I am serving and can serve as contract-based or Visiting R&D Officer, Business and IT Consultant or Researcher, both short-term or as a one-off service, both as an employee or as a service provider.
Academic experience
I have served as academic programme manager and research contributor for about 15 years (since 2007) both at the universitites and research institutes as well as European Commission and EU Agencies in different roles.
At the University of Tartu I served as European Union Studies master studies progamme manager and worked on researches and surveys delivered, among other, for the State Chancellery as well as project partners.
At Tallinn University of Technology I worked as project manager for developing and implementing an upgrade to logistics and supply chain engineering BSc and MSc programmes. Also, prepared and launched (together with colleagues, of course) the Innovation Lab for Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Among that, were in the team of runner-up for startup competition and later taught a course on how to launch innovation (Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project).
Part of my work at Tallinn University of Technology (now Taltech) was also technology transfer – seeking and implementing cooperation projects between the academia and businesses. Also, contributed to preparing two business plans (one for the satellite programme) as Technology Transfer Officer in Mektory centre.
European Level Policy Impact work
After finishing my work at the University, I took up more and more research duties for the digitalisation of transport and supply networks. Between 2015 and 2017 a lot of preparatory applied research was taking place to map and consolidate the interests and obstacles in implementing cross-border international paperless trade.
Since January 2017, I have been the member of the coordination group at the Single Window Initiative, which since summer of 2017 and the Estonian EU Presidency has made direct impact on the European Commission policy and preparation of relevant legislation.
In December 2017 I have also been invited as expert member to the Digital Transport and Logistics Forum (DTLF,) which in January 2019 turned into full membership for me – expert on individual merits. The Expert Group is directly behind the EU Regulation on Electronic Freight Transport Infomation (eFTI), adopted in 2020 and coming into full effect in 2025.
EU Agencies
Between September 2018 and March 2020 I served as Business and IT Consultant at EU Agency for Large-Scale IT Systems (eu-LISA), where my duty was to be the lead for the Research and Technology Monitoring report on Implementation of Blockchain and DLT for large-scale IT as well as contribute to the reserarch report on the applicability of AI in the same domain. Additionally, I worked on discussion paper on data quality.
To work with other EU Agencies
I have been an expert evaluator for EU SME Innovation Grants since spring 2018 and have evaluated more than 60 funding scheme proposals.
Startups and innovation
I have been consulting starting businesses for a while, launched business plans and supported the product development.
Prototypes
There greatest prototype that I have made a proposal for was the eCMR indexing scheme, which I invented and introduced to DIGINNO WP3 members. Soon after, it was considered for DIGINNO-Proto project Show-Case, it won the grant and was taken to preparation of the tender during winter 2020. In spring 2020, the prototype was developed and in August/September 2020, it was successfully tested on roadside and on devices across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. I served as country manager of that test as well.
Marketing as well as making your materials and reports nice
Branding and concept development, also CVI-s, material evolution has been a hobby of mine. Having taught myself on the desing programmes and having become the super-user of Word and PowerPoint (Pages and KeyNote) templates, I am capable of editing and formattting reports also in the visual terms, not just content.