Registration for ICT4S 2025 is now open. Please visit our Registration page for full cost information and registration form.

We are delighted that Dr Paolo Bertoldi has accepted our invitation to speak at ICT4S 2025

Dr Paolo Bertoldi

• Senior Expert, European Commission

Paolo Bertoldi is a senior expert in sustainable energy, climate change and energy efficiency at the European Commission. Some of his key areas of expertise include: energy service companies, market based instruments, governance, environmental leadership, ICT energy consumption.

Paolo is also an experienced Editor In Chief with a demonstrated history of working in the international affairs industry. He is also skilled in sustainable energy, CSR, international relations, and data center, and is in charge of policy analysis for energy efficiency at the European Commission where he has served as Energy Efficiency Expert and Senior Expert for 25+ years.

We are delighted to announce the acceptance of Professor Benno Werlen as a keynote speaker at ICT4S 2025

Professor Benno Werlen

• UNESCO Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability.
• Founding Member of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES.
• Chair at Academia Europaea - THE ACADEMY OF EUROPE

Chair of the IGU Commission on Global Understanding (since 2016), is the initiator and chair of The Jena Declaration (TJD) on the Cultural and Regional Dimension of Global Sustainability’ endorsed by many of the leading organizations in the field, founder and executive director of the International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) including more than 30 Regional Actions Centers, approved by the UNESCO General Conference.

TJD proposes an alternative strategy to the top-down sustainability policies that have dominated until now, and which are clearly coming to an end. Instead, it calls for a global bottom-up mobilization to achieve sustainability through culturally and regionally adapted and locally embedded pathways and social inclusion.

TJD has already created an already formidable network of support, including Nobel Laureates Yuan-Tse Lee, former President of the International Science Council, and Gordon McBean, founder of the IPCC report, the Presidents of the Club of Rome and the World Academy of Art and Science, many UNESCO partners, leading social and cultural scientists, artists and engaged citizens from around the world. 

TJD wants to launch a global movement driven not by fear, deprivation or shaming, but by joy and enthusiasm for a richer, happier and healthier life for everyone, wherever they are on the planet.

With its bottom-up and a change from a nature- of a culture-centered approach TJD is fully in line with the UN statement for the recent 2024 International Human Rights Day 2024: "Our Rights, our Future, now", a call to empower individuals and communities to build a better future.

And because of its innovative demands, TJD has recently been invited to participate in the preparation of COP30.

We are delighted to have the following accepted as keynote speakers at ICT4S 2025. More speakers will be announced shortly. 

• Professor Nic Bidwell MIT (UQ), PhD (UoL)
• Professor Jon Summers, RISE

Professor Nic Bidwell MIT (UQ), PhD (UoL)

• Charles Darwin University, Australia and Rhodes University, South Africa
• Chair Sustainability Committee ACM SIGCHI

Expertise in community-based, action research for technology design in the global south; working with rural inhabitants of Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda, India, Indonesia, Australia, Argentina and Mexico including indigenous people. Her research has designed and informed successful tech initiatives and advocacy, and is sensitive to gender and local perspectives. She has mentored over 40 early career African researchers, including in founding AfriCHI. She is founding advisor to Namibia’s Internet Society (ISOC) and Groot-Aub community network. Her collaborators range from not-for-profits to Microsoft Research. She initiated the first indigenous-led digital design panel and the first publications on decolonalism in the Assoc. for Computer Machinery (ACM).

Research

• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Digital ethics
• Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Rurally situated technology design
• Designing with the pluriverse

Professor Jon Summers

• Research Lead in Data Centres at Research Institutes of Sweden,
• Adjunct Professor of fluid mechanics at Luleå Technical University and
• Visiting Professor in Thermofluids at University of Leeds

Dr Jon Summers is the scientific lead in data centres at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Adjunct Professor in Fluid Mechanics at Lulea Technical University in Sweden, and a Visiting Professor to the Institute of Thermofluids at the University of Leeds in the UK. He has worked on government and industry funded projects using high performance computing (HPC). Having built and managed compute intense clusters to support research projects, he chaired the HPC User Group for 20 years at the University of Leeds.

In the last eight years Jon’s research has focused on a range of thermal and energy management projects within Data Centres, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning and industrial sectors.

His research and technological development at RISE during this decade is focussed on making the digital infrastructure as energy efficient and sustainable as possible.