In this session, two projects from the EWUU AI programme illustrate how trustworthy AI can drive progress toward a healthier, fairer, and more sustainable future. The project PROMISE: PRediction of Outcome with Machine Learning in Infants: a Synergistic Exploration focuses on extremely preterm infants (<28 weeks) that face high risk of brain damage and long-term behavioral challenges. This project contributes to developing a trustworthy AI model to predict individual behavioral outcomes early, enabling personalized interventions. By harnessing AI, we aim to drive transitions in preventive health, helping clinicians act proactively to improve lifelong outcomes. Complementing this clinical perspective, the NWA-ORC–funded DECIDE project explores how to democratize AI by making decision-making more transparent and citizen-centered. Through co-design with citizens, educators, policymakers, and industry, DECIDE aims to build AI systems that support informed choices, align with societal values, and strengthen trust in public services.  

The Dutch healthcare sector is responsible for 13% of national material extraction and 7% of national emissions, making it a significant contributor to climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Paradoxically, these environmental impacts directly undermine human health—the very thing the sector aims to protect. At the same time, healthcare’s heavy reliance on (critical) raw materials and increasingly fragile global supply chains poses growing risks to the continuity of care. 

Addressing these urgent challenges requires close collaboration between academic research, public and private partners. In this session, we highlight how such collaboration can drive meaningful change. One of our Seed Fund projects will share how their work tackles circularity challenges in healthcare, and how strategic engagement with stakeholders accelerates real-world impact. 

We then move into an interactive brown-paper ideation session, where participants build on the project’s insights and collectively explore opportunities to strengthen and scale circular solutions. Drawing on the expertise in the room, we will co-create next-step ideas that push the boundaries of what is possible in circular healthcare.  

How do you feel about the daily news? Do you feel equipped to drive transitions in society, with society? At EWUU Education we aim to coach responsible change makers, able to explore and apply the principles of resilience in both societal and personal contexts. This demands from (prospective) professionals that they develop capabilities beyond the cognitive. 

Adaptive performance, enables (prospective) professionals to be resilient, navigate uncertainty and co-create innovative solutions for societal challenges by using their prior knowledge and skills in efficient and innovative ways. Adaptive performance helps to empathize and collaborate with others and integrate multiple disciplinary insights and perspectives in the development of potential solution-pathways for societal challenges. 

During this session we will jointly explore the concepts of resilience and adaptive performance in interactive dialogue. We host guest speakers to engage with us in a co-learning journey in this session. We will explore how different fields engage with resilience and build adaptive expertise together.  

What if life itself could become a tool for solving the world’s most complex challenges? This session offers a clear, jargon-free introduction to the rapidly evolving world of synthetic biology and living technologies fields that are reshaping how we think about health, materials, energy, food, and the environment.

Designed for curious members of the public as well as transdisciplinary researchers, the session will:

Participants will walk away with a grounded understanding of the science, an appreciation for its potential, and a sense of how living technologies might shape the next generation of solutions.        

Across Europe, regions are facing increasing pressures from climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, and vulnerable supply chains. These challenges strain both urban and rural areas and expose how deeply our economies depend on linear systems of extraction, production, and waste. As a result, communities become less resilient, social and environmental inequalities grow, and opportunities for sustainable regional development remain underused. 

To address these issues, a shift toward circular regions is essential: resource flows and social dynamics extend beyond municipal borders, and each region’s unique landscape, economy, and governance context shapes its circular opportunities. 

Addressing these urgent challenges requires close collaboration between academic research, public and private partners. In this session, we highlight how such collaboration can drive meaningful change. One of our Seed Fund projects will share how their work tackles regional circularity challenges, and how strategic engagement with stakeholders accelerates real-world impact. 

We then move into an interactive brown-paper ideation session, where participants build on the project’s insights and co-create next-step ideas. Drawing on the expertise in the room, we will explore new opportunities to strengthen and scale circular solutions for thriving, resilient regions. 

In this keynote, professor Roel Vermeulen (Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht) invites us to explore possible futures of preventive health by flipping our perspective on today’s dominant systems, routines, and assumptions. Through the lens of “futuring,” the keynote shows how a shift in perspective brings into view elements currently overlooked. Drawing on recent work within the EWUU Institute for Preventive Health, including studies on child resilience, living environments, health at home, and early-onset cancer, the keynote illustrates how alternative imaginaries mobilise academics, practitioners, communities, and designers to break through the crisis of imagination and move beyond the constraints of the present—driving transitions in society, with society. 

Building on the combined strengths of the four EWUU institutes and the latest advances across the i4PH research lines, this keynote demonstrates how truly transdisciplinary collaboration can reshape what we believe is possible and accelerate the shift toward a society where health is created, not repaired. 

Featured by the EWUU Centre for Unusual Collaborations and the EWUU Education Programme. More information will follow soon!