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Dr. Govert Gijsbers joined TNO in 2004 and is presently working as senior adviser and as manager of the Innovation Policy Group. He specializes in research and innovation policy, with a special interest in foresight and scenarios studies, and in planning, monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment. His work includes innovation and foresight studies and he does research on the dynamics of knowledge infrastructures and the changing roles of Research and Technology Organizations in open innovation. He has worked for national and international organizations for more than 25 years and is actively involved in projects on new skills and competences for Europe, innovation in different economic sectors, including in agriculture, food and biotechnology.. Other recent projects include work on food quality and safety issues, Science and Technology Commercialization with the Russian Academy of Sciences, a benchmarking study of European RTOs an economic analysis of Quality Assurance Schemes in agriculture, and a scenario study for the Netherlands Commission on Genetic Modicification (COGEM). He has led a large number of international projects for the European Commission, for JRC/IPTS, for the Asian Development Bank, for the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others.

Maurits Butter will be reponsible for the methodological approach of this project.He graduated at the faculty of chemical engineering at the Delft University of Technology. He started his career as an environmental consultant with Dutch consultancy firm Tebodin, where he was involved in the reduction of waste disposal and emissions. In 1994-1998 he worked for the Netherlands’ Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment, in the department of Strategic Planning (VROM). In 1998 he joined TNO as a senior advisor on innovation policy. He works at the interface between technological innovation and policy, focusing on foresight studies and the non-technological aspects of technological innovation. At present, he is member of the management team and research manager of the TNO research program on “renewal of innovation” and several large EC funded and national foresight projects.

Miriam Leis (Dr. rer. soc.) works as a researcher at TNO since May 2008, specialising in emerging technologies (e.g. NBIC, biomedical engineering, Human Enhancement Technologies (HET), advanced robotics and AI, synthetic biology), future issues (e.g. megatrends, weak signals, EFMN), ELSI/ELSA of emerging technologies and vision assessment. Recent projects include “Robotics for Healthcare”, innovations for the food industry, “Megatrends”, technological innovations in various areas, ethical issues of synthetic biology and “Scanning for Emerging Science and Technology Issues” (SESTI). She studied political sciences (with specialisation in biopolitics) and sociology (specialization: sociology of technology) at University Konstanz (Germany) and got her PhD in sociology with an interdisciplinary thesis about non-industrial robots. Prior to TNO she worked as a researcher at University Duisburg-Essen and the German foresight consulting firm. Miriam Leis is also involved in the WFUNA Millennium project, societal/ethical discussions about Human Enhancement Technologies and other foresight-related expert networks.

Matthijs Leendertse has been working as a research consultant for TNO Information and Communication Technology, a Dutch R&D organisation, since February 2006. His work focuses mostly on media, education and ICT related strategic research for the private and pubic sectors. Research topics include learning spaces, digital educational content, open educational resources (OER), life long learning, e-skills, the effectiveness of ICT in education, social media and the future of publishing (e-readers, user created content etc.). Since 2006, he is also a scientific lecturer at the Erasmus University, Faculty of History and Arts on trends in the media industry and media policy. Previously, he worked as a lecturer and research associate at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Communication Studies/Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR). Before that, he worked as head of research at Van Dusseldorp & Partners, an Amsterdam-based consultancy company focused on new media developments. He often gives speeches at national and international conferences. Leendertse is a member of the international advisory board of the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation. Currently he is finishing his Ph.D. dissertation at ASCoR on the effects of policy measures on the production of digital educational resources. He holds an MA in Communication Studies (2000) from the University of Amsterdam.

Annelieke van der Giessen is a researcher and consultant at TNO Information and Communication Technology (Delft, the Netherlands). Annelieke joined TNO in 2001. She specialises in research and innovation policy. She has special interest in national and sectoral systems of innovation (ICT, Life Sciences), the policy mix for innovation, the impact of R&D programmes as well as foresight and impact assessment of the technological and socio-economic aspects of emerging technologies. Research methods include policy evaluation and monitoring, impact assessment, benchmarking, analysis of innovation systems, business models and foresight.

She has worked in several EU and national projects on analysing and benchmarking science, technology and innovation policies, in particular for life sciences, ICT and converging technologies. Clients include the European Commission (DG Enterprise and Industry, DG Research, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities), the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, the Netherlands Genomics Initiative, and Rathenau Institute.

Since 2003, Annelieke has been responsible for the secretariat of the Six Countries Programme – The Innovation Policy Network. This is an informal expert network of research and innovation policy researchers and policy makers from various countries.

Annelieke has a diploma in Small Business Management from Haarlem Business School and holds a masters degree in Business Studies, specialization in management of technology and innovation, from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Business Studies.