Session Leads

Arjon van Hengel, Senior Policy Officer Health Innovations and Ecosystems, EU DG Research & Innovation 

Recent geopolitical and economic developments have led the EU to take action to boost its competitiveness. Research and innovation naturally have an important role to play in this, as also set out in the Life Science Strategy. 

This keynote will shed light on the EU’s research, policy and related regulatory priorities. It will also look ahead to the upcoming funding programmes FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund. Arjon van Hengel will highlight how the EU aims to make Europe the most attractive place in the world for life sciences in 2030, and what kind of opportunities this will provide for researchers. 

Bio of Arjon van Hengel

Arjon van Hengel works for the European Commission as senior policy officer in the Health Innovations & Ecosystems Unit within the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. His unit aims to foster the development and uptake of breakthrough innovations in the field of health and care, and to help citizens stay healthy in particular through health promoting environments and people-centred healthcare systems. He is a member of the Innovative Health Initiative’s Science and Innovation Panel.

Arjon has been at the European Commission since 2005 and has worked on various aspects of research related to human health. He has been team leader for infectious diseases during the first one and a half years of the COVID-19 pandemic, policy officer for antimicrobial resistance research and has led a research group that develops and validates analytical detection methods for food allergies.

He received a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Wageningen (NL), and prior to joining the European Commission, he was a research scientist at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK).