Patricia Osseweijer

Patricia Osseweijer (1958) is full professor and Section Leader of “Section Biotechnology and Society in the Department of Biotechnology, at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the Delft University of Technology. Her drive is to link technological innovation in biobased production with societal challenges to build a sustainable bioeconomy. Research interest focus on integral impact assessment, competing claims, the role of trust and responsibility in achieving sustainability, stakeholder and public interaction, public opinion forming, novel designs of public communication and their relevance for policy making and ethics. In 2015 she was awarded the Royal Academy of the Netherlands distinguished Lorentz fellowship for integrating social sciences and technology.

Patricia has a PhD in science communication (Free University Amsterdam) and a masters degree in molecular biology (Utrecht University) with professional experience in the management of (inter)national research and education initiatives at the Delft University of Technology since 1991 and earlier experience in curriculum development and as a study advisor and European Commission project manager at Radboud University Nijmegen from 1984. In 2007, she did sabbatical in Cambridge, UK at the Department History and Philosophy and St. Edmunds College.

Patricia was involved in the establishment of the Public-Private Partnership ‘Kluyver Centre for Genomics of Industrial Fermentation’ at the Delft University of Technology and in 2002 appointed as its Managing Director (budget of 10 M Euro/year). She developed the Genomics and Society Programme and became Programme Leader responsible for the coordination of the societal research projects in several universities as well as for the integration of these projects in the communication strategy of the Kluyver Centre. At the same time she was appointed as Principal Investigator for Communication and member of the Management Team of the Netherlands Centre for Society and Life Sciences (CSG) which anchored her theoretical knowledge in social sciences. In 2010 she was asked to become Flagship Manager of the 12 M Euro socio-economic programme (Societal embedding of a Sustainable Biobased Society) of the Public-Private Partnership BE-Basic, a government supported consortium of 120 M Euro (2010-2017), which was extended with a chairmanship for the additional program “Economy, sustainability and policy”.

Patricia is Co-Scientific Director of the TU Delft/BE-Basic office and program in Campinas, Brazil, where she leads a Dual Degree PhD program aiming for 100 Dual Degrees in 2025 and coordinates a series of advanced courses in addition to a broad portfolio of joint research projects. Her aim is to develop novel forms of education to reach more with higher efficiency, and she was co-initiator of the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Industrial Biotechnology of TU Delft (EdX platform, https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/industrial-biotec).  She published over 85 articles, reports and papers and gave more than 120 presentations.