Meet the Advisory Board
The AfriConEU Advisory Board (AB) is composed of leading experts in the field of digital innovation and tech hubs in Africa and Europe. AB members provide the project with their expertise on the needs and problems of stakeholder groups as well as with meaningful feedback on our views and project outcomes. Besides, AB members support the consortium by providing access to additional important stakeholder groups across Europe and Africa and drive the sustainable uptake of the project’s results.
Currently, the President of the Board of the Startup Europe Regions Network (SERN), an association gathering regional authorities in Europe and beyond for the promotion of Startup-friendly policies, created under the sponsorship of the EC and the Committee of Regions. In July 2007, he was appointed by the EC for four years as the representative from Portugal at the Business Chamber of the Enterprise Policy Group (EPG), an advisory board to the then Vice-President Antonio Tajani. In 2017 He has since contributed to the annual report “Innovate Europe – Competing for Global Innovation Leadership” presented in the Davos 2019 WEF forum. Eurico Neves has experience in leading innovation projects in Morocco, Guinea-Bissau, and Angola and is currently a senior expert for the ASToN-Network project, gathering 12 African cities under the topic of innovative urban development.
Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, the largest Portuguese university with activities in education research and innovation at the international level. Gil is currently the Chairman of the General Assembly of the National Portuguese ICT Cluster (TICE.PT), an association gathering industry, academia, and research in Portugal. TICE.PT is actively involved at the national and European level in the definition and implementation of the Digital Innovation Hubs strategy. Gil is leading the participation of FEUP in the EIT Manufacturing, a knowledge and innovation community set up by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology in 2019, and is the coordinator of the DIGITAL and InTelligent Industry laboratory, a research laboratory recently created at the University that brings together faculty members working in digital innovation projects. With extensive research and innovation experience, Gil has been involved in over 35 National and European RTD projects and studies to promote digital transformation in different sectors like manufacturing, health, and agri-food.
Currently the CEO of Konnekt-able Technologies Ltd. and Manager of EU Research & Innovation Development at the Decision Support Systems Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens. He has worked as an R&D Director, senior R&D manager, active researcher, and ICT specialist to implement and manage EC-funded ICT projects (H2020, FP7, FP6, PSP-ICT, ENPI). His areas of interest and expertise include Innovation Management, BigData, CSCW, Semantics, Web 2.0, eGovernment, eHealth, Crisis Management, Cloud Computing, and Enterprise Interoperability.
