Chiel Scholten

Principal Consultant

Offices: Netherlands

Email: chiel.scholten@technopolis-group.com

Chiel Scholten MSc is a Principal Consultant based in the Amsterdam office of Technopolis Group (The Netherlands) and as people manager part of the Amsterdam Management Team. He is active on strategy and policy projects in science, technology and innovation (STI). His main areas of expertise are the impact of technology on society and technological innovation. As a result of his multidisciplinary background, Chiel has strong analytical skills, in addition to his advising skills in science, business and policy. He is experienced in quantitative and qualitative research methods, as well as project management.

At Technopolis Group Chiel is working on projects for public and semi-public clients in the Netherlands and abroad (incl. the European Commission). He has led several projects ranging from evaluations and studies to (impact) analyses and strategic support. In the last two years, he was part-time seconded at COVRA to support setting up a long-term research programme for the geological disposal of radioactive waste.

Chiel is especially interested in supporting policy makers and (semi-)public organisations in their policy and strategy planning. He has led and been involved in several exploratory studies concerning technologies (mainly KETs, digital technologies and nuclear technologies), including foresight studies, and strategic support of organisations involved in science and innovation. Nevertheless, he has also performed many projects across the full policy cycle. He led evaluations of (STI) policies and programmes and was involved in several institute evaluations.
Prior to joining Technopolis Group, Chiel was a policy advisor on EU and Valorisation at the University of Twente (Enschede, The Netherlands). As part of this job, he was one day a week employed at the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. Chiel was involved in several strategy and policy projects concerning science, technology and innovation in a societal context (incl. regional collaboration), on which he advised the university board and the directors of the research institutes. He also advised researchers on strategic EU funding acquisition.
Chiel was educated as an engineer, specialised in materials science and nanotechnology. He holds both a master and a bachelor degree in Applied Physics from the University of Twente. Apart from his major, he has followed several courses from the master Science Communication. He has combined his technical studies with the master track Science, Business and Policy at the University of Groningen, which focused on science advising. Due to this technological background Chiel is very interested in new technologies.