The world is facing increasingly complex societal challenges, including unequal access to essential services such as water and sanitation, healthcare, housing, energy, mobility, education. Addressing these challenges requires innovative approaches and context-appropriate technologies capable of responding not only to immediate needs but also to long-term processes of sustainable, resilient, and inclusive development. These challenges call for researchers and professionals who are able to work across disciplinary boundaries, engage with diverse stakeholders, and develop solutions that are technically sound, socially acceptable, economically viable, and environmentally responsible. Preparing future PhD graduates for these complex contexts therefore requires complementary competences that go beyond disciplinary expertise, including systems thinking, participatory design, co-creation, intercultural collaboration, and responsible innovation. The PhD Course "Tech 4 Change: Designing 4 Society" aims to provide doctoral candidates from different disciplines with the knowledge, methods, and practical tools needed to design, develop, and evaluate technologies and research outcomes that generate positive societal impact, especially for the disadvantage part of the society such as underserved and marginalised communities. Through lectures, case studies, interdisciplinary teamwork, and interaction with practitioners, participants will strengthen the transversal competences increasingly required in both academic and professional careers. The course will use a challenge-based learning approach in order to close the gap between theory and real-world problems.

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Module 1 (3 hours)— Understanding the context: the humanitarian scenario Topics: • Humanitarian Engineering as a discipline • SDGs, engineering responsibility and ethics • Engineering under uncertainty • Systems thinking Module 2 (5 hours) —Sustainable Design Topics: • Design with scarcity, between complexity and uncertainty • Participatory Design • Appropriate technologies for scale and impact in resource-scarce environments • Frugal innovation vs emerging technologies Module 3 (5 hours) — Water, Sanitation and Health Topics • Small community water supply • Water storage and treatment • Distribution systems • Wastewater management • Hygiene promotion Session 2 Topics • Public health in emergencies • Medical technologies and Health system resilience Module 4 (2 hours) — Renewable Energy Topics • Energy demand estimation • Solar systems • Battery storage • Hybrid microgrids • Energy resilience Module 5 (5 hours) — Circular Economy and Disaster Resilience Session 1 Topics • Hazard identification • Risk assessment • Safety engineering • Multi-hazard scenarios • Resilient infrastructures Session 2 Topics • Innovation in Humanitarian Logistics • Humanitarian supply chains • Emergency logistics • Procurement • Last-mile delivery

In presenza

Sviluppo di project work in team

P.D.2-2 - Luglio