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Dr. Luc SOETE Rector Magnificus, University of Maastricht

CV

 He completed his first degrees in economics (1972, summa cum laude) and development economics (1973, summa cum laude) at the University of Gent, Belgium, before obtaining his DPhil in economics at the University of Sussex (1978).
 Before coming to Maastricht in 1986, Luc Soete worked at the Department of Economics of UFSIA, University of Antwerp (1973-79), the Institute of Development Studies (1979-84) and the Science Policy Research Unit (1980-86) at the University of Sussex, England. He was also Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Stanford University (1984-85).
 In 1988 he became director of MERIT, a medium sized research institute with a good international reputation in the area of innovation studies and the socio-economic analysis of technological change.
 In 1999 he became director of a new interdisciplinary undertaking: the International Institute of Infonomics. The new institute groups currently some 70 researchers from different disciplines all focusing on various aspects of the digitisation of society.
 His research interests include both the theoretical and empirical study of technological change and innovation, with a particular emphasis on new information and communication technologies, on growth, employment and international trade and investment.
1995 Dr. Soete was co-ordinator for the OECD's Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, the G-7 project "Technology, Productivity and Job Creation", submitted to the G-7 Jobs Summit in Lille, April 1996.
1995-1997 Luc Soete chaired the High Level Expert Group on the "Social and Societal Aspects of the Information Society" for the European Commission. This group was set up in May 1995 to look into the social and societal aspects of the Information Society, and is seen as an integral part of the European Commission's Action Plan on the Information Society. An interim report "Building the European Information Society for Us All" was released in January 1996.
2005 Luc Soete became joint Director of the United Nations University Institute for New Technologies (UNU-INTECH) and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT). He is Professor of International Economics (on leave) at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Maastricht.
2012 Professor Luc Soete is the Rector Magnificus of Maastricht University as of 1 September 2012.

Mitgliedschaften

Dutch Adviesraad voor Wetenschap en Technologie (AWT), since 2004
Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

Publikationen

Over the past 30 years, Soete has authored, co-authored, edited and co-edited no fewer than 11 books, 50 articles and 100 book chapters. His publications cover the broad fields of theoretical, empirical and policy studies of technological development and, in particular, innovation.

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