Koenraad Debackere is a professor of Technology & Innovation Management & Policy at KU Leuven since 1995. He has degrees in engineering & business. He was a visiting doctoral student & Fulbright post-doctoral fellow at MIT Sloan School & obtained best paper awards from the TIM Division of the American Academy of Management, the Decision Sciences Institute & the International Association for the Management of Technology. In 2006 he was awarded the Prize for Scientific Excellence of the Belgian Entreprise Foundation (VBO). In 2007 he received an honorary professorship from the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex. He is the managing director of KU Leuven Research & Development & chairman of the KU Leuven seed fund, Gemma Frisius. He is co-founder & chairman of Leuven.Inc, the innovation network of Leuven high tech entrepreneurs. Since 2005, he is the general manager of KU Leuven. In 2015, he was appointed to a two-year mandate as chairman of EIT Health e.V. -- - a KIC of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology.