Åsa joined CIRCLE as full professor in July 2011. At CIRCLE she is the research director for the platform “entrepreneurship and innovation”. She has an MSc in mechanical engineering from Chalmers (1986) and a PhD (1994) from the Department of Industrial Management and Economics, Chalmers. After that she spent two years abroad as a post doc, both in the USA and the UK. In 1999 she was appointed “docent” in Technology Management, Chalmers. Between 2000 and 2003 she was Head of the Department of Industrial Dynamics. She was a member of the management team (2004-2010) and Director (2008-2010) of RIDE, “R&D, Innovation and Dynamics of Economies”. In January 2005, she was appointed Professor in Business Administration, specializing in Entrepreneurship, at Halmstad University. She was appointed Visiting Professor at Chalmers from 2007 to 2010. In 2011 she was also appointed visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London.

The overriding theme in her research is technology-based entrepreneurship and the linking of entrepreneurship and innovation. Her specific research interest includes studying new and small technology-based firms and the role of entrepreneurs in the development of companies and economies. She is very interested in both innovation policy and entrepreneurship policy. She is especially pursuing the research of acquisitions and spin-offs as various entrepreneurial forms of promoting innovativeness and growth. This includes analyzing technology-based spin-offs from different incubator systems, both universities and private firms.