The Faculty of Engineering

Empirical evidence from scientific research is considered the most reliable source of factual information in western societies. However, our worldview and ideology can influence scientific research and its outcomes. And vice versa, the results from scientific research also influence our worldview. So how sharply can and should we strive to distinguish science and worldview? Can worldviews be completely fact free, and can science be completely factual and neutral? Probably not. I will discuss three historical and current examples from biology where science and “nonscience” meet:[list=1][*]Social Darwinism and biological evolution[*]Religious belief and biological evolution, and[*]Gender and biological sexes.[/list]Although it is usually thought that “non-science” can hinder scientific progress, I will show that sometimes the opposite has been true. For this and other reasons, I will argue that universities should have space for nonscience next to science in order to remain sanctuaries for academic freedom. However, I will also argue that we should be as clear as possible on what is science and what’s not, and on the motivations for scientists to do scientific research. This will reduce the risk of naturalistic and ideological fallacies. Duur Aanen is a professor of evolution and genetics and studies and teaches fundamental questions and concepts, such as the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of sex and cultural evolution. In his research he uses fungi as model systems of conflict and cooperation, both in interactions within and between species. His team published key studies on the evolution of the mutualistic symbiosis of fungus-growing termites and on the evolutionary stability of multicellular cooperation in fungi. In 2018, he organised a Lorentz center workshop with biologists and theologians on the acceptance of evolutionary theory, resulting in the Leiden Declaration on Evolution and Religion. Professor Aanen collaborates with social scientists, on the topic of science and world view, and on the role of science in society.

Want to know what is going on behind the scenes at IMADA?Come and join us for 2 x 20 min. inspiring talks while you enjoy a free “casual after-work” beer with your fellow student, colleague or teacher.This time Associate Professor Emanuela Marchetti (Topic: Reviving the Renaissance  - Reconnecting computational and natural sciences to art and design, as experimental room) and Associate Professor Matthias Oliver Wilhelm (Topic: Machine Learning for Analytic Calculations in Theoretical Physics) will each spend 20 minutes each telling you about their current research.

En vild onsdags-tværfaglig undersøgelse af (u)normalitet i det moderne DanmarkNormalitet og normalisering er en bærende norm i vores samfund. Normalt er ofte lig med trygt – og det ”onde tvilling” unormalt ses ofte som truende og farligt. Normalisering er en proces, som handler om at passe ind. Ikke nødvendigvis sådan at alt og alle skal være helt ens. Det er en ukonstruktiv stråmand i diskussionen. Normalisering handler i højere grad om rammerne for, hvor meget forskellighed vores samfund kan rumme. Det gælder såvel kroppen som kroppens opførsel. På den ene side, er vi nødt til at have nogen rammer. Et samfund er et sted, hvor jungleloven ikke hersker. På den anden side er det langt fra uskyldigt at sætte rammer: Hvor stramme skal rammerne være, og hvilke fordomme får vi med i købet? Hvilken unormalitet kan vi rumme? Må vi indse, at den normale krop ikke er den raske krop, men den syge krop? Det er svære spørgsmål – og ofte dilemmafyldte og fyldt med uligheder.Vi U(Normaliteten) op til en fælles undersøgelse, udfordring og debat på tværs af kunst og videnskab. Vi har samlet en fantastik spædende flok af deltagere. Kom og vær med.Klik her for at se programmet

Freedom of Movement and Brain Drain:  A Moral DebateThe free cross-border movement of people, when it occurs, is in many respects a great social achievement and a great individual opportunity. Free movement generally produces large individual earnings boosts, and it can be a major contributor to reducing individual and global poverty. But it also contains mechanisms whereby typically richer destination countries appear to exploit the typically poorer origin countries who have invested in the human capital of the migrants. How to think about this hidden cost of free movement and the normative implications of brain drain? Essex University political theorist Paul Bou-Habib will sketch the issues based on his forthcoming OUP book Brain Drain: A Moral Assessment. DIAS Chair Pieter Vanhuysse will then chair a roundtable discussion with three political theorists: Paul Bou-Habib, Lars Tønder (SDU, Politics), and Lasse Nielsen (SDU, Humanities). Paul Bou-Habib is Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His research interests are in the history of political philosophy and contemporary political philosophy. He has written articles on climate change, demography and politics. He is currently writing a book entitled The Brain Drain: A Moral Assessment, which explores the extent to which skilled emigrants and the host states they relocate to owe duties to people in their home states. This Wild Wednesday is organized by DIAS Chair Pieter Vanhuysse.

There is an increasing demand for critical metals and rare earth elements for production of electronics, technological advancements and the green transition. This has intensified international competition for known terrestrial resources and renewed interest inmining mineral resources on the deep seabed, including polymetallic nodules, seafloor massive sulfides and cobal-rich crusts. However, potential exploitation of these resources raises complex environmental, legal and geopolitical questions.This session will feature three presentations addressing the geological and biological context of deep-sea mineral resources, current scientific understanding of environmental impacts, and the legal and governance challenges associated with potential mining activities. The three 15 min presentations will be followed by a Q&A and discussion with the audience.   Karl Attard, University of Southern Denmark, DIAS, DK - The perspectives of deep-sea mining Bryan O’Malley, Eckerd College, Florida, USA (online) - Deep-Sea Mining Impacts and Recovery: Immediate, Annual, and Decadal Responses of Benthic Ecosystems Ole Larsen, Danish Hydraulic Institute, DK - Environmental impact assessment and governance challenges in deep-sea mining  Q&A and discussion facilitated by Ronnie (15-20 min)

The Russian offensive against Ukraine that began in February 2022 signaled the end of a three-decade-long period of great-power peace and the beginning of an era marked by a new Cold War or even resurrecting the possibility of a hot war. China’s goal of achieving global hegemony in the coming decades, particularly through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), asymmetric technological superiority, and the militarization of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, is generating conflict, though of a different kind than that seen during the Cold War. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a crusade against the international economic and political order by imposing very high tariffs on friends and foes alike in the hope of obtaining primacy. All the great powers are seeking “spheres of influence,” undercutting norms of sovereignty and territorial integrity. How do resurgent great-power conflicts affect peace and peaceful change in regions such as Europe, Asia, and the Middle East? What new tools do we need to explain patterns of regional order and the impact of systemic rivalries on these orders and vice versa? BioT.V. Paul is Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He served as the President of International Studies Association (ISA) for 2016-17. He is the Founding Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC) and a Distinguished Scholar at Asia-Pacific Foundation, Canada. Paul is the author or editor of 24 books, co-editor of 6 special journal issues, and author of over 90 scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of International Relations, Peace & Peaceful Change, International Security, and South Asia. He is the author of the books: The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford University Press, 2024); Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018); The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2013); Globalization and the National Security State (with N. Ripsman, Oxford University Press, 2010); The Tradition of Non-use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford University Press, 2009); India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (with B.R. Nayar Cambridge University Press, 2002); Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); and Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge University Press, 1994).  He is the lead editor of the Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021). Paul currently serves as the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series: South Asia in World Affairs. The several awards he has received include: the inaugural Kim Dae-jung Award by the International Political Science Association (IPSA), 2025 (named after former South Korean President and Nobel Laureate for Peace); the 2024 International Studies Association (ISA)-Canada Distinguished Scholar Award and the 2025 ISA-International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. For more, see: www.tvpaul.com

What if communication were not just something humans do, but a process through which all kinds of beings—molecules, machines, institutions, emotions, organisms, laws, and people—come to express themselves and make a difference? Drawing on my forthcoming book, “Thinking the World Communicatively: An Exploration of the More or Less,” this talk introduces a way of approaching reality that transcends the traditional boundaries between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. I propose that to think communicatively is to examine how relations allow phenomena to manifest themselves more or less in the world.Communication, in this broad sense, encompasses electromagnetic radiation warming our skin, neurons firing, procedures shaping institutional conduct, technologies guiding attention, and people coordinating with one another. Instead of reducing the world to discourse or matter, this communicative ontology highlights how beings both act and “pass through” others. It offers scientists, scholars, and students an anti-reductionist framework for understanding truth, objectivity, materiality, agency, and power across domains, from social interaction to quantum mechanics.BiographyFrançois Cooren (PhD, Université de Montréal, 1996) is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Université de Montréal, Canada. His research focuses on organizational communication, language and social interaction, as well as communication theory. He is the Past President of the International Communication Association (ICA, 2010–2011), the Past President of the International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA, 2012–2021), and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Communication Theory (2005–2008). He was elected ICA Fellow in 2013, NCA (National Communication Association) Distinguished Scholar in 2017, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2024. He published 16 books (four as an author or co-author and twelve as an editor or co-editor) and authored close to 100 peer-reviewed articles and more than 60 book chapters. He is one of the founding members of what is now known as the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, a primary branch of the Communication as Constitutive of Organization (CCO) approach.

About the talk:Our ability to shape materials at the nanoscale opens new possibilities for, among other things, rapid diagnostics and smart medication. I will give examples from our research that encompass both new discoveries and startup stories.In the treatment of leukemia and sepsis, there is a need for therapeutic monitoring of drug concentrations in patients’ blood. Silicon structures at the nanometer scale can have surprising optical properties. For example, they can enhance the so-called Raman scattering more than a million times. This effect can be used to perform very sensitive measurements of small molecules in a complex blood sample.Our vision is that in the future we can ‘swallow our doctor’. Ingestible capsules can be made smart so that they can eventually measure, take samples, and perform local repairs/medication in the stomach and intestines. Can this be done without also having to swallow a battery, and how do you take a sample from the intestines?About the speaker:Anja Boisen is head of section and professor at the Department of Health Technology, Technical University of Denmark. Her research group focuses on the development and application of nano-sensors, energy harvesting in the body, and ingestible devices for sensing, sampling, and delivery. Anja is a cofounder of several companies and is, among others, a member of the board of the Leo Foundation, the Danish Academy of the Technical Sciences, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. She has been awarded the largest research prize in Denmark, the Villum Kann Rasmussen Award, and the Order of Dannebrog by Her Majesty the Queen of Denmark.

Abstract: Since the second World War, we have entered the era of ‘Big Science’. Research is now often conducted at a scale well beyond of what one individual, or even one research lab can manage. Such large experiments tend to require financial support from one or more government agencies over extended periods of time—often even several decades. Because of this increase in costs, scientists have had to change how they decide what experiments to pursue, since only a small number of large-scale experiments will be funded at any given time, and what experiments are pursued can determine the future of scientific research. In this talk, I want to give a start at investigating what makes an experiment more worthy to pursue compared to other experiments, especially in the era of Big Science. Short Bio: My primary interests lie in history and philosophy of cosmology and astrophysics, and general philosophy of science. I received my PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020, before joining the philosophy department at Stockholm University. In 2025, I received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council for a project on collective decision-making on future large-scale experiments in cosmology and astrophysics. My Cambridge Element, Philosophy of Cosmology and Astrophysics, was published in 2025.

Experts worry that support and tolerance for political violence and violent extremist actors is on the rise in the United States.  Is this true?  If so, what might explain why more Americans view political violence to be acceptable? Finally, what can be done to stem the tide of support for political violence in the U.S. and perhaps elsewhere.  In this lecture I present some of my findings over several years of public opinion research on political violence in the United StatesJames A. Piazza is a Liberal Arts professor of Political Science whose research focuses on terrorism, political violence, and violent extremism in the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics from New York University, an M.A. in Middle East Studies from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago. Piazza’s work examines how democratic processes, demographic change, and extremist ideologies shape patterns of political violence. His research has been published in leading journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Security Studies, and Political Research Quarterly, and he is widely recognized for his comparative studies of left‑wing, right‑wing, and Islamist extremism.