Dr. Søren Bøwadt is the Deputy Head of Unit for the Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology Programme of the European Commission’s Research and Innovation Directorate in Brussels. His main educational background in organic synthetic and analytical chemistry has been obtained from the University of Odense, Denmark. After Ph.D. studies at the European Joint Research Centre in Ispra in Italy, he spend a total of 3 years in the United States, working first at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, and secondly as Product Specialist at LECO Corporation in St. Joseph, Michigan. He moved on to a position as Principal Chemist at the Water Quality Institute in Hørsholm (Denmark) before joining the Measurement and Testing unit of the European Commissions Research Directorate as a Scientific Officer at the end of 1999.  Since July 2003, he has been working for the Directorate for Industrial Technology in DG Research and Innovation. Søren Bøwadt has been responsible for over 150 scientific projects within DG Research in various areas of natural science as well as setting up the SPIRE public private partnership, and has published more than 50 papers in various areas of chemistry related research.