The Faculty of Engineering

The inability to spend beyond one's means -- the need to live within one's budget -- is economics' most fundamental law. It applies to entire economies as well as their household and government sectors. Official debt is presumed to signal government budget violations. But official debt measures only those obligations governments choose to label 'official'. Moreover, this labeling choice has no basis in economic science, whose equations don't direct their description.Thus, official debt is a matter of linguistics, not economics. Any country's past, present, and future fiscal policy can be relabeled to produce any past, present, and future values of official debt. In short, government debt is no better grounded in reality than the emperor's new clothes. If official debt is a number in search of a concept, how should we assess a country's fiscal sustainability? Economics' answer is the fiscal gap -- the imbalance in the government's intertemporal budget. The US fiscal gap now exceeds 7 percent of annual GDP.Closing the gap requires either raising all taxes by 26 percent or cutting all non-interest spending by 23 percent -- on an immediate and permanent basis. Such adjustments are politically infeasible. What can work is radical reform of healthcare, Social Security, taxes, and welfare.

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 Postdoc Serhii Petrovychi (Topic: From Classroom to Living Lab: Rethinking STEM Learning through Sustainability Projects) and Associate Professor Fabian Haiden (Topic: Counting Problems: from Billiards to Quantum States) will each spend 20 minutes each telling you about their current research.

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

This year's theme: FROM COGNITION TO CAPACITY Foundations of Empowering KnowledgeThe conference focuses on how empowerment arises through knowledge, and how it is strengthened and supported through interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration.

This year's theme: FROM COGNITION TO CAPACITY Foundations of Empowering KnowledgeThe conference focuses on how empowerment arises through knowledge, and how it is strengthened and supported through interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaboration.

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.

Modern capitalism is often associated with faceless institutional investors and dispersed ownership, but globally family ownership is, by far, the most common form of ownership. But what is “family capitalism”, and how are family businesses and their varieties best studied and understood? Program: Jeppe Nevers (SDU): IntroductionMorten Bennedsen (Copenhagen): The state of economic research on family businessesAndrew Popp (CBS): Family capitalism in business historyKristoffer Jensen (Grundfos): The use of history in family businessesLouise Skyggebjerg & Anders Ravn Sørensen (CBS): Grønbech – a family-owned business through 200 yearsPanel (chair: Paul Sharp)

Polarization is one of the major challenges internationally. But what does polarization look like in the Nordic countries? The Nordic welfare states are built on a high degree of mutual trust, yet affective and identity-based polarization in particular can generate antipathy toward our fellow citizens, foster conspiracy theories and hate speech, and, in the worst case, undermine the much‑celebrated Nordic trust.In the POLIS project, we examine through an interdisciplinary humanities-based approach how affective and identity-based polarization unfolds outside traditional political debate: in everyday public discourse, on social media, in art and culture, and in our relationships with fellow citizens in Denmark and the Nordic region more broadly. This Wild Wednesday presents selected insights from the project and explores how polarization shapes everyday aesthetics and art, promotes public moralism, and functions as a central dynamic in conspiracy theories. Program [list][*]Anders Engberg-Pedersen - introduction  – 10 min[*]Kathrin Maurer – 15 min[*]Anne-Marie Søndergaard  – 10 min[*]Kasper Grotle Rasmussen  – 10 min[*]Q\&A - 15 minutes[/list]

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.

What does it take today to build great research?It is not just about great ideas and the right people but about building environments that help them think bigger, navigate smarter, and connect to society. This final DIAS event of the semester brings SDU Rector Jens Ringsmose into DIAS Blue Sky conversation. He will zoom out to the broader landscape shaping universities right now: a system where funding increasingly comes from outside, where expectations of impact are rising, and where research is unfolding inside a deeply political arena - within a larger (political) arena itself.Universities are no longer just places of knowledge. They are institutions under pressure, expected to deliver on interdisciplinarity, innovation, and societal relevance, while at the same time defending academic freedom. And that raises a difficult question: How can a young, ambitious researcher in the best possible way acquire insight into this politico-institutional context and use it in support of research leadership and career objectives? Jens Ringsmose will open the session with the larger trends shaping the research landscape today. From there, the discussion turns to DIAS: how environments like this can support outstanding researchers, not just in thinking freely, but in finding their footing in a complex system where ideas, people, funding, and politics are increasingly intertwined.Join us in this last event of the semester with the university leadership, which also bring in DIAS Director Sten Rynning and Chair Ben Davies into the conversation. About Jens RingsmoseJens Ringsmose is a Professor of International Politics and the Rector of the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), a position he has held since 2021. Before becoming Rector, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences at SDU and before that as Vice-Dean for Research and Director of the Institute for Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College. He earned his MA in History and PhD in International Politics from SDU. His research interests include strategic studies, security and defense policy, NATO and asymmetric conflicts.Jens is also a member of YERUN’s Executive Board, and both Jens and SDU are very committed to internationalization and the European higher education and research areas.About Sten RynningSten Rynning is Director of the Danish Institute of Advanced Study and a Professor of War Studies, the University of Southern Denmark. He served as interim dean of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences November 2021-May 2022 and as vice dean for research June 2019-August 2022.He founded SDU’s Center for War Studies and has advised several official Danish and Norwegian commissions on security and foreign policy. Rynning has held senior academic leadership roles at SDU and serves on multiple international editorial and advisory boards. His research focuses on NATO, war, and transatlantic security, and his latest book is NATO: From Cold War to Ukraine (Yale University Press).About Ben DaviesBen Davies is Professor of Literature in the Department of Culture and Language at the University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses on modern and contemporary literature, with emphasis on time, narrative, and reading. He was Co‑I on the Carlsberg‑funded Lockdown Reading Project, which resulted in the award‑winning book Reading Novels During the Covid‑19 Pandemic (Oxford University Press, 2022). He currently serves as Chair of University English and is a member of the English sub‑panel for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).   This event is hosted and organized by Sten Rynning

While robots have been employed in industrial contexts since the 1960s and have since extended their sensorial and intelligent capabilities, the operation of today’s robots in everyday life is still very limited. Whether it be public places, work environments, or life at home, physical robots are in general not yet capable of meaningfully interacting with humans. Human Robot Interaction (HRI) – in contrast to HCI – did not yet make it to commercially successful applications relevant for everyday life.At our workshop, we will discuss the current status and technical challenges in relevant subdisciplines such as Speech Recognition and Dialogue Processing, Dexterous manipulation, Computer Vision, Mobile Robots and HRI as a discipline integrating all these fields. At the end of the workshop, we will discuss perspectives for the development of interactive robots that have the potential to intrude public life.  Agenda 10:00 Prof. Norbert Krüger: Welcome and Introduction10:05 Prof. Ulrik Schultz: Autonomous Drones in Danish Society - Status and Challenges10:30 Prof. Lazaros Nalpantidis (DTU): Computer Vision on Robots: Status and Challenges10:55 Søren Udby (OUH): Learnings & Challenges in Developing and Implementing Robots in a Hospital11:25 Prof. Henrik G. Petersen (SDU): Dexterous Manipulation: What is the application potential and what are the challenges11:50 Assoc. Prof. Chen-Li (AAU): Conversational AI: Where We Are and What's NextFrom Chatbots to Embodied Agents12:15 Discussion 12:30 Lunch 13:15 Jakob Sand (Hive Robotics): Deploying Humanoid Robots in Real-World Applications: Lessons from the Field13:40 Assoc. Prof. Leon Bodenhagen (SDU): Status and Challenges in Human-Robot-Interaction14:05 Assoc. Prof. Mika Yasuoka Jensen (RUC): Where Society Needs Telepresence Robots: Roles, Use-Cases, and Open Challenges 14:30 Break14:45 All: Moderated Discussion[list][*]What are the use-cases that could make it?[*]What are the obstacles on the way?[*]What are appropriate steps in terms of fundraising and investments?[/list]16:00 End

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.

The Future of Health Depends on RehabilitationRehabilitation has long been under-prioritized in health systems, even as the global demand for these services rises sharply and far outpaces what is currently offered. Funding models often fail to support rehabilitation adequately, despite its essential role in universal health coverage, healthy aging, and equitable care. The WHO’s resolution on Strengthening Rehabilitation in Health Systems, the Rehabilitation 2030 initiative, and the World Rehabilitation Alliance (WRA) signal a global shift toward addressing this urgent gap. Dr. Côté will examine how health services and policy research can shape responsive policies, drawing on the work of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Rehabilitation and Musculoskeletal Health at the Institute for Disability and Rehabilitation Research. He will also highlight why generating robust data on the value of rehabilitation, its impact on population health, work productivity, and quality of life for aging adults is critical to support governments in making informed investments in integrated, sustainable rehabilitation services.About Pierre CôtéPierre Côté is a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ontario Tech University. Côté is an epidemiologist who holds the Hann-Kelly Family Chair in Disability and Rehabilitation Research. From 2013-2023, he held the prestigious Canada Research Chair in Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation. Côté is the founding Director of the Institute for Disability Prevention and Rehabilitation (IDRR), a leading international research hub which aims to improve the functioning and quality of life of people with disability or in need of rehabilitation. He is the inaugural Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on Rehabilitation and Musculoskeletal Health. Professor Côté currently serves Lead of The Cochrane Rehabilitation Methodological Group. Dr. Côté holds appointments at international universities. He is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto; Adjunct Professor of Disability Prevention at Southern Denmark University; Honorary Professor of Physiotherapy at MGM Institute of Health Sciences, India, and Visiting Professor of Health Promotion Sciences at Sophiahemment University, Sweden.  Throughout his career, Côté has published more than 420 peer-reviewed papers. His current Scopus h-index is 71. Throughout his career, Professor Côté has supervised more than 50 master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral trainees.This event is hosted and organized by DIAS Chair Jan Hartvigsen

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.