Dr Matthias Weber, Head of Technology Policy Department , Austrian Research Centres (ARC)

Dr. Matthias Weber has been Head of Technology Policy Department at Austrian Research Centres (ARC) in Vienna since 2000. Before, he had been working for several years at the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) in Seville and at the Programme for Policy Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (PREST) in Manchester.  

He is an expert in national and European research, technology and innovation policy, and is regularly advising Austrian government and the European Commission on policy strategies and programme development. In 2005/2006 he was leading the innovation and technology policy strategy development at the Austrian Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, and in 2006/2007 he was in charge of the design of the innovation policy strategy process of the City of Vienna. He has been member of several expert groups of the European Commission, most recently on Rationales for the European Research Area (2007/2008) and on Key Technologies (2005). Currently, he is working on a project aiming to define a new mission and strategy for Austria’s largest applied research organisation ARC.  

His research work has in recent years focused on foresight methods in support of political decision-making, on the analysis of R&D collaboration networks, in particular in the context of the EC’s framework programmes, and on governance issues related to research, technology and innovation policy, in particular regarding horizontal coordination between innovation and sectoral policies, and the interplay of European, national and regional research, technology and innovation policy.