PROGRAMM

Europe boasts some of the world‘s finest centers of scientific research. And yet the gap separating Europe from China and the US seems to be growing at an exponential rate. Europe appears unable to translate its world-class research base into real-world advantage. HELGA NOWOTNY is one of Europe’s top experts in science and technology studies. A co-founder and former chair of the European Research Council and now at Vienna’s Complexity Science Hub, she draws on a lifetime of experience in the sciences. In conversation with MISHA GLENNY, she will explore what Europe needs to do to realize its hope of establishing digital sovereignty, free from the capricious technological control increasingly exercised by its two superpower rivals.

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HELGA NOWOTNY is a professor emerita of science and technology studies at ETH Zurich and a founding member and former president of the European Research Council. She is currently a member of the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation, chair of the scientific advisory board of the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna, and a member of the board of trustees of the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin. Her latest book is Zukunft braucht Weisheit (Matthes & Seitz, 2026).