Policy Fellow Alum, Centre for Science and Policy

Dr Cawley was a Senior European Commission Official (Economic Advisor) in the Financial Engineering Unit within the Research and Innovation Policy Directorate of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. DG Research and Innovation is responsible for both the EU research and innovation funding programmes and EU research and innovation policy.

The Financial Engineering Unit is responsible in particular for the EU's Risk Sharing Finance Facility (in conjunction with the European Investment Bank). In addition to developing financial instruments to support corporate research investments, the Unit seeks to improve conditions for research and innovation generally, including via EU competition policy (in particular the state aid rules), corporate tax policy and fiscal incentives, and philanthropy.

Dr Cawley has worked for the European Commission since 1983, including spells in DG Economics (working among other things on the Delors-Ceccini internal market report) and DG Information Society (where he designed and negotiated significant parts of the EU legislation for the telecoms sector). Prior to joining the Commission he was a researcher at City University Business School and worked as an economist in the aluminium sector. He studied at Leicester University (BSc Mathematics/Economics), Cambridge University (Education), Simon Fraser University Canada (MA Economics), and has a PhD from Delft University of Technology. In 1995-96 he was a Fulbright scholar at MIT, and in 2004-05 he was the EU Fellow at Yale University.