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Are We Innovative Enough for the Transition Away From Fossil Fuels? - Temporal and Spatial Development of Bioeconomy Patents in the European Union
The AEP group at WUR is looking for MSc students interested in writing their thesis or doing their internship or both as part of its project "BioMonitor", which addresses the information gap in bioeconomy research by restructuring its existing data and modelling framework.
The student specifically will work on the development of bioeconomy patents in the European Union (EU). The bioeconomy entails all economic sectors and systems linked to biological resources and their functions and principles. The sustainability transition towards a bioeconomy aims to provide alternative feedstocks to conventional fossil fuel raw materials. Research and development into innovative techniques and technologies are needed to use these alternative feedstocks from biomass. The granting of new patents in bioeconomy sectors is a good indicator of the research and development activities. The data for this indicator first needs to be collected using a previously developed patent search strategy:
- Patent databases and search engines (e.g. European Patent Office)
- Patent families
- Background research: preliminary searches in scientific literature and industry journals
- Keyword searches, patent code searches
The research will provide input to the BioMonitor project, where an indicator framework for the bioeconomy is developed. This framework, among other things, measures and monitors the employment and economic competitiveness of the bioeconomy in the EU, for which the development of patents is an important indicator.