DigiSus thematic lunch on September 23: Digitalization and Environmental Sustainability

This autumn and winter, we are organizing thematic lunches on the intersections of digitalization and different sustainability dimensions. The topic of the lunch on September 23 is Digitalization and Environmental Sustainability – covering both opportunities and threats.

Time: Monday September 23 between 11-12
Place: Centre campus, Main building, YO Restaurant
Sign up: https://forms.office.com/e/tZP52TskmW

The aim of the lunch is to gather a better understanding of the expertise and interests of our community in the environmental sustainability dimension of digitalization. We welcome concrete examples, critical questions, and research & development needs that you may have recognized. Over the lunch, we will discuss issues such as:

  • How to ensure that digitalization initiatives are environmentally sustainable? For example, how to trace the production chains of devices, how to assess if data centres harming biodiversity, or how much energy does the use of generative AI actually consume?
  • How can environmental sustainability be increased by using digitalization? For example, smart energy systems to conserve energy, crowdsourcing apps to protect biodiversity, or supply chain management technologies to reduce food waste.

We don’t have all the answers and we want to learn together what are the opportunities, threats, and untapped research directions. For you, this can be an opportunity to get to know people from different disciplines who share the general interest in environmental sustainability and digitalization. To participate, you don’t have to be an expert in the topic, genuine interest is enough.

Sign up by September 19 to receive a calendar invitation and detailed information. We have space for 30 participants, so we will close the sign-up form earlier, if all seats get booked.

We plan to also organize lunches over the themes of social and cultural sustainability and economic sustainability (dates to be announced later). The discussion on each lunch is by no means restricted to one dimension, as the dimensions are interrelated. One of the aims of DigiSus is to promote transdisciplinary collaboration opportunities to form more holistic perspectives on the broad societal transitions.