Thematic Solution Forum 1

TWAS administers 440 doctoral/postdoctoral fellowships per year, from over 90 DCs, with currently 1,100 students on site, offers research grants and other programmes. He also oversees the administration of OWSD (https://owsd.net/), with over 6,000 members; of IAP, (interacademies.net) a global network of 130 academies of science and medicine; and of GenderInSITE (https://genderinsite.net/), international initiative to promote the role of women in ST and engineering.

Murenzi plays a key role in global science diplomacy and policy.

He initially joined TWAS in 2011 for five years. He then moved to UNESCO, Paris, directing the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building. On 1 September 2017 he was transferred back to TWAS.

He served as Rwanda’s Minister of Education, S&T and Scientific Research (2001-2006), and as Minister in the President’s Office in Charge of S&T, and Scientific Research, with responsibilities including ICT (2006 – 2009).

Ms. ‘Utoikamanu, a Tongan national, took up her appointment as the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States in May 2017. Prior to taking up her position with the United Nations, she was the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Tourism in Tonga.

Ms. ‘Utoikamanu has a wealth of national, regional and international experience at various senior leadership levels.  She was previously Acting Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the Council of the University of the South Pacific (2015), Deputy Pro-Chancellor and Deputy Chair of the Council of the University of the South Pacific (2009-2016), Deputy Director General and Director of Education, Training and Human Development of the Secretariat of Pacific Community (2009-2015), Permanent Representative and Ambassador of the Government of Tonga to the United Nations, United States of America, Cuba and Venezuela and High Commissioner to Canada (2005-2009), and Secretary for Foreign Affairs and European Commission’s National Authorizing Officer for Tonga (2002-2005).

Dr. Orkun Hasekioglu, is Executive Vice President at TUBITAK, Turkish Scientific and Technological Research Foundation. He is responsible for research institutions and international relations. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of TUBİTAK and European Commission Joint Research Centers (JRC).

He has BS, MS (Caltech) and PhD (RPI) degrees in Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, with a specialization in signal processing, communications systems and networks. Prior to joining TUBITAK, after engaging in academia at Caltech and RPI, Dr. Hasekioglu, has served in General Electric’s R&D Center, Schenectady, NY, as a research engineer, Moren Communications as Chief Technology Officer, CHEMI Inc. as Vice President responsible from product development, and AIT Inc, as Vice President and later on as President and partner. At AIT, an engineering R&D and consulting services company, his team was involved in the design, analysis and testing of advanced technological products. Later on, Dr. Hasekioglu joined Turkish Airlines Technic as CIO where he was responsible from developing and implementing enabling and innovative Aircraft MRO IT Technologies for efficient maintenance operations.

TÜBİTAK is a national agency of Turkey with the goal of developing science, technology and innovation policies; supporting and conducting research and development; and playing a leading role in the creation of a “science and technology role” in Turkey. TÜBİTAK is very closely involved in the development and operationalization of the Technology Bank for the LDCs and Dr. Hasekioğlu sits on the Bank’s Governing Council. He will discuss how TÜBİTAK is facilitating STI development, scale up, and diffusion in Turkey, as well as regionally and globally.

Dr. Woosung Lee is the director of Global Policy Research Center, STEPI (Science and Technology Policy Institute), which is a government-affiliated policy research institute under the Research Council of Economics, Humanities, Social Sciences in the Prime Minister Office. He was nominated as a board member of UN ESCAP Scientific Advisory Board in 2016. He has been working in the field of STI (Science, Technology and Innovation) policy and tech-economics areas more than 15 years through LG Economic Research institute, SK Economic and Management Research Institute and STEPI. He also had taught in the Graduate School of Management of Technology, Korea University of Technology(KUT) more than 7 years. He was a visiting scholar to Asia University in Japan. His specialties are tech-economics, innovation system, STI policy and global development cooperation. His recent presentations include “Post 2015 SDGs Development Agendas and APEC Innovation Platforms (APEC Research and Technology, 2015)”, “Post-2015 SDGs and the role of STI (UNDP seminar, 2015)” and “Korean STI ODA Strategy and Global Technology Sharing Centers (Global South-South Development Expo, 2014).

Andrey Vasilyev is the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), a post he has held since 1 April 2010. Prior to his appointment as Deputy Executive Secretary, Mr. Vasilyev was Director of UNECE’s Economic Cooperation and Integration Division.

Mr. Vasilyev has almost 30 years of experience with the United Nations. From 2003 to 2006, Mr. Vasilyev was the Director of UNECE’s Technical Cooperation Unit.

Before joining the UNECE Secretariat, he worked as a Senior Programme Officer for the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in New York which he joined in 1993.

From 2001 until September 2002, Mr. Vasilyev was also the Principal Coordinating Officer in the Secretariat of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg. He joined the United Nations in 1992 as an advisor for the Secretariat of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which took place in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in June 1992.

Prior to his work for the United Nations he worked for the Permanent Mission of the USSR (Russian Federation) to the United Nations in New York where he was an advisor and negotiator on various economic and environmental issues, from 1987 to April 1992.

A graduate of the Moscow State University, Department of Economics, Mr. Vasilyev joined the Department of International Economic Organisations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in Moscow in 1983.

Dr. Chantal Line Carpentier is currently serving as the Chief of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) New York Office.

Dr. Carpentier leads her team to bridge the research and technical cooperation conducted by headquarters and the New York political process for UNCTAD, the focal point in the Organization for the integrated treatment of trade and development and interrelated issues in the areas of finance, technology, investment and sustainable development.

She previously lead the participation of non-state actors in the negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA); headed the Trade, Economics and Environment Program of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Commission for Environmental Cooperation; served as a Policy Analyst for the Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture; and headed the Country Office in Brazil for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Dr. Carpentier also serves on several boards and is a Mentor for the Unreasonable Group.

A Yale World Fellow, she holds agricultural and environmental economics degrees from McGill University and a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech University.

Mr. Oswaldo Reques is the Focal Point for South-South Cooperation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a position he has held for 2 years. Mr. Reques is a Venezuelan Historian and Lawyer who holds a Master’s degree in Political Sciences. Professor and Researcher in different fields of the social sciences in the University Central of Venezuela, Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC) and National Congress (Science and Technology Commission) among other institutions, with broad experience in the diplomatic field. He represented his country for nearly a decade in negotiations in Intellectual Property and Trade.

WIPO is the global forum for intellectual property services, policy, information and cooperation. Its mission is to lead the development of a balanced and effective international intellectual property system that enables innovation and creativity for the benefit of all. WIPO is actively engaged in South-South cooperation, where it acts as a catalyst, spurring on promising home-grown initiatives and facilitating mutually-beneficial exchanges. Mr. Di Pietro will discuss the importance of intellectual property for encouraging the development of science, technology and innovation solutions. He will also discuss WIPOs work in this area.

Responsible for several nationwide ICT surveys and research projects on the socioeconomic implications of ICTs in Brazil, including research on ICT in Education and online risks and opportunities for children. Coordinates regional capacity building programs on survey methodology in cooperation with UN ECLAC and A4AI in the Latin America region and Lusophone countries of Africa. Chair of the Expert Group on ICT indicators for households at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and member of the International Advisory Board of the Global Kids Online project leaded by the Unicef and the London School of Economics-LSE.

Author and co-author of several articles published in journals and book chapters on topics related to digital inclusion, implications of ICT in education, ICT in health and e-government. He holds a PhD degree in Business Administration from the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil) with a postdoctoral degree from HEC Montreal (Canada), a Master’s degrees in Business Administration from the University of Bradford (UK) and in Computer Science from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Catholic University (Brazil).

CETIC is dedicated to promoting the development of the information society. It was created in 2012 through a cooperation agreement signed between the Government of Brazil and UNESCO. The Center’s mission is “to contribute towards building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication technologies”. It does so by measuring and monitoring socioeconomic impacts of the information and communication technologies in Brazil through the production of reliable statistical data. It also advocates towards the production and usage of comparable ICT statistics for evidence-based policy making geared at digital inclusion.

Hassan is the lead Middle East adviser to Bill and Melinda Gates and is responsible for the Gates Foundation’s strategy and engagement across the 22 countries of the Arab League and Turkey. He also coordinates the work in Pakistan, where the foundation has $725m of active investments.

Hassan co-founded and sits on the board of the Lives & Livelihoods Fund (LLF), a $2.5 billion fund based in the Islamic Development Bank. The LLF is the largest ever truly multilateral aid initiative based in the Middle East. In recognition of this and other work, he was named by Arabian Business magazine as one of the 100 Most Powerful Arabs Under 40 in 2015 and again in 2016. For his work across the region, he collected the Arabian Business NGO of the Year Award in 2015 on behalf of the foundation.

Hassan writes a monthly column in The National (UAE’s leading English language daily), and has published articles in the Guardian, The New Statesman and several other publications. In 2016, he was featured as one of 3 notable Arabs living in London in the BBC Arabic program Woojooh Al Madina (“Faces of the City”).

Prior to joining the foundation in 2013, Hassan spent 5 years at McKinsey & Company, a strategy consultancy. In that role he designed and implemented large scale transformations for governments and philanthropy in the Middle East.

He has also helped to establish two leading non-profit organizations in the UK: New Schools Network, where he was the first COO and Head of Strategy and Achievement for All, where he was the first COO.

Hassan is a co-founder and board member of the One Degree Academy, an innovative new school serving deprived children in North London. He serves on the European board of the Education for Employment Foundation, an NGO that provides job training and placement for unemployed young people in the Middle East and North Africa. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Istanbul International Center for Private Sector in Development.

Hassan holds a double-first class bachelor’s degree from Oxford University and a masters from Harvard, where he was awarded the Von Clemm Fellowship.