In this keynote, professor Roel Vermeulen (Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht) invites us to view preventive health from an unexpected angle: the future. Speaking as if looking back with curiosity and mild astonishment, he reflects on the choices we made in 2026, revealing how many of today’s routines and assumptions around prevention may one day seem ineffective, or even strangely misplaced. This future perspective unsettles what we take for granted and creates space to imagine fundamentally different ways of acting.

Rooted in the work of the EWUU Institute for Preventive Health, the keynote illustrates how preventive health can only succeed when we move beyond disciplinary silos and work in society, with society. From child resilience and healthy living environments to health at home and early-onset cancer, the examples show how scientists, policymakers, practitioners, designers and community partners jointly shape knowledge, interventions and transitions. Here, research is not only about understanding the world, but about changing it together.

The session makes this shift tangible through an interactive serious game in which participants step into the roles of diverse stakeholders within a society facing health inequities. Together, they navigate the interplay between policy, environment, living conditions and social structures, making collective decisions and experiencing the systemic consequences of their choices. By turning complexity into lived experience, the game stimulates dialogue, surprise and shared ownership, translating future thinking into concrete action and deepening the move from interdisciplinary collaboration to truly transdisciplinary practice.

The healthcare sector has a substantial environmental footprint, while at the same time facing increasing pressure on resources, supply chains and continuity of care. Addressing these challenges requires more than technological innovation alone, it calls for a deeper understanding of how materials are used and embedded in everyday healthcare practices.

This session builds on a Seed Fund project, within the EWUU Institute for a Circular Society,  exploring material use in childbirth procedures in the Netherlands and Suriname. The research highlights how clinical routines are shaped by cultural and contextual factors, and what this means for advancing circularity in hospital care.

An ethnographic film, created as part of the project, serves as a starting point for collective reflection. By watching the film together, participants will discover how healthcare practices differ across contexts, and how these differences influence material use and sustainability outcomes.

The session combines insights from ethnographic research and Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) to discuss possible follow-up steps. Together, we will reflect on what can be learned from these practices and how such insights can inform future research, collaboration and action towards more circular and resilient healthcare systems.

Session format:

• Film screening
• Interactive discussion and brown-paper ideation session

Session facilitator

• Megan Milota – UMC Utrecht

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. After a welcome by our director of EWUU Education prof. Ines Lopez Arteaga, our session hosts Lisette van Bruggen, Ramona Laurentzen and Femma Roschar will engage us in a co-learning journey in this session. We will explore how different fields engage with resilience and build adaptive expertise together.

Session hosts:

• Lisette van Bruggen (Theme lead Transdisciplinary Learning for EWUU Education, UMC Utrecht)
• Femma Roschar (Senior coach/facilitator on Resilience and Personal Leadership Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University & Research)
• Ramona Laurentzen (Senior facilitation and space holder on Resilience and Intuitive Intelligence Education and Learning Sciences, Wageningen University & Research)

Welcome by:

• prof. Ines Lopez Arteaga (Director EWUU Education, Dean Bachelor College TU/e, Eindhoven University of Technology)

How can we develop AI that people genuinely trust, both in the most vulnerable clinical settings and in societal decision-making? In this session, we explore what trustworthy AI looks like across very different contexts, and what it takes to move from promising technology to responsible, real-world impact. This session is organised by the EWUU AI Programme

The workshop brings together two complementary projects that address trust in AI from both a medical and a societal perspective. Through short, focused presentations and interactive discussion, participants will be invited to reflect on transparency, accountability, and human involvement in AI-supported decisions.

What to expect

The session consists of two 30-minute presentations, each followed by opportunities for questions and discussion. Participants are explicitly encouraged to share their perspectives, experiences, and concerns, making this a highly interactive session rather than a one-way transfer of knowledge.

Presentations

PROMISE: Prediction of Outcome with Machine Learning in Infants
A synergistic exploration of AI in neonatal care
Presenters: Maria Luisa Tataranno & Manon Benders (UMC Utrecht)

This talk explores how machine learning can support outcome prediction for infants in neonatal intensive care, a setting where decisions are complex, stakes are high, and patients cannot speak for themselves. The presenters will discuss not only technical advances, but also the clinical, ethical, and interpretability challenges that arise when deploying AI for the care of the smallest and most vulnerable patients.

DECIDE: Democratizing AI: Empowering Citizens through Transparent Decision-Making
Presenters: Mieke Boon (UT), Yingqian Zhang (TU/e)

This presentation shifts the focus from clinical care to society at large. DECIDE investigates how AI systems can be designed to make decision-making processes more transparent and inclusive, enabling citizens to understand, question, and meaningfully engage with AI-supported decisions that affect their lives.

Why join this workshop?

• Gain concrete insights into how trust in AI is built, or lost, in both healthcare and societal contexts
• Learn how transparency, explainability, and human values can be embedded in AI systems from the design phase onward
• Compare challenges and solutions across disciplines, from neonatal medicine to public decision-making
• Contribute your own perspective to an open discussion on responsible and trustworthy AI

What will you have learned afterwards?

After this workshop, you will have a deeper understanding of

• The practical challenges of implementing trustworthy AI in high-stakes environments
• How different stakeholders (clinicians, patients, citizens) relate to and rely on AI systems
• Design principles and governance approaches that support transparency, accountability, and trust
• How interdisciplinary collaboration strengthens responsible AI development

This session is particularly relevant for researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and anyone interested in the societal and ethical dimensions of AI beyond the algorithm itself.

This session explores how research can move beyond analysis towards real-world societal impact. Using the EWUU Ideation Lab as a concrete example, we discuss how students and researchers collaborate to explore new directions, engage with societal challenges and develop ideas together. Through a live conversation with a researcher and a student, the session offers insight into motivations, expectations and what it takes to turn research questions into shared learning and action.

How can research contribute more directly to societal change, and what does that require from researchers, students and other stakeholders? This breakout session explores this question through the lens of the EWUU Ideation Lab, a new initiative that brings students and researchers together to explore how research can evolve towards societal impact. The session uses the Lab as a learning environment to reflect on collaboration, experimentation and co-creation.

Through a live conversation with an EWUU researcher preparing to submit a project and a student considering participation, we discuss motivations, expectations and the opportunities and challenges of working at the intersection of research, education and society. Participants will gain insight into how such formats can open up new perspectives on their own work,  whether as researcher, student or partner, and how they might engage when the Ideation Lab launches later this year.

Speaker

Robbin Reijnen, academic coordinator at WUR and project lead of the EWUU Ideation Lab, will serve as the main speaker and host of the session.  The other speakers are a EWUU researcher and a student that will be interviewed around their drives, role and expectations within the Ideation Lab.

Are you a transdisciplinarity novice? Are you curious about transdisciplinary learning, but don’t know where to start? Did you have a first experience with transdisciplinary teams, but were overwhelmed by what happened or did not know how to engage in the next step? Do you question how to fail forward?

Come to our escape room where we actively engage with transdisciplinary concepts, learn how to escape the failures and train you in engaging differently in transdisciplinary processes.

Expect active and fun engagement in an escape-room setting. Collaboratively we will learn by doing, engage with fellow transdisciplinary enthusiasts, and solve puzzles. No previous experience required!

Hosted by EWUU Education and the EWUU Centre for Unusual Collaborations

When Life becomes a tool

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:

The talk will be followed by a short interactive panel discussion on the ethical and societal questions raised by living technologies, including responsibility, safety and long-term impact. 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.    

Speaker:

• Wilco Nijenhuis (Utrecht University)

Across Europe, regions are under increasing pressure from climate change, resource scarcity and vulnerable supply chains. These challenges cut across urban and rural areas and highlight the limits of linear systems of production and consumption. Within the EWUU institute for a Circular Society, strengthening regional circularity requires new forms of collaboration, governance and innovation that connect cities and their surrounding regions.

In this session, the Circular Society Seed Fund project Accelerating public-private partnership for circular public spaces through inclusive digital technologies explores how digital tools and technologies can support public-private partnerships for circular public spaces. Building on research in the Province of Utrecht, the project examines the socio-technical and governance capacities needed to enable material reuse and to accelerate the twin transition of digitalisation and sustainability.

After a short project presentation, participants engage in an interactive brown-paper session to collectively explore follow-up research questions and opportunities. Drawing on the expertise in the room, the session aims to identify pathways to strengthen and scale circular solutions for resilient urban-rural regions.

Session format

• Short project presentation
• Interactive brown-paper ideation session

Session facilitators

• Vikrant Sihag – Eindhoven University of Technology
• Dujuan Yang – Eindhoven University of Technology
• Kirsty Holstead – Wageningen University & Research
• Erna Ruijer – Utrecht University

Stimulating a healthy lifestyle in adolescence benefits young people now and supports their long-term health into adulthood. To truly drive transitions in society with society, health promotion research should not be developed for youth, but co-created with them, including their involvement in the analysis of research data. In this workshop, participants will experience firsthand how youth can be meaningfully involved in interpreting research data.

This interactive workshop draws on the Healthy Lifestyle for Low Literate Teenagers (LIFTS) project in the Netherlands. Funded through the NWO-KIC scheme (2022) with €1.4 million (plus €0.3 million from societal partners), LIFTS is a transdisciplinary collaboration between Wageningen University & Research, Utrecht University, Eindhoven University of Technology, teachers from Praktijkscholen, companies, policy makers, and around twenty societal partners.

Running from September 2023 to September 2028, the project focuses on promoting a sustainably healthy lifestyle among low-literate adolescents in practical education through accessible and engaging technologies such as games.

Within a photovoice study on healthy and sustainable dietary behaviour, youth were invited not only to document their lived experiences, but also to actively analyze their own images. In this workshop, participants will re-enact this analysis process and experience firsthand how youth can be meaningfully involved in interpreting research data. Together, we will reflect on practical strategies, opportunities, and challenges of participatory data analysis, and what it means to co-create research that supports real societal transitions.

What to expect?
• Short introduction to LIFTS and participatory research
• Hands-on experience with participatory photo analysis
• Guided reflection and discussion on co-analyzing data with youth

Why join this workshop?
• Experience participatory analysis by doing
• Exchange perspectives with fellow participants
• Gain practical inspiration and tools for youth-centered health research

Speakers
Presenters Madelief Engels and Daniëlla van Uden are PhD candidates at Wageningen University working on the LIFTS project. Madelief has a background in Nutrition and Health, and Daniëlla in Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology.