Francesco Molica 

Francesco Molica is the director of EURADA, the European Association of Development Agencies, and a PhD researcher in economics at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Previously, he worked as economic and policy analyst at the European Commission’s JRC where he researched on regional and innovation policies. He also served as Director for EU budget and Cohesion Policy at the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, the largest organisation and think tank representing EU regional governments. In the past he worked for several years on the implementation of cohesion policy programmes, namely, for the regional government of Calabria. As a leading expert in regional and innovation policy with a 15 year long experience in this field, Francesco is regularly invited to contribute his expertise to high level conferences on these topics. He is author of various policy and academic papers on cohesion policy, regional economics, innovation policies and EU studies.