Prof. Petra Ahrweiler

Prof. Petra Ahrweiler is the Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business, Director of UCD´s newly established Innovation Research Unit IRU, and a permanent Research Affiliate of the Engineering Systems Division at MIT, USA. She studied law, sociology, journalism and political science at the University of Hamburg finishing with her Ph.D. in the area of science and technology studies at the Free University Berlin where she was supported by the German National Merit Foundation. Since her habilitation thesis at the University of Bielefeld on social simulation of innovation processes she worked as a Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG and as a Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Hamburg where she built up a new research programme on innovation research. Petra Ahrweiler has long experience as principal investigator and co-ordinator of international projects on innovation networks, e.g. the EU projects on Simulating Self-Organizing Innovation Networks (SEIN) and on Network Models, Governance, and R&D Collaboration Networks (NEMO). She holds various research awards and is a member of various advisory boards in both governmental and academic organisations.