DAVID A. WOLFE - SHORT BIOGRAPHY

David A. Wolfe is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto in Mississauga. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Carleton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has participated actively in a wide range of community and public policy organizations. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Political Science Association and conducted research for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada on "The Politics of the Deficit". His past research has examined the implications of technological change for skills, occupational requirements, education and training on behalf of the Labour Council of Metro Toronto, the Social Planning Council of Metro Toronto and the Council of Regents for the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology in Ontario. In 1990, he co-authored part of the report of the Ontario Premier's Council Report on People and Skills in the New Global Economy. From October, 1990 to August, 1993 he served as the Executive Coordinator for Economic and Labour Policy in the Cabinet Office of the Government of Ontario. In this capacity he acted as Secretary to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Development, reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary to Cabinet.

He played an active role in key policy initiatives, such as the creation of the Ontario Training and Adjustment Board and the Ontario Lead Investment Fund, as well as in the design and implementation of the Sector Partnership Fund.

Upon his return to the University of Toronto in 1993, until 1997, he was a research associate in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Program in Law and the Determinants of Social Ordering and was involved with the program's initiative on Institutions of the New Economy. He has edited a volume on Innovation and Social Learning, resulting from this initiative. Since 1995 he has served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Science and Technology Statistics for the Science and Technology Redesign Project at Statistics Canada. In 1997, he co-authored a report on "The Socio-Economic Importance of Scientific Research to Canada" for the Partnership Group for Science and Engineering, based in Ottawa and funded by Industry Canada. In 1997, he co-founded the Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems (PROGRIS) at the Centre for International Studies. PROGRIS was recently named as the node for one of five subnetworks of the new Innovation Systems Research Network, funded jointly by SSHRC, NSERC and the National Research Council. PROGRIS also acts as the national secretariat for the ISRN. He recently completed a report on Government Support for E-business: Comparative Experiences for the Canadian E-business Opportunities Roundtable and the Electronic Commerce Task Force of Industry Canada. A complete list of his current publications can be found at the ISRN web site (http://www.utoronto.ca/isrn).