Participants

François Bourguignon is a specialist in the economics of development, public policy, economic growth, income distribution and inequality. As the World Bank’s Senior Vice President for Development Economics and Chief Economist since October 2003, he provides intellectual leadership and direction to the Bank’s overall development strategy and economic research agenda, at global, regional and country levels. As a member of the Bank’s senior management team he advises the President and Bank’s management on economic issues. Complete Bio

Kai-Ming Cheng is Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor and Chair Professor of Education at the University of Hong Kong.    He was also Dean of Education and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of University of Hong Kong.  Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since 1996-2006.
Trained as a mathematician at the HKU, he was a school teacher and a school principal.   He obtained his PhD from the University of London Institute of Education. Over the years, he has undertaken research and consultancies commissioned by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP and other international organisations, working mainly on education in rural China.  Recently, he has extended his research interest to India and other Asian countries, and has extended to higher education reforms, IT development in education, qualitative research methodology, and cultural dimensions of education.  Most recently, he has been invited to deliver keynote papers pertaining to the impact of knowledge society on education. He has been invited to provide consultancy for the governments of the UK, Japan, India and Singapore. He is also Visiting Professor in various Chinese universities including Peking University and the National Academy of Education Administration. He publishes widely and serves on various editorial and advisory boards worldwide.  He was awarded Fellowship by several academic institutions, including the London Institute of Education, the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration, Hong Kong Educational Research Association and the Hong Kong Educational Research Association. Locally, he serves on the Education Commission and Chairs the Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualification. He writes a column in Hong Kong Economic Journal Daily.

Fumio Kodama is Dean and Professor of Graduate School of Engineering Management (MOT Program) at Shibaura Institute of Technology in Tokyo. He is also Professor Emeritus at The University of Tokyo and a Faculty Fellow at Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). During 1994-2003, he was Professor in the University of Tokyo (Research Center of Advanced Science and Technology, Graduate School of Engineering, and Director at Research Center of Advanced Economic Engineering).  Previously, he taught at Graduate School of Policy Science in Saitama University (now National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies) in 1984-1993. In addition to teaching, he has worked as Director-in-Research at National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) in Science and Technology Agency in 1988-1991. He is the author of many articles on technology policy and management. One of his works is "Analyzing Japanese High Technology: the Techno-Paradigm shift", (Pinter Publishers, London, 1991), the Japanese version of which received the 1991 Sakuzo Yoshino Prize. He is also a recipient of the 1991 Science and Technology Minister's Award for Research Excellence.

Bengt-Ã…ke Lundvall is currently professor in economics at Department of Business Studies at Aalborg University and since September 1, 2004 Special Invited Professor at Department for Technological Economics and Management at the School of Economics and Management.
His research is organized around a broad set of issues related to innovation systems, learning economies. He gives Master- and Ph.D.-courses on economics and management of innovation and knowledge. Lundvall has co-ordinated the IKE-group in Aalborg since 1977 and the Danish network DRUID 1996-2001. Since 2002 he coordinates the worldwide research network Globelics.
In close collaboration with Christopher Freeman, Bengt-Åke Lundvall developed the idea of innovation as an interactive process, in the first half of the eighties and the concept national system of innovation in the second half (Lundvall, 1985 and Lundvall, 1988). In the beginning of the nineties he developed the idea of ‘the learning economy’ in collaboration with Björn Johnson (Lundvall and Johnson, 1994).

Boris Pleskovic is Research Manager, Development Economics at the World Bank. He previously served as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Prime Minister of Slovenia from 1991-1992 and taught economics at MIT and the Universities of Illinois and Cincinnati. He also serves as a board member of the World Bank Economic Review (Oxford Journals), Beyond Transition and International Regional Science Review; Guest Editor for Special Issues on Is Geography Destiny? and Regional Science and Development; and co-editor of several books: Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics with Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and other authors; co-editor of books for the Berlin Workshop Series, including Institutional Foundations of a Market Economy (with Gudrun Kochendoerfer-Lucius); published widely, including "Political Independence and Economic Reform in Slovenia," (with Jeffrey Sachs) in The Transition in Eastern Europe, Chicago University Press and "Interindustry Flows in a General Equilibrium Model of Fiscal Incidence", Journal of Policy Modeling, Special Issue in Honor of Nobel Laureate, Wassily Leontief. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at MIT and a Fullbright Fellow at Harvard University; decorated by Charles University on the occasion of its 650 anniversary, Prague, 1998. He is President of the Slovenian World Congress, 2000 to present and member of Prime Minister’s Strategic Council for Economic Development. Decorated by the Slovenian government with the Golden Order of Services in 2006. He has a BA from the University of Ljubljana, MA from Harvard University and Ph.D. from MIT. Complete Bio

Sharifah Hapsah bt Syed Hasan Shahabudin rose from lecturer in physiology to professor of medical education at UKM and was responsible for the development of the undergraduate medical curriculum and postgraduate training scheme. She was instrumental in establishing the quality assurance system for educational programmes in UKM based on her work in developing the accreditation system for medical education. Subsequently she was invited to be Director in the Ministry of Higher Education to develop the quality assurance system for public universities and served for 8 months as the CEO of the National Accreditation Board before being appointed as the Vice Chancellor of UKM. In the last 6 years she has been responsible for developing the  Malaysian Qualifications Framework and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency Bill, due to be tabled in parliament.

Patricia Sto Thomas is a person with a strong expertise and proven innovative leadership in the areas of human resource development and management, organizational development, employment and migration, public administration and governance and development communications, built on more than three decades of solid work in the bureaucracy (both local and international) and academe. Her recent appointment (July 2006) as Chairman of the Development Bank of the Philippines will give her the rare opportunity to share her expertise with the DBP family and its partner institutions and meaningfully contribute to the important concern of development banking and financial management. Before her appointment as Chair of the DBP, she was Secretary of Labor and Employment.  Her appointment as labor and employment secretary was a homecoming.  She first joined the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) in 1975 as chief of the workers’ welfare division at the Institute of Labor and Manpower Studies.  Five years later, she became the Institute’s executive director. After five years at the POEA, then President Corazon C. Aquino appointed her to the post of assistant secretary for human resource development at the Department of Education, Culture and Sports. Her stint at the education department, however, was cut short when she was appointed DOLE undersecretary for employment five months later.  She stayed in the position for less than a year when she was named chair of the Civil Service Commission (CSC), the government’s central personnel agency, in 1988.

Min Weifang is the Executive Vice President and the Chairman of University Council of Peking University (Beijing University), one of the national leading universities in China. He has been responsible for a wide range of management of the university since 1995, including academic affairs, faculty development, personnel, finance, university high-tech industry programs, and the overall coordination of the university operation. He is also is a faculty member in economics of education of the university. He received his Ph.D. in Economics of Education from Stanford University in 1987. He joined the faculty of the university in 1988. Dr. Min received a National Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Country as an Expert in Education in 1992, and a National Award for Excellence in Teaching in China in 1995. He is currently also serving as Director and Professor of the Institute of Higher Education of Peking University. Concurrently, Dr. Min serves as the President of the China National Association for Research on Study Abroad, Vice President of China Higher Education Research Association; Vice President of China National Association of Economics of Education; Senior Research Fellow of National Education Development Research Center of the Ministry of Education of China; Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the international journal HIGHER EDUCATION. Dr. Min also is a Member of the International Academy of Education. He served as principal investigator for more than ten national and international research projects, authored or co-authored many publications in education. He has also served as the Chairman of the Expert Panel for the implementation of World Bank Education Development in Poor Provinces Project in China since 1992. The Project covers 114 counties with schools, colleges and universities for teacher and management training，construction, equipment, and the computerized education management information system development. Dr. Min worked full-time at the Headquarter of the World Bank in Washington DC during 1991-92 as a higher education specialist. He joined more than 30 World Bank Missions to East Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China since early 1990s for international higher education development projects. 

L. Alan Winters is Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank.  He has worked previously in the Bank as Division Chief and Research Manager (1994-99) and Economist (1983-85). He is currently on leave from the University of Sussex where he is Professor of Economics. He is a Research Fellow and former Programme Director of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London) and has previously worked in the Universities of Cambridge, Bristol, Wales and Birmingham. He has been editor of the World Bank Economic Review, associate editor of the Economic Journal, and serves on numerous editorial boards. He has also advised, inter alia, the OECD, DfID, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the European Commission, the European Parliament, UNCTAD, the WTO, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He is one of the world’s leading specialists on the empirical and policy analysis of international trade and has recently also worked on migration and the brain drain. He has published over two hundred books and articles in areas such as regional trading arrangements, non-tariff barriers, European Integration, transition economies’ trade, international labour mobility, agricultural protection, trade and poverty, and the world trading system. He has also published on small economies, global warming, pricing behavior and econometrics. Complete Bio