| 2009: European Year of Creativity and Innovation – The European Parliament |
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| KEYNOTE SPEAKERS |
| David WHITE |
| David White, who is married with 3 grown-up children, comes from Northern Ireland. He studied economics and politics at the Queen’s University, Belfast, at Manchester University and at the LSE. After a period with the UK Government Economic Service, he moved to Brussels where, during a long career with the European Commission, he worked on employment questions, budgetary matters, the internal market, industry, innovation and education, while being involved almost continuously in trade and external relations. He was a member of the cabinet of Commission President Jacques Delors, led negotiations on government procurement in the Uruguay Round and was successively Director of Enterprise policy, Innovation policy and Education policy. He is currently EU Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.
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| Simon BENSASSON |
| Simon Bensasson was born in 1945. He took a degree in Architecture in 1969 and one in Computer Science in 1972. Following a period of work as a consultant in computing for the construction industry he formed Bensasson & Chalmers Ltd., a Software House in Cambridge UK, developing novel DBMS and Information Management Systems. He represented the UK in various European user associations and chaired the CECUA working group on standards for five years. He joined the European Commission, whose informatics architecture he had previously helped establish, in 1989 and has been Head of the Future and Emerging Technologies Unit in the IST Programme and later in charge of International Relations in IST technologies. He is currently advisor to Cedefop - the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Education and Training.
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| Elias CARAYIANNIS |
| Elias Carayiannis is Full Professor of Management Science as well as co-Founder and co-Director of the Global and Entrepreneurial Finance Research Institute (GEFRI) and Director of Research on Science, Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, European Union Research Center (EURC) at the School of Business, George Washington University. He has consulted to a wide variety of technology-driven organizations in the public and private sectors. He has published numerous articles in academic and professional journals, including Research Policy, Journal of R&D Management, Engineering Management Journal, and Journal of Growth and Change, and is co-author or co-editor of several books, including Idea Makers and Idea Brokers in High-Technology Entrepreneurship (Praeger, 2003), The Story of Managing Projects (Praeger, 2005), and Knowledge Creation, Diffusion and Use in Innovation Networks and Knowledge Clusters (Praeger, 2006).
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| Iordanis ARZIMANOGLOU |
| Dr. Iordanis Arzimanoglou was appointed CEO of Alexander Innovation Zone, Thessaloniki, Greece in 2007. In that role he is mandated to catalyze development and commercialization of new breakthrough research within an Innovation Zone environment, facilitate the interface between university and industry, and establish critical alliances in the entire Thessaloniki metropolitan area with European and US partners. From 2003 until his appointment to his current position Dr. Arzimanoglou was CEO of Biomedico Forum/Biomedical Science Park, a biocluster in Aarhus, Denmark. Prior to that he served as a consultant to major private hospitals and early stage biotech companies in Belgium, Luxemburg and Greece on management, strategy, research and business development issues (2001-2002). During the same time, he served as expert evaluator for the Research Directory (DG12), European Commission, Brussels, to review competitive research grant proposals in the field of Human Genetics. Dr. Arzimanoglou is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor with the University of Aarhus, Institute of Human Genetics since 2006. Most recently he was Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York (1999-2000) and prior to that he was Chief of Cancer Genetics in the Department of Gynecology at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York (1997-99). Before joining Lennox Hill he was a research scientist in the Division of Human Genetics at Weill Cornell Medical College.
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