January 17, 2020

RRI Ambassadors

Question: Which part of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is closest to you?
Answer: In my day to day activities, I keep in my mind that I’ve to try to respect all the cross-cutting requirements of RRI but I based my activity on these pillars: Public engagement, Science literacy and education, Ethics, and co-creation.

Question: Which principles/topics affect your work?
Answer: During my professional experience with Consorzio ARCA (the incubator of the University of Palermo) we have seen RRI as a pivotal concept for our whole activities. In particular in my day to day activities that dealt with project management we always suggest testing and use tools or activities on more diverse ways of understanding and addressing problems, sharing knowledge, and empowering people to learn in the planning phase.

We applicate this participated approach for the design and the maintenance of the Madonie Living Lab and the Tecla Living Lab. The first is a rural Living Lab and the second is devoted to Textile &Clothing, in H2020 projects like FOTTRIS, TCBL and Interreg Med Creative WEAR. Or ReFREAM. In all this projects the design of actions involving key social players and innovators who will interact to generate ethically acceptable and socially and environmentally sustainable innovation products, services and processes and to boost technological applications which fit the crucial societal challenges.

In TECLA, an ENOLL certified Living Lab that I manage, we try to tackle the social and the environmental issues raised by the clothing production through an open and inclusive approach. One of our pillars is to put at the same table companies and users, artists, fashion designers and technicians in order to take advantage from multiples approaches and ignite co-creatione

Question: Which part of RRI is closest to you?
Answer: RRI is a concept that can be used for opening eyes on the elements of responsibility that should be taken into account when dealing with innovative research and innovation activities. It explains well, how widely innovations impact the society. Therefore I don’t want to highlight only one element of RRI as more important than the others. The importance of different elements depends on the situation and issues you are dealing with.

Question: Which principles / topics affect your work?
Answer: During MARIE Interreg Europe project we realised that we are lacking the aspect of ethical evaluation on Structural Funds. Thus, when launching a call for proposals for the development of artificial intelligence, we added a RRI to the funding criteria.

The criteria was developed together with VTT and Tampere University. The RRI criteria has a strong focus on ethical evaluation, but we also included questions about openness and safety. Engagement was added as well, to make sure that the innovation projects open their processes for different values, interests and perspectives.

The first projects have been funded from the pilot call with RRI criteria and all in all the results have been good. Therefore, the second pilot call was launched in December 2019. Our aim is to fund more responsible innovation projects here in Tampere region and also to start a wider process of changing the mindsets of the innovation actors. We aim to develop the thinking of the innovators towards a broader awareness of the societal impacts of their R&D actions.

Question: Which principles / topics affect your work?
Answer:
The promises of emergent technologies are global aspirations and developing countries are more aware of them trying to grasp their benefits for the future.

As a specialist in Innovation Management is my concern the techno-ethic governance of new technologies in order to assess the wide spectrum of social and environmental impacts. In my work, the RRI principles of anticipation, engagement, and reflexivity are crucial to incorporate new responsible practices in the industry and even exploring new rationalities for policy-making related to research and development.

In this respect, The Social labs of “Leadership in enabling Industrial Technologies” and “Future and Emerging Technologies” from the NewHoRRIzon project seems to be a proficient source of inspiration and useful knowledge to my field of practice.

Question: Which part of RRI is closest to you?
Answer:
I appreciate all parts of RRI, but if I have to choose one most important, I will go for governance, i.e. creating structures for implementing RRI.

Question: Which principles/topics affect your work?
Answer: My work includes a variety of activities, I work as a senior research at a research institute, an associate professor at university, an associate editor of publication journal.

I would say all principles/topics of RRI affect my work.