrics, and research integrity, developing these for Digital Science’s Dimensions and Altmetric datasets. Her work has looked at the importance of collaboration between social sciences and STEM research, the role of mentorship on positive and negative science communication practices, the use and reuse of shared research data, and characterizing suspicious references. Her role at Digital Science is to support engagement with and data access for scientometric researchers.