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David Nordfors

Special Advisor to the Director General, VINNOVA

Director General and Program Leader at VINNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems. He is Special Advisor EMEA to the Executive Committee of TCI. He coined the expression "Innovation Journalism" and is presently a visiting Scholar at Stanford University, where he leads the VINNOVA Innovation Journalism International Fellowship Program and chairs the Innovation Journalism Conference at Stanford. Dr. Nordfors was part of the VINNFORSK commission reporting to the Minister of Science concerning measures for commercialization of academic research. He is the Swedish manager of the MoU on industrial R&D collaboration between the governments of Sweden and Israel. He was Director of Research Funding of the Knowledge Foundation, KK-stiftelsen, one of the largest Swedish research foundations. There he constructed the research funding programs and designed the policies and strategies for information dissemination. He was Science Editor of Datateknik, the largest Swedish magazine for IT professionals and founded "IT och Lärande" (IT & Learning), the largest Swedish newsletter for educators, which he headed as publisher and editor. He headed a seminal project on technological incubators with support from the Swedish government, which was supported in several bills in the Swedish parliament. He initiated and headed the first hearing about the Internet to be held by the Swedish Parliament. Dr. Nordfors has a Ph.D. in molecular quantum physics from the Uppsala University, where he was recruited as a Ph.D. student by Prof. Kai Siegbahn (Nobel Prize in Physics 1982). He was a post-doctoral researcher in theoretical chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, supported by a grant from the Swedish Natural Research Council NFR. He has published a book on commercialization of academic research results, based on a co-operation between VINNOVA and the US National Academy of Sciences, and has published scientific papers in physics, chemistry, and knowledge communication. Dr. Nordfors has organized several delegations, workshops and conferences and has been invited as a speaker by the OECD and other organisations.