Technological innovation plays a key role in the 21^st  century, in the field of bio-engineering, the energy transition, sustainability, mobility, urbanisation and infrastructure, for example. That raises fundamental questions, such as what does the innovation of technical systems mean for our freedom and for our responsibilities? How do we deal with security and risks? The world is changing beyond belief and our way of thinking about these issues therefore has to change as well. Technology is where everyday reality is determined: we are literally developing the future, the way we live, work, communicate and play.

If you bring ethics and engineering together at an early stage, moral values like privacy and autonomy can be included in the design phase of new systems, technologies and applications. This is what we like to teach our students. Prof. Van den Hoven will elaborate on this in his keynote.