David A. Wolfe is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Co-Director of the Program on Globalization and Regional Innovation Systems (PROGRIS) at the Munk School for Global Affairs. In July, 2009 he was named the Royal Bank Chair in Public and Economic Policy at the University of Toronto. His research interests include the political economy of technological change and the role of local and regional economic development, with special reference to Canada and Ontario. PROGRIS serves as the national secretariat for the Innovation Systems Research Network (ISRN), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is National Coordinator of the ISRN and has served as principal investigator on two Major Collaborative Research Initiatives, the first on Innovation Systems and Economic Development: The Role of Local and Regional Clusters in Canada and currently on the Social Dynamics of Economic Performance: Innovation and Creativity in City Regions which runs from 2006 to 2011. He is the editor or co-editor of nine books and numerous scholarly articles.
He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science from Carleton University and a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. From October, 1990 to August, 1993 he served as Executive Coordinator for Economic and Labour Policy in the Cabinet Office of the Government of Ontario. Upon his return to the University of Toronto from 1993 until 1997, he was a research associate in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research’s Program on Law and the Determinants of Social Ordering. He has acted as an advisor to the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, the Ontario Premier’s Council, the E-Business Opportunities Roundtable and the Electronic Commerce Task Force of Industry Canada, the National Research Council, the LEED Program of the OECD, the Ontario Panel on the Role of Government, the Ontario Research and Innovation Council, DG Regio of the European Commission, and the Toronto Region Research Alliance. He was the CIBC Scholar-in-Residence for the Conference Board of Canada in 2008-2009 and recently published a book for the Conference Board, entitled 21st Century Cities in Canada: The Geography of Innovation.
