Petra Schaper-Rinkel graduated in political science from the Freie Universität Berlin. After working at the Humbold-Universität zu Berlin, VDI/VDE-IT, the Freie Universität Berlin and the Technical University Berlin, she joined the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Vienna in 2009.

Much of her work on innovation policy has concerned the governance new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Nanotechnology, and she has been particularly interested in the interconnection between technological and political change and the political shaping of emerging technologies.
Her areas of research span innovation, Science and technology studies, the political implications of emerging technologies, the political shaping of technologies and the technological shaping of society; the assessment of research programmes, technology assessment, foresight methods and methods of forward looking activities.
Broader interests concern Governance theories, Governmentality, the political economy of emerging technologies, and the history of future thinking.

Her work has been carried out for many sponsors, including the DFG (German Research Foundation), German government departments (BMBF), the Berlin state government, foreign government departments (Korea) and international organisations (e.g. EC’s DG Research and DG Enterprise).