Dr. Els Van de Velde is Senior Expert in the field of “Competitiveness and Innovation”. She has extensive experience in key enabling technologies, smart specialisation strategies, and value chain analyses. As a project manager she has led and participated in various European and regional projects for the European Commission, VLAIO, EWI, BELSPO, OECD (FR), and EPSRC (UK). Els has a PhD in Applied Economics, at the Ghent University. She holds a master’s degree in civil engineering. She has advanced skills in qualitative and quantitative analysis, evaluation of European policies, survey set-up and implementation, and business development.

She has extensive experience with innovation policies on national and European level, and with funding opportunities for R&D and innovation. As a project leader, she has led several studies related to key enabling technologies (KETs) such as the study “Access of SMEs to KETs technological centres”. She has been involved in the “Monitoring Digital Transformation and Key Enabling Technologies” project (DG GROW, 2018-2021). She offers expert support to the S3 High-Tech Farming partnership and the Vanguard Nano Pilot, targeted at supporting the development of a cross-regional partnership for co-investment (2016-2020). She acts as expert in the study “Digital platform for data-enhanced circular economy business models in cross-sectorial sustainable value chains”, the study “Identification of business model in the circular economy”, and “Techno-Economic study on the potential of European Industrial Companies regarding Europe’s Green Deal”. She is also involved in an ongoing study on the knowledge ecosystems for the new European Research Area (DG RTD, 2021-2022) which aims at providing a comprehensive analysis of the state of play, the design of monitoring mechanisms, and creation of a toolbox of support measures for an efficient and effective R&I system and in the study “Support to Assessment and Monitoring of Industrial Research, Innovation and Technologies in the field of energy intensive industries (EII) and of other industries in relation to the European Green Deal and the green transition” (DG RTD, 2021-2022).