University of California Santa Barbara

Luciano Kay is a Postdoctoral Scholar with the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at University of California Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB) and a Research Associate with The Georgia Tech Program in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) at Georgia Tech. He has several years of experience in policy research and analysis related with economic development, science and technology (S&T) and innovation policy topics. Lately, his work has focused mainly on prizes and other incentives for innovation and the societal and economic impact of emerging technologies. Luciano’s recent book “Technological Innovation and Prize Incentives. The Google Lunar X Prize and Other Aerospace Competitions” (Edward Elgar, 2012) presents case study findings and develops theoretical and practical implications for the design, implementation and evaluation of prize competitions, offering insights to entrepreneurs, professionals and other individuals or organizations interested in this phenomenon. Luciano’s work has been funded in part by competitive grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and The IBM Center for the Business of Government and published in international scholarly journals, books and book chapters and policy reports. He has also worked on S&T projects with a number of governments and organizations and provided expert input to studies such as the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative PCAST reports to the U.S. President and Congress.