• Evidence-based policy making

    A number of my tweets and retweets this past week have focused in different respects on the notion of evidence-based policy. Most with any training in the sciences may well be confused by the very concept since it implies that there is, … Continued

  • Week 3: EU data protection laws, TTIP and industry responses

    The topic for this week was inspired by a short article in the FT about Amazon’s decision to site a data centre in Germany to create more confidence in Amazon’s ability to protect the data of Europeans and comply with data … Continued

  • Week 2: More science fiction? The quest for nuclear fusion and the case of public v private R&D

    Last week, we used driverless cars (which even a few year’s ago seemed more science fiction than reality) as a case for how a disruptive technology might challenge existing industry structures and may be leading firms to take R&D more … Continued

  • Week 1 Topic: Placing Bets on the Future — Automotive R&D, Driverless Cars and Innovation as Disruption

    In my original tweet, earlier today I responded to Anne Glover, the EC’s Chief Scientific Advisor, who was pointing out the importance of the automotive industry to European R&D.  She was undoubtedly referring to work of the Joint Research Centre, which in … Continued

  • Summer Reading List 2014

    Welcome to Cambridge! Summer may be over, but it seems fitting to begin the academic year with our summer reading list since that is meant to provide the most general overview and entry point to the programme and to thinking about the interactions … Continued

  • Data Protection Debates: Week 8

    I have generally tried to stay away from EU Science and Technology Policy issues since that is the  focus of TP3 in Easter term, but following on the DG-Connect talk, some of the legal and policy questions we touched on … Continued