Bruno Woeran starts as EU Affairs Manager

Press release 26.10.2015

The work for creating a new approach to attract direct EU funding to the Vaasa region was started in the beginning of 2015, as a result of strategy planning of the Vaasa Region Development Company VASEK’s board of directors. In the first few months of the year, a number of workshops were organized for actors and shareholders in the region, in which a framework for the activities and financing was built up. A total of 11 partners participate in the financing: the City of Vaasa, VASEK, Merinova, Regional Council of Ostrobothnia, Vaasa University, Vaasa University of Applied Sciences, Novia University of Applied Sciences, Åbo Akademi University, University of Helsinki, Hanken School of Economics and the Ostrobothnia Chamber of Commerce.

Bruno Woeran (Austria) has joined Merinova on October 1st as EU Affairs Manager for EnergyVaasa. The aim of his engagement is to bring all stakeholders from industries and universities into an active cooperation within European and International Research Collaboration, foremost in Horizon 2020 and other network related programmes.

The competitive nature of international programme participation nowadays calls for a good preparation on the context side, creating complementary consortia and engaging society at large for the exploitation and implementation of research results.

Bruno has previously worked as Senior Advisor for EU Research Programmes Management and Open Innovation Networks at LUT - Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. Formerly Research Grant Officer and Senior Expert Controlling at IST Austria with a portfolio of about 12.5 MEUR and Senior Consultant ICT at EUTEMA Technology Management Ltd in Vienna. For more than 14 years he was the Managing Director of DANUBE, the regional transfer organization in the Vienna Region for companies, universities, and research institutions on European Programmes for Innovation and Technology Transfer, Vocational Training (LLProgramme) and Research and Technological Development (FP3-7).

Bruno holds a Master’s degree in Business from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (1993) and from the University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna (1991). He is co-editor and author of articles on knowledge transfer and expert systems and works intensively on training and certification, for organisations’ innovation and knowledge management issues and regional innovation management tools, especially SMEs.

He is international trainer for EU Research, Higher Education and Innovation management projects and supports the EQF – European Qualification Framework through http://www.ecqa.org. In addition on being the current President of the European TechTransfer and International Innovation network www.TII.org, he serves on the boards of other international organizations fostering innovation management www.ISPIM.org and vocational training networks to support academic human capital exchange www.LEO-NET.org.

For more information:
Bruno Woeran, EU Affairs Manager +358 50 382 1182
Mika Konu, Managing Director of Merinova +358 400 730 747
Stefan Råback, Development Director VASEK +358 50 590 2525