A University College Dublin (UCD) researcher has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant of €1.5 million to establish his own research team and to pursue ground breaking social science research.
Dr Dieter F. Kogler, an early-career researcher in the UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy, will receive this ERC funding, over 5-years, for a study entitled, ‘Technology Evolution in Regional Economies’ or TechEvo.
The aim of the TechEvo project is produce a series of economic indicators, models and tools which will enable firms and policy makers, across Europe, to make more informed and better location-based investment decisions to boost innovation and drive regional prosperity. The project will also deliver an advanced science and technology policy evaluation tool.
This research project will apply a ‘bottom-up’ approach to understanding and enabling knowledge-based economic growth. Under this methodology, local scientific and technical capabilities are considered to be the basis from which it is possible to develop regional strategic policies to boost innovation and drive economic growth.
To achieve this, Dr Kogler will employ his novel concept of ‘knowledge spaces’, a tool capable of identifying current economic development deficiencies, as well as future opportunities for innovative activities, within urban centres and in regional economies.
Dr Dieter Kogler, whose research focus is on the geography of innovation and evolutionary economic geography said, “I am delighted to receive this prestigious ERC Starting Grant which will enable me to build a research team to carry out cutting-edge research at University College Dublin.”
He added, “To date, the way in which specific regional knowledge capabilities influence the evolution of local technology trajectories and thus shape geographies of economic prosperity have not yet been considered systematically.”