Dr. J.M. (Jaap) Vleugel

Range

When I studied General Economics, my professor in Macro-economics (Huisman) once told us to be prepared to work in a completely different area after your graduation. This advice came in a period of economic hardship. Do not depend on just one field or tool, but explore many (related) fields and tools. Apart from providing the necessary economic independence, this strategy is even more important to prevent overspecialisation, a precursor of loss of creativity and ultimately stagnation or redundancy, typical features of ageing in science and education. The ability to quickly move from one field, perspective or scale level to another or combine them, gives many degrees of freedom when dealing with practioners, colleagues and students. My involvement with young interdisciplinary students allows me to experience new things almost every week. If you speak the language of science and business alike, a serious amount of social value is a logical result.
Interestingly, technology is a black box in economic theory, while here at TU Delft engineering is my prime concern. When appropriate, Economics provides an extra toolkit.