European Commission
EUROPEAN RESEARCH ERA

Jan Van den Biesen

Educated as a physicist at Leiden University, Jan van den Biesen spent one year as a postdoc at the University of California in Berkeley before joining Philips in 1983 to work on semiconductor research. After a one-year secondment to Hitachi’s Central Research Laboratory in Tokyo in 1986/7, he held various R&D-related staff positions within Philips Research and Corporate Headquarters. In the mean time, he complemented his education with an MBA.

As Vice President Public R&D Programmes of Philips Research, he is coordinating Philips’ participation in public programmes for R&D partnerships in Europe. In addition, he is representing Philips’ R&D interests with public authorities in Europe. In this context, he is a regular speaker at conferences, hearings and expert panels. He is a member of the FP7 Advisory Group on International Cooperation, the Expert Group on the Role of Community Research Policy in the Knowledge-Based Economy, the Special Interest Group on European Relations of EIRMA, the Research and Technological Working Group of BUSINESSEUROPE and the R&D cluster of DIGITALEUROPE. In April 2008, he was appointed by the European Commission as a member of the new European Research Area Board (ERAB).