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The 29th EUA General Assembly (GA), taking place online on Thursday 2 October CEST from 10.00-11.00 CEST, is open to representatives of EUA member institutions and organisations. EUA affiliates may attend the General Assembly as observers. Registration is open until 22 September.
This extraordinary General Assembly is held for the purpose of electing a new member to the EUA Board for the period October 2025 until April 2029. The successful candidate will replace Astrid Söderbergh Widding, who recently stepped down from the EUA Board to take up a position with a research-funding organisation in Sweden.
Candidates were endorsed by EUA Council on the recommendation of the Nominations Committee. Voting will be open to eligible participants in attendance at the General Assembly and the results of the election will be announced before the meeting closes. Relevant meeting documents will be circulated to the executive heads and designated contact persons of EUA member institutions and organisations at the latest two weeks before the meeting.
Members who wish to register for the General Assembly and vote in the extraordinary Board election are kindly asked to take note of the information provided below on voting eligibility and proxy nominations. Questions related to participation may be directed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
EUA full members (individual and collective) with no outstanding memberships fees, up to and including 2025, are eligible to vote on statutory items, including the Board election, presented during the General Assembly. The deadline for receipt of any outstanding fee payments is Monday 22 September. Enquiries related to payment of membership fees can be directed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Voting is open to executive heads (university presidents, rectors and vice-chancellors and presidents of national rectors' conferences) of full EUA members. Executive heads who are unable to attend the GA may nominate a representative from within their leadership team to attend and vote on their behalf.
Alternatively, executive heads may nominate the head of another EUA full member to vote on their behalf. Please note that any member of the General Assembly may hold only one proxy from another EUA full member. Both the institution transferring a vote and the nominated proxy institution must have paid all outstanding membership fees.
PROXY NOMINATION FORM
Executive heads wishing to nominate a proxy must complete the form below by Monday 22 September. Please direct any related enquiries to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Board candidates are endorsed by EUA Council on the recommendation of the Nominations Committee, which oversees the selection and interview process following a call for nominees. During its extraordinary online meeting on 2 October, the General Assembly will be invited to vote for their preferred Board candidate.
The successful candidate will take office from 2 October, replacing Astrid Söderbergh Widding, and will serve until April 2029. Further information on the voting eligibility of EUA members and the criteria for nomination of proxy representatives can be found in the Voter Guidelines.
Levente Kovacs is the current Rector of Obuda University, Budapest, Hungary. He has held this position since 2019, following his appointment as a full professor at the university in 2016. From 2024, he has also served as Vice-President of the Hungarian Rectors’ Conference.
Professor Kovacs’ fields of interest are modern control theory and physiological controls. He founded the Physiological Controls Research Center at Obuda University in 2013. He was previously a János Bolyai Research Fellow of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 2012 to 2015. In 2021 he received the lifetime achievement Geza Hetenyi award from the Hungarian Diabetes Association as the first engineer ever in the life of the society.
He has been a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2009, senior member since 2018, holding several positions in the organisation. As of 2025 he is President of the John von Neumann Computer Society.
In 2015, Professor Kovacs was the recipient of the highly prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant grant in tumour control that aimed to research the context of personalized tumour control by control engineering methods as a double optimization min-max problem: reducing the therapy cost and maximizing the quality of life.
Levente Kovacs received his MSc degrees in electrical engineering in 2000 (“Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Romania) and biomedical engineering in 2011 (Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE), Hungary). He received his PhD from the BUTE in 2008. In 2024 he received his DSc from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Sunniva Whittaker is serving her second term as the rector of the University of Agder (UiA), (2019 – 2027) and is also the Chair of the University Board. From 2021-2025, she was the Chair of Universities Norway and is currently a Member of the Universities Norway Board. Before becoming rector, Professor Whittaker was the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at UiA and has also held positions as Department Head and Vice-Rector at NHH Norwegian School of Economics.
Professor Whittaker aims to create a culture of learning where students feel like partners in a community of knowledge. She works to achieve close collaboration with students through cooperation with student organisations and associations and by having her own student mentors. Ensuring good research conditions for research groups and individual researchers is also a top priority. In line with UiA’s vision of co-creation of tomorrow’s knowledge, she stresses the importance of the further development of collaboration between industry and public institutions in the region, including ensuring that students are connected to the labour market during their education. Sunniva Whittaker was born in Trondheim, Norway and was raised in Canada; she considers both Norwegian and English as her mother tongues.
Professor Whittaker holds a PhD in French Linguistics from the University of Bergen, Norway. She has studied French, Literary Science and Russian and is also a trained conference interpreter. Her PhD dissertation, which was written in French, explores how argumentation is integrated into language structures.
Photo credit: Jon Petter Thorsen
