On September 10, 2020 Mariia Shkolnykova finished her dissertation entitled "Firm Innovation and Industry Transformation. The case of German Biotechnology" with great success and was thus awarded her doctorate. In her cumulative dissertation, she deals in four empirical research papers with radical innovations and technological trajectories in the field of German biotechnology using bioeconomic patent data. She has published her findings in the journal "Review of Evolutionary Political Economy", in the series "Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation" of the Institute for Economic Research and Policy (IERP) and has submitted papers to other international journals.

Mariia Shkolnykova studied at the National Technical University in Donetsk, Ukraine (M.Sc. 2015) and at the Otto-von-Guericke University in Magdeburg (M.Sc. 2016) before joining the research group as a research associate in May 2017. Since then, she has enriched the work of the professorship and the department in various functions, including teaching in the bachelor module "Microeconomics", through her work in the BMBF project "B2B Future - From Biotech to Bioeconomy", supervising students' theses and in committee work.

We congratulate Mariia Shkolnykova on her excellent doctorate, look forward to further cooperation and wish her continued scientific success!