Dr Adri­an Solo­mon obtai­ned his PhD in Sus­tainable Pro­duc­tion / Sup­p­ly Chains at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Shef­field, United King­dom. During his aca­de­mic deve­lo­p­ment he spe­cia­li­sed in tech­no­lo­gy trans­fer by lea­ding indus­try-aca­de­mia pro­jects at the Advan­ced Resour­ce Effi­ci­en­cy Cent­re (UK) whe­re glo­bal indus­tries like Boe­ing, Jagu­ar Land Rover, Toshi­ba, Tata Steel, Sie­mens (and others) were working with lea­ding Bri­tish uni­ver­si­ties to co-design inno­va­tions in fields such as eco-mate­ri­als, cir­cu­lar prac­ti­ces and digi­tal twins.
Addi­tio­nal­ly, as part of his out­reach work, he ser­ved as asso­cia­te pro­fes­sor at MSc/MBA levels in tan­gen­ti­al topics such as Inno­va­ti­on & Entre­pre­neur­ship, Digi­tal Trans­for­ma­ti­on and Sus­tainable Ope­ra­ti­ons.

His pas­si­on for taking tech­no­lo­gy trans­fer to the next level pushed him to deve­lop hands-on exper­ti­se in sha­ping regio­nal inno­va­ti­on eco­sys­tems and in actively enga­ging in uni­ver­si­ty trans­for­ma­ti­on towards entre­pre­neu­ria­lism and R&D com­mer­cia­li­sa­ti­on. The­r­e­fo­re, hig­her edu­ca­ti­on reforms (entre­pre­neu­ri­al trans­for­ma­ti­on), buil­ding regio­nal inno­va­ti­on eco­sys­tems and know­ledge tri­ang­le inte­gra­ti­on are among the core capa­ci­ties from his cur­rent port­fo­lio which was deve­lo­ped over the past 12 years.

So far, he has suc­cessful­ly acqui­red and mana­ged +50 eco­sys­tem trans­for­ma­ti­on pro­jects amoun­ting to more than 60 mil­li­on Euros. His addi­tio­nal appoint­ments (cur­rent & past) con­sist of: Mana­ger (Ser­bia) at the Euro­pean Insti­tu­te of Tech­no­lo­gy Manu­fac­tu­ring (Aus­tria), Direc­tor, Helix­con­nect Euro­pe (Roma­nia); Chair­man of the Exter­nal Grants Com­mit­tee at the Tri­ple Helix Asso­cia­ti­on (Uni­ver­si­ty of Stan­ford-initia­ted tech­no­lo­gy trans­fer asso­cia­ti­on); Con­sul­tant at Drees & Som­mer (Place-based regio­nal deve­lo­p­ment solu­ti­ons, Ger­ma­ny); Depu­ty Direc­tor of the South East Euro­pean Rese­arch Cent­re (Greece); and Co-foun­der of a World Bank Working Group on Law and Tech­no­lo­gy; World Bank Expert for Manu­fac­tu­ring value chain deve­lo­p­ment.

Based on his track record, he has ser­ved as key­note spea­k­er and panel spea­k­er in num­e­rous inter­na­tio­nal events and has per­for­med indus­tri­al and poli­cy con­sul­ting at local, regio­nal, natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal level.

He curr­ent­ly devo­tes his work in Eas­tern Euro­pe and Wes­tern Bal­kans (as well as in other less deve­lo­ped inno­va­ti­on eco­sys­tems) towards sup­port­ing uni­ver­si­ties in tho­se regi­ons to beco­me engi­nes of inno­va­ti­on, entre­pre­neur­ship and regio­nal growth. He is doing this by trans­fer­ring suc­cessful place-based inno­va­ti­on models (such as tho­se from TUM Inter­na­tio­nal, Euro­pean Insti­tu­te of Tech­no­lo­gy, UK Rese­arch Excel­lence Frame­work) and actively acqui­ring fun­ding and grants that enable such trans­for­ma­ti­on.