Director-General for International Relations and Scientific Research
Barbara Weitgruber has always been involved in international cooperation, higher education and research – at the University of Graz, as Head of the Austrian National Agency for the EU Programmes ERASMUS, COMETT and Human Capital and Mobility, and then at the Austrian Federal Ministry in charge of higher education and research. She has also been very active in South-Eastern Europe, especially in the framework of the Task Force Education and Youth of the Stability Pact and the Task Force Fostering and Building Human Capital of the Regional Cooperation Council. Besides, she has been involved in the Bologna Process aimed at establishing a European Higher Education Area from its very beginning in 1999, especially in the development of the European Higher Education Area in a Global Setting. She is also a member of numerous committees, including the Task Force for Research, Technology and Innovation of the Austrian Federal Government and the Austrian Fulbright Commission, and she chairs the Scholarship Foundation of the Republic of Austria. In the context of the European Research Area, she is the Member States co-chair of ERAC, the European Research and Innovation Area Committee.