Five researchers awarded honorary doctorates

The American innovation researcher Henry Etzkowitz and four other international researchers have been awarded honorary doctorates by Linköping University. The doctorates will be conferred at a ceremony in May together with that of author Jonas Gardell.

Henry Etzkowitz (photo) is one of the real heavyweights on the world innovation scene. The Stanford professor is one of the originators of the “triple helix model” that highlights the interaction between academia, industry and society in stimulating innovation. Since the end of the 1990s he has been collaborating with Professor Magnus Klofsten and other LiU researchers in the field of entrepreneurship, innovation and regional development. Professor Etzkowitz also played a key role in the development of the Helix interdisciplinary research centre, which studies mobility in working life, and sits on its international committee.

Professor Charles W. Tu will become an honorary Doctor of Engineering. He is also active on the west coast of America, more specifically the University of California in San Diego. Professor Tu is a leading researcher in the field of advanced semi-conductor materials. His scientific collaboration with Linköping University has been going on for two decades and begun when the now Professor of Materials Physics Weimin Chen was working in the USA at the beginning of the 1990s. After Chen returned to Linköping University in 1993, this collaboration spread to more and more areas, and Professor Tu is now being honoured for his contributions to materials physics research at LiU.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has awarded two honorary doctorates. Professor Rosi Braidotti is an internationally renowned feminist philosopher, working at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Her seminal research and her teaching and mentoring have been a major source of inspiration for researchers at the faculty. Her work was of great significance in the emergence of the Unit of Gender Studies at Linköping University.

Jörg M. Winterberg of the SRH Hochschule in Heidelberg will become an honorary Doctor of Philosophy. Professor Winterberg is internationally renowned both as a researcher in political science and as a leader in higher education. For a long time he has worked closely with the Department of Political Science. His commitment to and participation in the master’s programme in International and European Relations has helped make this programme one of the university’s most popular international master’s courses today.

Professor Joel Ernst, a leading international tuberculosis researcher, will becomes an honorary Doctor of Medicine. He is professor of medicine (infectious diseases) at the University of New York, and leads the tuberculosis work at Bellevue Hospital. His research is aimed at understanding how the bacteria that cause tuberculosis behave when they trick the immune system’s defence. He has had contacts at Linköping University since the 1980s, when he initiated a fruitful collaboration with Professor Olle Stendahl.

Finally, as previously announced, the author Jonas Gardell will become an honorary Doctor of Medicine. He is being honoured for his powerful and multi-faceted description of the treatment of AIDS victims by society and the medical profession during the 1980s.

All these honorary doctorates will be conferred at an inauguration and award ceremony in Linköping on 17 May.

Lennart Falklöf Wed Apr 03 11:39:22 CEST 2013

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