In their sitting of 28 December, the Lombard Regional Government nominated ten international experts in the relationship between technoscience and society. The experts will make up the Regional Forum for Research and Innovation, recently created under the 29/2016 law following a call that received 150 candidates from across the globe and closed in September.

The more technologically and scientifically evolved a community becomes, the more it has to ask itself how it should responsibly use and steer its potential.

This issue has already been taken up by different institutions across the world, with the Danish Board of Technology Foundation, the Netherlands Rathenau Institute, the Austrian Institute of Technology Assessment and the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) in Great Britain just a few examples.

The newly formed Forum aims to broaden offers of democratic deliberation on emergent innovation, which as such may be ethically, socially and politically sensitive.

As a reflection of and thanks to the activities carried out by the Bassetti Foundation over the last two decades promoting responsibility in innovation, we have supported the Regional Government through the evaluation of these candidates, based upon the parameters described in the call.

We hope that the international composition of the consultation Forum will favour the most open and current debate on technoscientific advancement possible, and the proposals that derive from them.

Congratulations to the new members of the Regional Forum for Research and Innovation, and best wishes with your new responsibilities:

DAVID GUSTON
Director of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University (US). He is the central figure for responsible innovation in the USA. Directed the Virtual Institute of Responsible Innovation (VIRI) from 2013 to 2017, financed by the US NSF and if the proposer of the concept and practices of the Anticipatory Governance of emerging technologies, upon which a large part of the discussion of responsibility in innovation is based. He has a great deal of experience in STS, Technology Assessment, Public Engagement, Public communication of Science and Deliberative and Participative Methods.

MARIO CALDERINI
Professor in the School of Management at the Milan Polytechnic, he teaches Strategy and Business Decision-making and Social Innovation. He is Director of the Alta Scuola Politecnica, the school of Advanced Study run by the Polytechnics of Milan and Turin. He founded and runs Tiresia, the research centre of the School of Management at Milan Polytechnic investigating Innovation and Finance in terms of Social Impact. He was Board Member of MIUR for the politics of research and innovation during the National Italian governments led by Monti and Renzi, and is currently Governmental Sherpa for the Italian Presidency of G7 and member of the Segreteria Tecnica della Ministri Fedeli. He is consultant for the OECD and the EU on politics of innovation. He sponsored the first Italian political push on social innovation and the finance of social impact, promoting the first public consultancy in the sector. Based upon this he was nominated governmental member of the G8 Task Force on Investment and Social Impact and participated in 2 editions of the Jury on Social Innovation Competition of the European Commission.

RALF LINDNER
Coordinator of the Technology Assessment and Governance group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (Karlsruhe, Germany), he coordinates and creates national and international projects on technology assessment, RRI, technology and innovation governance, science and innovation policy for both the European Parliament and the German Bundestag. He was coordinator of the Res-AgorA project, financed by the European Commission to draw up a governance framework for RRI and has experience participating in several other Europe wide projects (JeRRI, NewHoRRIzon, MoRRI, SMART-map, Est-Frame). He also has extensive international experience in Deliberative and Participative Methods.

FRANCESCO LESCAI
Associate Professor in Human Genetics and Bioinformatics at the Aarhus University (Denmark). Over and above his scientific competences, Lescai is also promoter and leader in public engegement public communication of science and RRI activities. He was coordinator of the European BIOPOP project (FP6) on the public communication of life sciences and is currently coordinator of the SMART-map project (Horizon2020) that aims to introduce RRI into the industrial context within the sectors of Precision Medicine, Synthetic Biology and 3D printing in biomedicine. In 2011 e 2016 he was nominated member of the European Commission Expert Panel for the European Strategy on Bioeconomy. He is President of the Collegio dei Probiviri of the Italian National Association of Biotechnologists (ANBI), addressing the deontological and ethical issues surrounding the impacts of biotechnology.

DOUGLAS ROBINSON
Research Fellow at CNRS-LISIS in Paris (France) and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at the University College London (UK). He has vast experience in the fields of public engagement, technology assessment, STS, research and innovation policy, and socio-economic impact assessment on research and innovation primarily in the regional context. His expertise in the application of in policy and governance terms has developed through his involvement with various national and international organizations such as the OECD, ESA, NASA, French Ministry of Research and INRA.

FEDERICA LUCIVERO
Senior Researcher in Ethics and Data at the Ethox Centre in the Big Data Institute at Oxford University (UK). She has broad experience in the analysis of complex problems related to ethics and the governance of technology and emerging sciences, crossing the academic and expert boundaries of STS, bioethics, Data Ethics, the governance of innovation and the philosophy of science. As well as contributing to the study of the ethical and social impacts of of various European projects on bionics, robotics e e-health (Ethicbots, RoboLaw, FI-STAR; THeCS; Sound and Robust e-Coaching), she coordinated the IntraEuropean Marie Curie Programme “Health on the Move” project on the ethical aspects of e-Health. In 2015she was invited to participate in the European Commission Working Group on mHealth. She also has experience and expertise within the fields of RRI, public engagement, technology assessment and participative and deliberative methods.

MARZIA MAZZONETTO
Consultant in the fields of the public communication of science, public engagement, participative and deliberative methods, open science and RRI, presently resident in Brussels. She has collaborated on numerous EU financed projects focussing on the processes of governance of science and coordinated the VOICES project (Horizon2020), a citizen consulttion in 27 member states, the results of which were used to orient the European research in environmental issues. After long experience in social and communication research in Trieste (SISSA), Rio de Janeiro (Fondazione Oswaldo Cruz) and Barcellona (Universidad Pompeu Fabra) and as a Senior Project Manager at ECSITE (European Network of Science Centres and Museums), she currently collaborates with various organizations such as the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) on RRI, Open Science, Citizen Science and Open Innovation projects.

AGNES ALLANSDOTTIR
Icelandic by birth, but Italian by adoption, she has many years of research experience in Communication Sciences, Social Psychology, Social Studies of Science and Technology, Citizens’ deliberation and public participation, Opinion Dynamics, Ethics of New Technology and Responsible Research and Innovation, participating in numerous European projects on the social and ethical impacts of science and technology. She is a member of the expert group on the study and monitoring of public opinion, policy and impacts of technoscience in Europe selected by the European Commission (PLACES: The Platform of Local Authorities and Communicators Engaged in Science; MASIS: Monitoring Policy and Research Activities on Science in Society in Europe; Social Values Science and Technology and Europeans, Science and Technology – European Commission Eurobarometer Surveys).

GUIDO ROMEO
American by birth but long time Italian resident, he is a science, technology and innovation journalist (Sole24ore and previously Wired). He is currently Science Editor in Chief of the REIsearch project, financed by the European Parliament and European Commission to create a dialogue, information and consultation platform for and between citizens, researchers, media and policymakers on emerging technologies and their social impacts. Guido Romeo is an expert and activist in Open Data, being one of the first in Italy to introduce Data Driven Journalism and having founded the Dirritto di Sapere organization whose work led to the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in Italy.

DENISE DI DIO
Researcher and Managing Director of Tiresia (Technology and Innovation Research on Social Impact) of the Milan polytechnic where she works on politics for social and inclusive innovation, with particular interest in the social responsibility of research and the role of public collaboration. She is a member of the G7 Science Working group of MIUR, as coordinator of the Infrastructure for Global Research and Access to Data session and supports the activities of the ministry for Education, Universities and research in the role of expert in the politics for research and innovation (R&I) and particularly approaches to social innovation, RRI and the politics of public-private collaboration.

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