Prof. Manfred Horvat

Prof. Manfred Horvat, is director of BIT (Bureau for International Research and Technology Cooperation), the Austrian liaison office for European and international research and technology programmes (EU Framework Programme, EUREKA, INTAS) with a staff of 55. BIT is funded by the Austrian government and the Federal Economic Chamber Austria.

Trained as a mechanical engineer at Vienna University of Technology (VUT) he was a lecturer and researcher in fluid mechanics at VUT from 1969-1980. Director of VUTs University Extension Centre from 1980-1993. Kellogg Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford 1993-95.

Prof. Horvat is director of BIT since 1993, and head of the Innovation Relay Centre Austria. Since 1993, he was a member of several programme management committees for specific EU RTD programmes (ESPRIT, INNOVATION, TMR, VALUE). He served as a member and chairman of a number of monitoring and five years assessment panels and working groups for different specific programmes of EU Framework Programmes (ACTS, ETAN, INCO, TSER). In 2001 and 2002 he was the chairman of the 2001 Framework Programme Monitoring Panel.

Since the early nineties, he has been very active in the process of integrating candidate countries from central and eastern Europe into the EU research, technology, and education activities. In preparing for FP6, he was one of the first actors to initiate the integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU RTD activities.

As a professor for European and International Research and Technology Cooperation at Vienna University of Technology he is lecturing on European Research Cooperation and on Technology Assessment. He is author and co-author of more than 80 papers and editor and co-editor of some 10 books.