MIT-Portugal Program

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-205).As the world turns increasingly towards knowledge economies, the integration of innovation, higher education (HE) and research policies continues to gain importance. In 2006, the Portuguese government and MIT launched the MIT-Portugal Program (MPP) as an integrative, university-centered innovation strategy that aims at reorienting Portuguese engineering education and research around the issues of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology management, serving as an incubator to establish missing links between universities and industry. The program was conceived as a targeted response to Portugal's specific innovation challenges. These challenges derive both from the country's specific socio-economic trajectory as well as general European reform pressure, and include for example the creation of strong graduate programs in engineering and science to address a critical lack in human resources, greater internationalization of Portuguese education and research, the achievement of critical research mass and international competitiveness in some designated key areas, and a greater involvement of external stakeholders and particularly industry in the universities. This thesis provides a real-time assessment of the MIT-Portugal Program one year prior to the completion of its current 5- year funding cycle. The thesis finds that MPP indeed represents an apposite, effective and comprehensive policy response to Portugal's imminent innovation challenges. The concerted combination of multiple policy tools has yielded important and visible successes, most notably in the creation of strong and international education programs, an unprecedented degree of networking and collaboration among Portuguese researchers and institutions, and the re-orientation of engineering education around innovation and industry needs. Secondly, the assessment has revealed significant opportunities for program improvement as well as some persistent barriers to implementation, in particular in the domains of industry linkages, program outreach and communication, and certain systemic and legal challenges that frame MPP's operation within the Portuguese system. Based on the thesis findings, thirdly, a continuation of the program beyond the current cycle is strongly recommended in order to extract the maximum benefit from the collaboration, to strengthen sustainable long-term bonds between the participating institutions, to include the lessons from the first period, and to ensure the retention and dissemination of the program achievements throughout the system. While such a renewal is highly uncertain due to the current economic constraints on Portugal and Europe as well as the substantial degree of politicization surrounding the Program, MPP should be viewed as a long-term strategic investment with great spillover potential into the Portuguese higher education and innovation system that is worth harnessing and expanding. Finally, the thesis argues that MPP does in fact provide a generalizable framework that could serve as a model strategy for other catching-up countries facing similar challenges.by Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer.S.M.in Technology and Polic

A cascaded laser acceleration scheme for the generation of spectrally controlled proton beams

We present a novel, cascaded acceleration scheme for the generation of spectrally controlled ion beams using a laser-based accelerator in a 'double-stage' setup. An MeV proton beam produced during a relativistic laser–plasma interaction on a thin foil target is spectrally shaped by a secondary laser–plasma interaction on a separate foil, reliably creating well-separated quasi-monoenergetic features in the energy spectrum. The observed modulations are fully explained by a one-dimensional (1D) model supported by numerical simulations. These findings demonstrate that laser acceleration can, in principle, be applied in an additive manner.Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG contract no. TR18)Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (contract no. 03ZIK052)European Union (Laserlab Europe

Circular economy inspired imaginaries for sustainable innovations

In this chapter, Narayan and Tidström draw on the concept of imaginaries to show how Circular Economy (CE) can facilitate values that enable sustainable innovation. Innovation is key for sustainability, however, understanding and implementing sustainable innovation is challenging, and identifying the kind of actions that could direct sustainable innovations is important. The findings of this study indicate that CE-inspired imaginaries enable collaboration and by relating such imaginaries to common and shared social and cultural values, intermediaries could motivate actors into taking actions that contribute to sustainable innovation.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Architecting complex international science, technology and innovation partnerships (CISTIPs): A study of four global MIT collaborations

Complex international partnerships have emerged as a policy instrument of choice for many governments to build domestic capacity in science, technology and innovation with the help of foreign partners. At present, these flagship initiatives tend to be primarily practitioner-driven with limited systematic understanding of available design options and trade-offs. Here, we present an analysis of four such partnerships from the university sector between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and governments in the UK, Portugal, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore. Using a system architecture approach in conjunctions with in-depth case studies and elements of interpretive policy analysis, we map how in each country distinct capacity-building goals, activities, and political and institutional contexts translate into different partnership architectures: a bilateral hub-&-spokes architecture (UK), a consortium architecture (Portugal), an institution-building architecture (Abu Dhabi), and a functional expansion architecture (Singapore). Despite these differences in emergent macro-architectures, we show that each partnership draws on an identical, limited set of ‘forms’ that can by organized around four architectural views (education, research, innovation & entrepreneurship, institution-building) and four levels of interaction between partners (people, programs/projects, objects, organization/process). Based on our analysis, we derive a design matrix that can help guide the development future partnerships through a systematic understanding of available design choices. Our research underscores the utility and flexibility of complex international partnerships as systemic policy instruments. It suggests a greater role for global research universities in capacity-building and international development, and emphasizes the potential of targeted cross-border funding. Our research also demonstrates the analytic power of system architecture for policy analysis and design. We argue that architectural thinking provides a useful stepping stone for STS-type interpretive policy analysis into national innovation initiatives in different political cultures, as well as more custom-tailored approaches to program evaluationNational Science Foundation (U.S.) Science of Science and Innovation Policy (Collaborative Grant 1262263)MIT-Portugal ProgramMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Leading Technology Policy Initiativ