Danish Institute for Advanced Study

DIAS Wednesday lecture with Erin Leahey, Professor and Director of Sociology at the University of Arizona About: Erin Leahey is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. She is known largely for her work on science, scientific careers, and inequality therein. Recently she has focused on studying the costs, benefits, and precursors of interdisciplinary research at both the individual and organization levels. Her lecture will be about the research she recently published in Nature: "Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time". The lecture is the keynote to an interdisciplinary conference hosted by Pantelis Analytis at DIAS. The lecture takes place in the DIAS Auditorium, Fioniavej 34. Everybody is welcome and no registration is needed. Live stream it at youtube.com/@danish-ias

Joint Guest Lecture by Ana Queirós and Cintia Organo Quintana Ana Queirós: Seaweed blue carbon, or is it? Nature-based solutions for climate change are much sought after strategies to use nature to address the causes and impacts of changes in our global climate system. Within this scope, seaweed conservation and farming have been placed in the spotlight as potentially important strategies. However, large questions remain around the potential carbon value of these habitats, and their broader effects our ability to limit climate change. In this talk, I will explore recent, promising findings of the seaweed blue carbon research community, and major data gaps in our current understanding of the value of these strategies as nature-based solutions for climate change. Cintia Organo Quintana: Climate regulation services of coastal vegetated ecosystems Coastal vegetated ecosystems, such as seagrasses and salt marshes, are well-known for their ability to store carbon, commonly referred to as "blue carbon." Despite decades of research focused on quantifying carbon storage in these ecosystems globally, little attention has been given to the losses of carbon through mineralization and export. During my presentation, I will explore the climate mitigation potential of seagrasses and salt marshes while addressing the knowledge gaps in carbon cycling and greenhouse gas emissions of these vital ecosystems. It is crucial to verify carbon budgets and accounting in blue carbon ecosystems to provide evidence-based knowledge to inform decision and policy-making at the local, regional, and national levels. About: Ana Queirós is an internationally recognised expert on seaweed blue carbon and climate change ecology, with expertise in field, laboratory and modelling based approaches. She has for the last 10 years led research advancing our understanding of the connectivity between seaweed habitats and the seafloor. She is currently researching how to design effective and climate resilient strategies to protect seaweed carbon in the ocean, including the development of carbon credit mechanisms, through partnerships between science, policy, the private sector, and industry. Ana Queiros has an extensive track record in the development of nature-based solutions for ocean management, and is leading research within globally distributed programmes that aim to help practitioners build climate resilience into marine conservation, restoration, harvesting and marine spatial planning, including important blue carbon habitat management (e.g. UNESCO Man & Biosphere programme collaborations). Cintia Organo Quintana's (SDU) research covers topics from species-specific effects of benthic marine invertebrates, such as polychaetes, bivalves and crustaceans, to ecosystem level responses to diverse disturbances (e.g. pollution, hypoxia, eutrophication, physical stress, climate change and bioengineering solutions for restoration of coastal habitats). This includes studies on ecology of individual species, bioturbation, multi-species effects, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (i.e. degradation of organic matter and regeneration of nutrients, C, N and P cycling). The lecture is presented by DIAS in collaboration with the SDU Climate Cluster and takes place in the DIAS Auditorium, Fioniavej 34. Everybody is welcome and no registration is needed. Live stream it at youtube.com/@danish-ias

Professor Norbert Krüger, The Faculty of Engineering, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Institute, SDU Robotics, and DIAS Chair of Engineering Interactive robots: Status, Problems and Perspectives Industrial Robots have transformed our society since the 1960ths by being able to perform repetitive movements with high precision, speed and strength. By that, a large amount of straining and monotonous work that before had been performed by human workers could be replaced. The application areas of robots could be further extended by the introduction of sensors such as cameras: Today also flexible and brittle objects that show a significant variation in shape (such as vegetables, meat, or fabrics) can be processed by robots. In addition, by simplifying robots programming – which was one of the reasons for the worldwide success of Universal Robot – in the last decade also more and more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have been enabled to apply robots in their production. In addition to industrial robots, also mobile robots have been applied within production and warehouses and nowadays even appear in public spaces. However, in case there is an unforeseen situation such as a potential collision with a person, these robots tend to just stop instead of going into an interaction with the human to resolve the situation. If we were able to model satisfying interactions and dialogues with humans, robots could play an even larger role in our society by assisting humans, for example in areas where hands are urgently needed such as elderly care. However, the image presented by the media about what such assistive robots can do does not match reality. In my talk, I will first give a short overview of the history of robotics and the transformational effects they triggered and will then share some insights into the state of art of robots that already today are able to operate in public spaces. The question “What makes human-robot-interaction such a hard problem?” will then be the focus of my talk. At the end, I dare to speculate about assistive robots in the near and far future. About: Norbert Krüger is Full Professor and new DIAS Chair of Engineering. He has been employed at the University of Southern Denmark since 2006. Since having finalized his Master’s in mathematics and philosophy in 1993, Norbert Krüger has established an interdisciplinary research and teaching profile at five universities in three different countries. His research focuses on industrial robotics, machine learning and human-robot-interaction. In the context of industrial robotics, he coordinated two EU projects as well as a Danish national project ReRoPro. His main scientific focus was on the learning of gripper structures for industrial applications by simulation and optimization. Today, this approach is used in the I4.0 lab at SDU. From 2012 onwards, Norbert Krüger supported the development of the Welfare Robotics Group at SDU Robotics. The lecture takes place in the DIAS Seminar Room, Fioniavej 34. Everybody is welcome and no registration is needed.

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Inaugural lecture by Mathematician Keith Devlin, Stanford University Can there be a (mathematically-grounded) “physics” of learning? Technically, modern physics is a precisely defined model of the “physical” world and universe we live in – as perceived by our minds, augmented by various observational technologies and measurement devices. As such, it has proved enormously successful not only in increasing dramatically our understanding of the universe we live in, including what we are made of and how it works, but also in construction-, civil-, mechanical-, automotive-, aerospace- and electrical-engineering, resulting in we humans living our lives in a manner totally unlike any other creatures on Earth. Chemistry performs a similar model to support biology, medicine, and pharmacology. Can there be an analogous model that provides a framework for the social and psychological domains, including learning and education? The lecture takes place in the DIAS Auditorium, Fioniavej 34. Everybody is welcome and no registration is needed. Live stream it at youtube.com/@danish-ias

Invited and presented by DIAS Senior Fellow Pieter Vanhuysse More information to come.

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Invited and presented by DIAS Fellow Lasse Aaskoven. More information to come.