Stefano Battiston is SNF Professor at the Department of Banking and Finance of the University of Zurich. His work applies the complex networks approach both to the empirical analysis of large economic networks and the modelling of their dynamics. His main activity at the frontier of physics and economics has made an impact on both communities, by covering topics such as corporate control, innovation, decision-making, and financial risk. A collateral line of research has led to interesting applications in computer science in the field of trust algorithms for on-line social networks. In recent years, his main interests have been financial contagion, default cascades, and propagation of financial distress, where he combines the insights from the statistical mechanics of networks with the analysis of economic incentives. Within the Financial Instability Program directed by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and funded by the Institute of New Economic Thinking, Stefano Battiston coordinates the Working Group on Financial Networks. In relation to Global Systems Science, he is the coordinator of the FET project SIMPOL that investigates policy modeling in finance and climate finance. This role will facilitate a strong synergy of ISIGrowth with SIMPOL as well as with the other GSS projects and initiatives. Web page
Fabio De Masi was elected to the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg for DIE LINKE party in June 2014. He is responsible for Hamburg and North Rhine-Westphalia. He holds a Masters in international economics at Berlin School of Economics and Law, has been a lecturer in economics and worked for Sahra Wagenknecht in the German Bundestag. In the European Parliament he is mostly involved with economic policy. Web page
Giovanni Dosi is professor of economics and director of the Institute of Economics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. He also serves as director of the Industrial Policy and Intellectual Property Rights task forces at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. Additionally, Prof. Dosi is a continental Europe editor of the journal Industrial and Corporate Change. He is included in the ISI Highly Cited Research list, denoting those who made fundamental contributions to the advancement of science and technology, and is a corresponding member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the first academy of sciences in Italy. His major research areas – where he is author and editor of several works – include economics of innovation and technological change, industrial economics, evolutionary theory, economic growth and development, organizational studies. A selection of his works has been published in two volumes: Innovation, Organization and Economic Dynamics. Selected Essays, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2000; and Economic Organization, Industrial Dynamics and Development: Selected Essays, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2012. Web page
Peter Dröll is in charge of Innovation Union and European Research Area in the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Department. This Directorate is about creating the conditions for excellent research and innovation throughout Europe. He has co-authored the 2010 “Innovation Union” strategy and is overseeing the Commission activities on innovation analysis, benchmarking and demand side measures. His previous positions in the European Commission include financial control of the Joint Research Centre, enforcement of EU environmental legislation, accession negotiations with Poland and coordination of the environment negotiations with all accession countries. He was a Cabinet member of Enlargement Commissioner Günter Verheugen and Head of Cabinet of the Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik. Peter is a lawyer by training with a doctorate degree in German constitutional law and European law. Before joining the European Commission in 1991, Peter worked as a lawyer in Germany.
Monica Frassoni is Co-chair of the European Green Party. From 1999 to 2009 she was Member of the European Parliament (from 2004 Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group) – in a truly European way: once for the Wallonian, once for the Italian Greens. She seat in the Board of Directors of the Green European Foundation where she focus on training and capacity building and the future of Green political thought in Southern Europe.
James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations and a professorship of Government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale (Ph.D. in economics, 1981). He studied as a Marshall Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge in 1974-1975, and then served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee. He directed the LBJ School’s Ph.D. Program in Public Policy from 1995 to 1997. He directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group based at the LBJ School. Galbraith’s new book is Inequality and Instability: A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2012). Galbraith is a member of the Lincean Academy, the oldest honorary scientific society in the world. He is a senior scholar of the Levy Economics Institute and chair of the Board of Economists for Peace and Security, a global professional network. He writes frequently for policy magazines and the general press. Web page
Alan Kirman is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Aix-Marseille III and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His Ph.D. is from Princeton and he has been professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Warwick University, and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the European Economic Association and was awarded the Humboldt Prize in Germany. He is member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has published 150 articles in international scientific journals. He also is the author and editor of twelve books, most recently Complex Economics: Individual and Collective Rationality, published by Routledge in July 2010.
Elisabeth Lipiatou is Head of Unit at the DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission. Ms Lipiatou became a Doctor of Sciences in Chemical Oceanography at University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, in 1989. She has ten years of academic experience in various universities and research centres, including the Centro de Investigacion y Dessarollo (CSIC) in Barcelona, the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and the University of Minnesota. Her research and published work were mostly in the field of biogeochemistry and chemical oceanography. She was visiting scholar at Rutgers University and member of the International Panel on Water, Environment and Health of UN University. Ms Lipiatou has sixteen years of experience in science and policy interface at the European Commission, Directorate General Research.
Mariana Mazzucato holds the RM Phillips chair in the Economics of Innovation at SPRU in the University of Sussex. She has held academic positions at the University of Denver, London Business School, Open University, and Bocconi University. Her recent book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (Anthem, 2013) was on the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times. Professor Mazzucato is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy, the 2015 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis and in 2013 the New Republic called her one of the ‘3 most important thinkers about innovation‘. She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors; a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on the Economics of Innovation; a permanent member of the European Commission’s expert group on Innovation for Growth (RISE), a member of the UK Labour Party’s Economic Advisory Committee and a member of SITRA’s (the Finnish Innovation Fund) Advisory Panel. Her research focuses on the relationship between financial markets, innovation, and economic growth—at the company, industry and national level. She is currently working on various research projects commissioned by organizations including NASA, and the Brazilian Ministry for Science and Technology. Web page
Arturo O’Connell is presently Senior Advisor to the Chairperson of the Board of Governors of the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic; ex- Member of that Board of Governors (2003-2010; 1986-1988). Formerly (1989-1999), co-director of the Centro de Economía Internacional (Centre for the International Economy) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina and Director of the Master’s Degree in Integration with particular reference to MERCOSUR, University of Buenos Aires (2001-2003). Secretary General for the Latin American region of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) (1974-1979). Lecturer and research worker at several centres and universities in Argentina, Latin America, Great Britain and the European Continent. Consultant to regional and international organizations. Holds a Degree in Mathematics (University of Buenos Aires) and proceeded to study Economics as a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College, University of Cambridge, England. Has published extensively on international financial matters, external debt, history of international economic relations and economic integration. For instance, “The recent crisis of the Argentine economy: some elements and background” in Epstein, G. “Financialization and the World Economy” (E.Elgar, London, 2005); “The return of ‘vulnerability’ and Raul Prebisch’s early thinking on the ‘Argentine business cycle’”; ECLA Review, No. 75, December 2001; “Foreign Debt and the Reform of the International Monetary System” ECLA Review No.30, December 1986; “Argentina into the Depression: Problems of an Open Economy” in “Latin America in the 1930’s. The Role of the Periphery in World Crisis” ed. by Rosemary Thorp. Macmillan, London, 1984). Web page
Georgios Papanagnou is Policy Officer Employment and Inequalities at the DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Panteion Panepestimion Ikonomikon kai Politicon Epistimon, and has a broad experience in policy analysis and project management. Before joining the European Commission in 2015, he worked as consultant at UNESCO and as Research fellow at the United Nations University – CRIS. Mark Nicklas is Acting Head of Unit Innovation Policy and Investment for Growth at the European Commission. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Universität Hohenheim. He joined the European Commission in 2003 as Policy Officer for the Air Transport Agreement, and was then appointed assistant to the Director-General Enterprise & Industry.
Willi Semmler is Henry Arnhold Professor of Economics, Department of Economics at the The New School, New York. He is author or co-author of more than 90 articles in international journals and is author or co-author of 13 books, among them books on Industrial Organization, Economic Growth, Growth, Resources and the Environment, Macroeconomics, Financial Economics, and the European Macroeconomy. His recent book is on “Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions” (Springer Publishing House, 2011). He has taught, among others, at the American University, Washington, DC, Bielefeld University, and UNAM, Mexico City, and French Universities. He is engaged in evaluating EU research projects. He was visiting scholar at Columbia University, Stanford University, Humboldt University, Berlin, and Fulbright Professor at the University of Economics and Business, Austria. He is Research Associate at the SCEPA, New School, New York, Center for European Economic Research, Mannheim, and the IMK, Duesseldorf. Web page
Robert Lord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. He is the author of The World After Communism (1995) (American edition called The Road from Serfdom). He was made a life peer in 1991, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He is chairman of the Governors of Brighton College. He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, “Against the Current”, which is syndicated in newspapers all over the world. His account of the current economic crisis, Keynes: The Return of the Master, was published by Penguin Allen Lane in September 2009. A short history of twentieth-century Britain was published by Random House in the volume A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles edited by Jonathan Clark in January 2010. Web page
Robert Strauss is Head of Unit at the DG Employment of the European Commission He studied economics at Cambridge, Bruges (College of Europe), and Oxford. Joined the European Commission in 1985. Spent the next 15 years in DG Industry/Enterprise working in the areas of steel, chemicals, cars and trade negotiations. Joined DG Employment in 2001 as head of the Knowledge Society unit. From January 2004, has been head of unit for Employment Strategy. Involved in the re-orientation of the Lisbon Strategy and the adoption of the first, and the second set of Integrated Guidelines. The Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Job and its successor EU 2020 remains the main priority of the unit and, recently, how to confront the economic downturn and rising unemployment . As of 1st May 2006, also responsible for Local Development and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). With respect to specific policy developments; heavily involved in the Commission’s proposal for, and Council’s adoption of common principles for flexicurity and more recently, has been at the centre of developing the EU policy initiative entitled New Skills for New Jobs.
Kathleen Van Brempt is a Member of the European Parliament as part of the Party of European Socialists and is leader of the local branch of her party in Antwerp. As Vice-President of the S&D-group she is responsible for sustainable development, environment, industry and transport. She was first elected in January 2003 and resigned in October 2003 to become State Secretary for Labor organization and Welfare in the working place in the second Belgian federal government headed by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. During the regional elections of 2004, Van Brempt was elected to the Flemish Parliament and she became Minister for Mobility, Social Economy and Equal Opportunities in the Flemish government. In the 2009 European elections, she was elected as Member of the European Parliament in the Socialist fraction. She was re-elected in the 2014 elections.