Dear TEKPOL Partners,

This year we will be celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TEKPOL's foundation. Therefore we believe it will be a valuable opportunity to reconnect with our partners all over the globe working in the field of science and technology policy making and decided to host a series of online seminars in the spring semester of 2023 academic year.

Our fourth guest will be Simona Iammarino, from University of Cagliari, Italy. Her presentation title is; The Material Basis of Modern Technologies.

The seminar will be held on 7 April (Friday) 2023, at 10:00 BST (12:00 pm Turkey time) , through ZOOM. The Zoom link will be shared with the registered participants before the session.

The moderation of the seminar will be conducted by Prof. Dr. Erkan Erdil from METU TEKPOL.

Registration is mandatory and the form can be reached through this link:

https://forms.gle/LxaauXKzpcgdyV387

It is possible to register until Thursday evening before the seminar (6 April 2023)

Kind Regards,

TEKPOL, Science and Technology Policy Research Center

About Simona Iammarino:

Simona Iammarino is a Professor of Applied Economics at the Department of Economics and Business of the University of Cagliari, Italy; Visiting Professor at the Department of Geography & Environment of the London School of Economics (LSE); member of the Board of the LSE-Cañada Blanch Centre; affiliate faculty member at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI) L'Aquila, Italy. She was a Professor of Economic Geography at the LSE (2009-2022), where she acted as Head of Department (2014-2017) and academic member of the LSE Council (2016-2020).

Simona's main research interests lie in the following areas: Multinational corporations, globalisation and local economic development; Economic geography of innovation and technological change; Regional systems of innovation; Regional and local economic development and policy. She has published more than 70 articles in major peer-reviewed journals, two co-authored books, around 30 book chapters, and numerous working papers, policy reports and other publications.

She is co-editor of the Journal of Economic Geography, and a member of the RSA Board and Chair of the RSA Journal Committee. Simona has a long-term experience in externally funded international research projects, and in consultancy projects for various international organisations (e.g. EU Commission, OECD, United Nations) and numerous government agencies.

About the Seminar:

This paper explores the evolution of modern technologies from the perspective of material use shifts. The unique properties of a wide range of Rare Metals (RMs) make them key inputs to achieve the functionality of new technologies. By text mining 5,146,615 USPTO patents during the period 1976-2015, this paper systematically studies the dependence of new inventions on 13 key RMs, with the aim of exploring the link between critical raw materials and frontier technological innovation.