The inaugural edition of the Babbage Industrial Innovation Policy Awards 2021, an initiative supported by the University of Cambridge, counted with two winners from the CMU Portugal Program. Jaime Bonnin Roca, CMU Portugal program Alumnus in Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), was one of the three “joint winners”. The work of Afonso Amaral, Dual Degree EPP Ph.D. student, was also distinguished and was one of the seven “highly commended” papers. This recently launched competition seeks to elicit new, multi-disciplinary insights, analysis, or synthesis to enhance the development of effective policies towards industrial innovation.
Joint Winner:
Jaime Bonnin Roca “Policy mixes to tackle the many faces of uncertainty in emerging technologies”
Jaime Roca graduated from the CMU Portugal Dual Degree Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy in 2017 at Instituto Superior Técnico and Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Innovation, Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing Group, at Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands. His research focuses on the role of uncertainty in entrepreneurship and technology adoption, especially in manufacturing industries, and the role of public organizations and policy in shaping that uncertainty. Besides research, he teaches courses related to decision analysis and technology forecasting.
“The awards were a unique opportunity to gain visibility in a global community of top-tier innovation policy scholars. What I found attractive about the prize was its emphasis on impact and real-life applicability.” (Jaime Bonnin Roca)
Highly Commended:
Afonso Amaral, M. Granger Morgan,Joana Mendonça, Erica R.H. Fuchs
“National core competencies and dynamic capabilities in times of crisis – Regulation of ventilators and new market entrants in Portugal versus Spain”
Afonso Amaral is a CMU Portugal Dual Degree student in Engineering and Public Policy at Instituto Superior Técnico and at Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering and Public Policy Department. He entered the Program in 2020 after concluding a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at IST specialized in Industry 4.0 maturity models. Currently, he researches how domestic manufacturing of critical technologies shapes the world’s national competitiveness landscape and allows Nations to respond to product shortages through the adaptation of established regulation.
The paper which received the highly commended distinction is entitled “National core competencies and dynamic capabilities in times of crisis – Regulation of ventilators and new market entrants in Portugal versus Spain” co-authored by his three Ph.D. supervisors Granger Morgan, Joana Mendonça and Erica Fuchs.
This work is Afonso Amaral’s first paper and the only representing a Portuguese and American University in the competition, what makes this victory even more special.
“I feel incredibly honoured to be recognized at such an early stage of my Ph.D. by the University of Cambridge. Starting a Ph.D. program in the midst of a pandemic entailed several unanticipated obstacles, but with the help of both IST and CMU communities as well as the strong support of my three supervisors, Dr. Erica Fuchs, Dr. Joana Mendonça, and Dr. Granger Morgan, we managed to lay the first cornerstone of my Ph.D. in a way that could not have been better. Our goal with this investigation is to understand how different European countries coped with the lack of a safety-critical product at a national level and to inform policymakers on how to deal with national product shortages. I hope that this recognition will help us in this endeavour and open new pathways for us to advise national policymaking on engineering-related topics.” (Afonso Amaral)
More about the Award here.
