Petra Puechner

Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, Germany

http://www.steinbeis-europa.de

Petra has a Diploma in Biology from Hohenheim University / Stuttgart and a PhD in Sanitary Engineering from Stuttgart University. After several years in research she started her career at the Steinbeis Foundation for Economic Promotion, within the Steinbeis Unit of Steinbeis-EUropa-Zentrum, as innovation consultant for european research and transnational technology transfer. Since the year 2002, she is Managing Director of Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum, which has grown from 12 staff members to today around 30 staff members. Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum is not for profit, supporting mainly small and medium sized companies for innovation on a European scale in all sectors. Since the year 2000, the issue of gender in innovation has been driven mainly by Petra herself, starting on female entrepreneurship. The main topics today in regard to gender is gender in innovation environments like clusters or other innovation communities. In Dec 2012, the European Network of women for innovative energy solutions will be founded in the framework of the KIC (Knowledge and innovation community) KIC InnoEnergy, an idea which was and is driven by Petra for the last 2 years.

Petra is often asked as speaker on gender and innovation, as in Oct 2012 during the TCI Cluster Conference in Bilbao or in Nov 2012 by the Ministry of North Rhine Westfalia during their Annual Women in Science Conference. In Summer 2012, Petra and her team organised a WOmen in SET Conference on behalf of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of FInance and Economy. Several EU Projects on the gender topic were coordinated by Petra and her team, like GENDERA (http://www.gendera.eu/) or the European Ambassadors for Female Entrepreneurship.