About Mrs. Mechthild Rohen

Mechthild Rohen is Head of Unit for ' ICT for Government and Public Services' in the Directorate General for the Information Society and Media in the European Commission (since September 2008). The unit is responsible for the DG's complete eGovernment portfolio which includes the eGovernment policy within the i2010 Lisbon initiative, research within the EC's Research Framework Programmes, and deployment of technologies - in particular in the "ICT Policy Support Program" (which is a part of the Commission's new Competitiveness and Innovation Programme CIP) and in the Preparatory Action on "ePartcipation".

M.Rohen received her scientific education in Germany where she gained a masters degree in computer science and a PHD in the area of software and knowledge engineering.

She worked as a researcher and lecturer at the universities of Dortmund and Bonn (Germany)
and has a long experience in management of research and technology take-up activities and projects in the Commission's programmes, CIP, IST and ESPRIT, in the fields of software technologies, micro-electronics, telecommunications and networking, and embedded systems.

Her work on operational aspects of the IST Programme during 2003 -2007 also included the budget coordination (1 billion € per year), the organisation of the work with the Member States representatives in the Management Committee and also the co-operation with the National Contact Points.

In the period March 2007 to August 2008 she was the Deputy Head of Unit for "eGovernment and CIP Operations" where she was in particular responsible for the operational and implementation aspects of launching the 'ICT PSP' (ICT PSP has a budget envelope of ~750M€ over the period 2007-2013).

Before she joined the Commission in 1993 she was the managing director of a Research Association of about 12 universities and research institutes in North-Rhine Westphalia (one of the German 'Bundeslaender') which focused on interdisciplinary research in the area of artificial intelligence.