Type of event: News

Sabina Leonelli, Richard Williams, and Joyce Koranteng-Acquah participated in the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) Summit at CERN. Over the past year, Sabina and Richard wrote the “Science Lens” as part of the 2026 GESDA Radar. During the summit, Sabina was part of the “Rethinking Discovery” panel alongside Maria Leptin (President, European Research Council), Karthik Ramani (Professor of Engineering, Purdue University), Magdalena Skipper (Editor-in-Chief, Nature), and Mehran Gul (best-selling author) and discussed how geopolitics and national priorities are transforming how science is governed. Sabina discussed how the dominance of private funding of scientific research allows private corporations to largely set the agenda for scientific research. However, a lack of shared agenda setting may result in highly instrumental relationships where private organizations largely extract research outputs from public organizations for commercial uses and public organizations use private organizations as sources of funding.

With GESDA’s overarching commitment to robust research, Sabina talked about the value of many voices when research agendas are set and how to give a more effective voice to various publics—including the scientists themselves and lay publics. In return, this may help to house the convenience and short-term wealth creation that private corporations typically prioritize within a richer dialogue that aims at well-being creation and gives environmental health, social inequities, and sustainable inclusive growth a fair hearing. So, national governments may aspire to facilitate more shared agenda setting among public and private organizations on what basic aims scientific research should pursue and how to pursue them.

Later, Sabina and Richard participated in the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar High-Level Review Workshop with Stephen Toope (President, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research), Markus Gabriel (Director of Center for Science and Thought, University of Bonn), Anne Glover (President, Royal Scottish Geographical Society), Hiroaki Kitano (Executive Deputy President, Sony Group Corporation), Lise Korsten (President, African Academy of Sciences), Alondra Nelson (Professor, Institute for Advanced Study), Carolina Torrealba Ruiz-Tagle (Vice-Rector of Research, Andrés Bello University), Michael Hengartner (President, ETH Board), Magdalena Skipper (Editor-in-Chief, Nature), Ayaka Suzuki (Director of Strategic Planning and Monitoring Unit, United Nations), Christian Happi (Director, Institute of Genomics and Global Health, Redeemer University) and Robin Lovell-Badge (Principal Group Leader in Stem Cell Biology, Francis Crick Institute) where we discussed the “Science Lens” and how anticipated future science can and should shape the present research ecosystem. Please check the following link to watch the “Rethinking Discovery: Who Shapes the Future of Research?” panel.

On 9 October 2025, the PHIL_OS project team presented its results on the occasion of the Public Science Lab (PSL) launch in Munich under the leadership of Sabina Leonelli, Jörg Niewöhner, and Anne Rademacher. The PSL, supported by researchers Elis Jones and Desiree Hetzel, builds on the outcomes of the PHIL_OS project by exemplifying and fostering transdisciplinary dialogue to bring various forms of public knowledge into contact with academic research. On 26 September and 28 September 2025, Leonelli and Emma Cavazzoni also launched Pianeta Lab, a branch of the PSL, establishing regular venues for citizen projects in the cities of Bologna and Modena. This also follows directly from the PHIL_OS project and involves many of our Italian collaborators, who participated in fieldwork conducted in the region. For more information on the PSL, see here [URL: https://publicsciencelab.org/]; for more information on Pianeta Lab, click here  [URL: https://www.pianeta.org/pianetalab/]

From 27–30 August 2025, we gathered in sunny Groningen, Netherlands, for the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA). Our symposium, “The Role of Philosophy of Science in Public,” highlighted ethical and political issues concerning science, and we discussed the social responsibilities of the philosophy of science in shaping public policy. Richard Williams looked at how philosophers and policymakers may work together effectively and fairly. Sabina Leonelli discussed how an Environmental Intelligence framework can help elevate long-term social and environmental goals in technological development, which is currently dominated by short-term goals of convenience and efficiency. Katherine Furman explored how philosophers can help scientists clarify the targets of their research in astrobiology and public health. Rachel Ankeny’s commentary foregrounded the need for realistic views on politics and how trustworthy institutions and practices are needed to facilitate public trust in science. In a separate symposium on data modelling and evidence, Emma Cavazzoni and Sabina Leonelli explored how data models for applied research can help to contribute towards theoretical frameworks.

Award to Paola Castaño: The panel “Ecologies of Life in Space,” organized by Paola Castaño with participation from Ilenia Picardi, Marco Serino, Monica Truninger, and Kärin Nickelsen, was awarded the 2025 Interdisciplinary Organized Session Prize at the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology conference in Porto in July 2025. The panel was recognized for its combination of multiple disciplines and methodologies, with special incorporation of the history and social studies of biology.

Award to Elis Jones: At the 2025 International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) meeting, TUM researcher Elis Jones was jointly awarded the society’s “Callebaut Prize.” The Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Recognition Research supports the prize, in honour of philosopher Werner Callebaut, and is allocated by the ISHPSSB awards committee. It recognizes, for early-career scholars, “the best manuscript utilizing an interdisciplinary approach based on a presentation at one of the two previous ISHPSSB meetings.” Elis’s paper, presented at the Toronto 2023 meeting, is titled “Exploring the socio-ecology of science: the case of coral reefs,” and is published as part of a special issue on the nature of research environments. It uses data from interviews with coral scientists, alongside ideas from ecology, philosophy, and STS, to argue that coral science is heavily shaped by, and in turn shapes, the ecological systems it is embedded within. The prize was shared with Richard Vangino for his paper “Analogical Anatomy: Neurons, Networks and the Electric Telegraph.”

The Global Metascience Conference will take place in London from 30 June to 2 July 2025, and is organised by Research on Research (RoRI) at University College London. Sabina Leonelli will join a distinguished lineup of speakers, including Maria Leptin, President of the European Research Council; Patrick Vallance, UK Minister of Science and Innovation; and Anna Koivuniemi, Head of Google DeepMind Impact Accelerator, to discuss the role of AI in science. She will participate in two sessions, sharing insights from her work with the multidisciplinary Ethical Data Initiative and her Philosophy of Open Science project (Phil_OS). She will also reference her contribution to the 2024 Royal Society study on Science in the Age of AI. Her sessions include:

• The plenary discussion titled “AI in Science: Accelerating Discovery,” where she will address risks such as conservatism and the tendency to prefer convenience in current AI research developments.
• The session “Funding by Algorithm: AI as Object and Enabler of Research,” where she will offer a philosopher’s perspective on how AI and digital technologies are transforming science, along with the policy and funding challenges they present.

Nathanael Sheehan gave the talk Handling Data & Data Ethics to the alignAI-MSCA Doctoral Network held at the Garching Campus of the Technical University of Munich on 13 May 2025. His talk addressed data ethics, exploring the environmental, social, and epistemic risks of large-scale data use. He emphasised the importance of data transparency and representativeness, reinforced by frameworks like FAIR and CARE principles.

Nathanael Sheehan gave the Keynote talk titled A journey from data ethics to AI governance for the “Data science for life scientists” course at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in the UK on 19 June 2025.

New report on transdisciplinary research: Sabina Leonelli engaged with a wide variety of stakeholders in public engagement around science and technology at the 19^th Munin Conference for Scholarly Publishing, where she conducted a workshop on Mechanisms for Transdisciplinary Research together with Stefano Rimini of the Pianeta association. A report of the proceedings, with lessons learnt and the original presentation slides, is now available on the Septentrio Conference Series: https://doi.org/10.7557/5.7842

 

Frontiers in Open Research Colloquium: We are delighted to announce the launch of the interdisciplinary colloquium led by Sabina Leonelli. Beginning on Thursday, 24 April 2025, the weekly hybrid seminar (Thursdays, 14:00–16:00 CET) will feature critical discussions on Open Research, research cultures, and systemic challenges, focusing on life sciences, data science, and AI. Each session includes expert talks and insights from recent research. Location: Augustenstrasse 40 (3rd-floor seminar room) and via Zoom.