Safe by Design | PhD & Postdoc Course 2024

Many materials, products and processes still end up causing unintentional harm, even though safety is a prominent topic in the professional environments of researchers and innovators. Safe (& Sustainable) by Design (S(S)bD) is an approach that renews our focus on safety from the earliest stages of design onwards and expands it by considering it in relation to other important values such as sustainability, security, and circularity.

About this course

This course:

• explains the importance of an integral approach to safety in design, engineering and processes;
• introduces the concept of S(S)bD;
• gives you an overview of the extensiveness of the S(S)bD;
• showcases a variety of disciplinary perspectives on its conceptualization, operationalization and (industrial) application;
• considers design for safety in the broader innovation system;
• discusses how to balance safety with values like sustainability, security, privacy, circularity, and autonomy;
• facilitates interdisciplinary exchange around concrete cases.

Throughout the three-day program you will work on group assignments, ideally based on actual cases. We highly encourage you to bring your own case, preferably related to your own research.

The team of lecturers represent the forefront of academic and practice-oriented research around S(S)bD at universities and research institutes across the Netherlands. Participants come from a wide variety of disciplines across science, engineering, and innovation studies.

The course thus offers a highly interdisciplinary environment that encourages critical reflection on and facilitates mutual learning about (1) novel ways to address safety early on in research and innovation and (2) the (moral) responsibilities of different actors/stakeholders.

Course preparation

It will be a highly interactive 3-day course. If you enrol, we expect you to participate for the full duration of the course. During the course we will work with concrete cases. We highly encourage you to bring your own case, preferably related to your research. When you do not bring your own case we will ask you to work in groups on someone else’s case. The workshop requires minimal preparation by watching this webinar, a number of short animations from RIVM and some relevant articles, which will be made available one month in advance.

How to register

You can express your interest by sending an email to TUDSSI@tudelft.nl. Then we will send you an enrolment form. You will have the option to describe your own research case for consideration during the PhD course. The course is free of charge and open to PhD candidates & postdocs from all Dutch universities.