Dr. Irene Dal Poz 

At Oxentia, Irene leads the Social Innovation and SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts for People and Economy) offering, designing and managing capacity building programmes for researchers, and providing strategic support for funders and institutions on how to strengthen their SHAPE ecosystems. This has included policy reviews, designing commercialisation guidelines, and frameworks to assess the readiness of commercial opportunities. Irene also helps entrepreneurs and tech transfer/commercialisation support staff assess and report on the social impact of their innovations through rigours measurement frameworks.  

So far, Irene has been managing programmes and projects for clients in the Higher Education Institution and Government sectors, funded by World Bank, FCDO, Research England, the British Council, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), European Structural Fund, and private foundations. Beyond the UK, these programmes have been delivered in South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Irene is also involved in the activities of the Oxentia Foundation. 

Before joining Oxentia in 2021, Irene was an Early Career Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of Warwick. Prior to that, she worked for a government agency specialising in project development aligned with EU policies, and for an NGO focusing on open data analysis. Irene has lived and worked in Italy, France, Belgium, Australia and the UK