15 projects pitched during matchmaking Digital Sciences for Society
In December of last year, a Call for Proposals for Icon Projects was launched by the Digital Sciences for Society strategic program. Fifteen pre-proposals have been submitted for multi-disciplinary, cross-School, socially relevant research on the interface of digital and social sciences and the humanities. The project teams have until May 29 to submit a full proposal.
All project teams that had submitted a pre-proposal were asked to give a five-minute pitch about their project and indicate what expertise and partners their consortium could still use. They did so during a matchmaking event on Tuesday, March 21. After all the pitches ended, many participants stuck around to exchange ideas with each another, which was exactly what the matchmaking event was meant for.
Academic lead Boudewijn Haverkort satisfied with pre-proposals
Academic lead of the Digital Sciences for Society program, Boudewijn Haverkort, expressed his satisfaction with the submitted pre-proposals:
I expected five to ten pre-proposals and I am very happy that there are as many as fifteen projects, all linked to challenges in society and representing truly multidisciplinary research, involving various Schools and external partners.
Wide variety of topics
The pre-proposals cover various topics, including health and wellbeing, governance, labor market, energy supply and accounting. Applicants see opportunities to use technology to contribute to flexibility, consumer empowerment, inclusiveness, equity, risk assessment and sparking democracy, among other things. Technology-related challenges addressed, include transparency, neutrality, credibility, privacy, usability, and sustainable implementation.
Support available for the project teams
Puck Wildschut on behalf of Library and IT Services (LIS), Gea Boudens on behalf of the Business Controllers of Finance and Control, and Mirjam Siesling on behalf of MindLabs gave short presentations on how they can support the project teams in further developing their project proposals. Contact details for more information can be found on the PowerPoint slides. A short presentation about MindLabs can be found here.
More information about project proposals
Do you want to know more about the pre-proposals? Or are you interested in participating in one of the projects? You can get in touch via DSFS@tilburguniversity.edu. An overview of the projects can be found in the PowerPoint.
Get ready for the digital future
The Digital Sciences for Society program invests in impactful research, education and collaboration aimed at seizing the opportunities and dealing with the challenges of digitalization for science and society.