Knowledge Networks News International Conference Debates the Role of S&T in the Context of the International Crisis International Conference Debates the Role of S&T in the Context of the International Crisis
- 13/07/2009The 12th International Conference on Public Policies in Innovation and Technology “Porto2009”, was held on 13-14 July 2009 at the Casa da Musica, Porto, the central focus of which being the discussion of strategic responses to the current international financial crisis that brought together long-term concerns with particular relevance to Science and Technology.
The Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, chaired the opening session, with contributions from the Secretary General of OECD, Pier Carlo Padoan, the Deputy President for R&D at Daimler AG, Heinrich Fleger, and Professor James Utterback from the Sloan School of Management of MIT.
The Conference also included analysis and debate on emerging strategies for technological development, as well as technology transfer and commercialization, with invited talks by the President of the French National Academy of Technology, Alain Pompidou, the Director of the Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Section of the US National Academy of Science, Charles Wessner, the former Mayor of Austin, Will Wynn, and Professor Raj Rajkumar from Carnegie Mellon University. The role of universities and the challenges to their continuing modernization were discussed by the Vice-President for the area of research at the University of Texas at Austin, Juan Sanchez, and the Rector of the University of Porto, José Marques dos Santos. The President of The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), Luis Magalhães, co-chaired with Pedro Guedes de Oliveira, a Member of the Board of FCCN - The Foundation for National Scientific Computation, the session on Human Factors and Knowledge Networks. The Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor, closed proceedings on the afternoon of the 14th.
The Conference formed part of a series of events planned for 2009 by the UTEN-University Technology Enterprise Network, which was set up under the UT Austin-Portugal Program, which falls under the scope of the Knowledge Networks activities integrated within the Commitment to Science for Portugal’s Future initiative, as do the MIT-Portugal Program, the CMU-Portugal Program and the Fraunhofer-Portugal Program, which were also called upon to contribute to the conference.
The UTEN Network links the 35 main technology transfer centres in scientific and higher education institutions in Portugal, encouraging the specialisation of national competences in this area through its internationalisation. Its mission is to stimulate and support the transfer and commercialization of technology in an international context, fostering the formation of technical expertise and access to international markets for new scientifically-based ideas. The 2008-2009 UTEN Network Activity Report was presented during the Conference.
The UT Austin-Portugal Program, which forms part of the UTEN – University Technology Enterprise Network, is led by a Board of Directors chaired by the President of the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), and includes the President of The Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), the Vice-President for Research and the Associated Vice-President for Research of the University of Texas at Austin and the two co-directors of the Program in Portugal and at UT Austin.