Federica Polo starts as EU Affairs Manager

The work for creating a new approach to attract direct EU funding to the Vaasa region was started in the beginning of 2015. Bruno Woeran, who took up the post, moved back to his home country Austria in the spring of 2020. During the first five years, several project applications have been prepared from the region, and the amount of funding in our region has developed very positively. EU Affairs Manager activities have been co-financed by 10 partners: City of Vaasa, VASEK, Merinova, Regional Council of Ostrobothnia, Vaasa University, Vaasa University of Applied Sciences, Novia University of Applied Sciences, Åbo Akademi University, University of Helsinki, and Hanken School of Economics.

Nowadays, the competitive nature of the international programmes calls for a good understanding of the context side, creating complementary consortia and engaging the society for the exploitation and implementation of research results.

Federica Polo will join Merinova on December 1st as EU Affairs Manager. The aim of her engagement is to bring all stakeholders from industries and universities into an active cooperation within European and International Research Collaboration, foremost in Horizon Europe and other network related programmes.

Federica has previously worked as coordinator of European and local projects at the University of Trieste, Italy and at the AAS1 Triestina. She has years of experience in the application for European funding and management of European projects. Further, she was researcher at the School of Technology and Innovation of the University of Vaasa and she worked at several projects in the field of University-Business cooperation with technology companies in Vaasa Region. At Merinova, she will act as connection point and facilitator to develop projects ideas together with the actors of the energy ecosystem in Vaasa region.

In January 2021 Frederica will defend her Doctoral dissertation in Economics and Business Administration at University of Vaasa. She holds a Master’s degree in Sociology for territorial networks and organizations from the University of Trieste (2012) and a post graduate in training and development of human resources (2014). She is author of several publications in the field of competence development in technology companies and training.

For more information:
Federica Polo, EU Affairs Manager +358 40 623 6551, federica.polo@merinova.fi
Mika Konu, Managing Director of Merinova +358 400 730 747, mika.konu@merinova.fi