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| Latest news |
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Senegalese delegation visits UNU-MERIT
Posted: 2009-02-02
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| Members of the Senegalese delegation |
A three-headed delegation from the Consortium pour la Recherche Economique et Sociale (CRES) of Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal visited UNU-MERIT from 28 until 30 January. At the basis of the visit lies the mutual desire to increase inter-institutional cooperation. For this reason, the institutes discussed the opportunities of an enhanced partnership, leading to twinning between the two institutes, which will boost a valuable two-way flow of knowledge and research activities. Other topics on the agenda were the organization of UNU-MERIT events in Senegal. CRES will already function as co-host for the GLOBELICS 2009 conference that UNU-MERIT organises in Dakar in October this year. This beneficial cooperation has also fostered the plan to organise DEIP, a UNU-MERIT training course, in Dakar. At the end of the delegation’s visit the two directors signed a protocol of collaboration between UNU-MERIT and CRES.
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UNU Vice-Rector pays a visit to UNU-MERIT
Posted: 2009-02-02
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| Prof. Kazuhiko Takeuchi, pictured left, and Prof. Luc Soete |
Prof. Kazuhiko Takeuchi, Vice-Rector of United Nations University, visited UNU-MERIT on 26 January. It was the first time for the recently appointed Vice-Rector to pass by Maastricht. Prof. Takeuchi met with Luc Soete, Director of UNU-MERIT and Robin Cowan who is responsible for the Institute’s training and capacity development activities. After several meetings with UNU-MERIT research-fellows Théophile T. Azomahou, Mulu Gebreeyesus, Can Huang, Michiko Iizuka and Jojo Jacob, Prof Takeuchi was given a complete update of the current UNU-MERIT activities in the fields of research and training and was informed about future institutional plans.
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| Research & policy analysis |
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Innovation in Europe is improving at a steady pace
Posted: 2009-02-02
The European Commission has recently published the 2008 European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS). The EIS provides a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of the EU’s 27 nation-bloc. This year’s report shows that the EU is making substantial progress in its innovation performance preceding the financial crisis. The relative innovation gap with the US and Japan has been reduced, in particular due to strong progress by many new Member States such as Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria. The report also shows that the EU is holding its ground against emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil. Although these emerging countries show a faster rate of improvement, the EU is still holding a substantial lead in innovation performance.
The EIS report was prepared by Hugo Hollanders, Adriana van Cruysen and Anthony Arundel from UNU-MERIT for the EC's Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry with support from researchers from Italy's National Research Council and CWTS from Leiden University.
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LINK website revamped
Posted: 2009-02-02
Following weeks of tinkering with its design and content elements LINK, a UNU-MERIT and FAO initiative based in Hyderabad and with regional hubs in East and West Africa and South America, has launched a revamped and redesigned website at www.innovationstudies.org. In the next few weeks LINK will make its entire catalogue of publications available for public viewing and download. These publications include discussion papers, policy briefs and regular news bulletins. The new look website has been designed to attract more visitors through a more engaging format. Apart from regular news and opinion pieces, the website will also feature blogs by LINK researchers as well as staff. LINK invites reactions to the changes or suggestions for future ways to evolve and visitors are encouraged to fill in a comment form on the website or email them to info@innovationstudies.org.
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| Training & capacity development |
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PhD defence Sandra Leitner
Posted: 2009-02-02 | Updated: 2009-02-10
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| Sandra Leitner |
On 12 March 2009, Sandra Leitner will defend her PhD thesis “Embodied Technological Change and Patterns of Investment in Austrian Manufacturing.” Prof. Dr. Pierre Mohnen is the promoter of Sandra. In brief the thesis elaborates on the role of embodied technological change for business cycles and identifies patterns and determinants of investments as carriers of embodied technology and as key transition mechanism from technological change to productivity and output growth. Throughout, the small and open economy of Austria is used as an empirical platform.
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| Face of the month |
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Sulayman K. Sowe
Posted: 2009-02-02 | Updated: 2009-05-27
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| Sulayman K. Sowe |
Dr. Sulayman K. Sowe (The Gambia) joined UNU-MERIT as a Research-fellow on 1 February. He contributes to research focusing on Open Source Software and operates within the Collaborative Creativity Group of UNU-MERIT’s third research theme ‘Knowledge and industrial dynamics’. At the moment Dr. Sowe is involved in the FlossMetrics, FlossInclude and the Open Source Observatory and Repository projects.
Before joining UNU-MERIT, Dr. Sowe was a research-fellow and assistant lecturer at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. Here, his main field of research has been free and open source software. Dr. Sowe obtained a PhD degree in Free/Open Source Software Development from the same university in 2007. Furthermore, in the 1980s and 1990s Dr. Sowe acquired study and working experience in Africa, Asia and Europe.
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| Events & networking |
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UNU-MERIT hosts EU Expert Workshop on Technology transfer in UNFCCC
Posted: 2009-02-13 | Updated: 2009-02-16
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| Participants in the workshop |
On 4 and 5 February UNU-MERIT hosted the Expert Workshop "Valorising the Experience of European support to Technology Transfer (TT) for the Enhancement of Technology Transfer System under the UN Climate Change Convention". The workshop aimed to communicate the specific needs of a technology transfer system under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to innovation support and technology experts in Europe. Furthermore, the workshop explored the network’s capacity to support arising TT-structures. This event brought together several experts from the European Commission Directorate-Generals Environment, Enterprise en External Relations. Furthermore, the workshop was attended by members of the EGTECH group, states representatives and technology transfer experts from the TTCLEAR initiative of the UNFCCC secretariat.
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