A chart showing four domains—Smart Society, Digitalised Industry, Rich and Healthy Life, and Educational Transformation—mapped to three project types: collaborative projects (red), research pairs (blue), and postdoc projects (black).

Digital Futures Research Programme Is Taking Shape

Since its inauguration last year, Digital Futures has had several calls for proposals and more than twenty cross-disciplinary projects with international research teams are now up and running. The illustration above shows which intersections of the Digital Futures research matrix each project primarily addresses.

Nine pilot research projects have evolved into Collaborative projects the will run for four years, involving nearly 50 established research leaders and their respective research teams. They focus on a range of issues from digital assistants in elderly care and sensitive data handling, to smart solutions for water distribution and programmable robotic microscale material. Read more here.

Collaborative projects

  1. Advanced Adaptive Intelligent Systems
  2. d-Brain: Digitizing Brain Data for Health and Disease
  3. Data-Limited Learning of Complex Dynamical Systems
  4. DataLEASH: LEarning And SHaring under Privacy Constraints
  5. Democritus: Decision Making in Critical Societal Infrastructures
  6. EO-AI4GlobalChange
  7. EXTREMUM: Explainable and Ethical Machine Learning for Knowledge Discovery from Medical Data Sources
  8. Humanizing the Sustainable Smart City (HiSS)
  9. Robotic Matter

There are also six Research pairs breaking new ground in areas ranging from improving the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders to designing threat models for cyber insurance. The funding instrument Research pairs is intended to foster collaboration between two young researchers that have obtained their doctoral degrees, not more than ten years ago. The instrument is aimed to identify new research collaborations that can develop into a leading scientific activity over the next few years. It is a vehicle for supporting and promoting young scholars with the potential to become future digital leaders. Read more here.

Research pairs

  1. Characterization of the mechanical tissue properties of the brain in the developing brain with magnetic resonance elastography
  2. Enabling Machine-Learning Intelligence for NetworkCybersecurity
  3. Layering Trust in Intimate Digital Health Technologies
  4. Resilient Decentralized Computing: Enabling Trust and Simplicity in Smart Edge Services
  5. SOS: Empowering User Control over Sensitive IoT Data
  6. Threat models for cyber insurance

In addition, nine Postdocs projects are currently part of the Digital Futures’ mobility program for talented early-career researchers, with two supervisors each from the Digital Futures faculty. Their research covers topics like Digital Transformations for Optimising the Post-Pandemic Sustainable Smart City, Fusion of Radar and Optical Remote Sensing Time Series for Wildfire Monitoring with Deep Learning, Feminist Design of Social Robots and Designing Robots For Young People, With Young People. Read more here.

Postdoc projects

  1. Deep Learning Approaches for Long-term Future Forecasting
  2. Digital Transformations for Optimising the Post-Pandemic SustainableSmart City
  3. Distributed Optimization and Federated Learning in Emerging Smart Networks
  4. Foreignness as conceptual framework for interaction design
  5. Fusion of Radar and Optical Remote Sensing Time Series for WildfireMonitoring with Deep Learning
  6. How people are making the city smart – the role of algorithms in urban space
  7. Intelligent wireless communications and high-accuracy positioning systems
  8. Learning Analytics in Higher education
  9. On The Feminist Design of Social Robots and Designing Robots For Young People, With Young People

With ongoing calls and evaluations of demonstrator projects, diversity and inclusion projects and additional postdoc projects, the Digital Futures research programme will soon expand, even more, we’ll keep you posted.

More news

A large group of people stand together on a wooden decking outdoors under a partly cloudy blue sky, posing for a group photo. Most people are facing the camera, with buildings visible in the distant background.

Digital Futures Summer Research Internship Programme 2026 kicks off with 86 students

15/06/2026

On 12 June, Digital Futures welcomed 86 students to the kick-off of the 2026 Summer...

Close-up of young green seedlings emerging from soil, with soft focus on leaves and stems. The background is blurred, highlighting the fresh, vibrant growth of the plants.

Digital Futures awards funding to 12 new International Postdoctoral projects

11/06/2026

On 3 June 2026, the President of KTH Royal Institute of Technology decided to award...

A person with long brown hair and a dark blue patterned shirt stands indoors, leaning against a white wall, with a large leafy green plant in the background.

Digital Futures researcher featured in Svenska Dagbladet on AI and data centres

10/06/2026

Digital Futures researcher and faculty member Anna Furberg was recently interviewed by Svenska Dagbladet, one of Sweden’s leading...

A group of people in formal attire stand outside a building, smiling and holding a long blue and yellow ribbon for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Two banners are displayed behind them.

Stockholm invigde ny AI-sandlåda för framtidens hållbara städer – Stockholm Digital Sandbox

29/05/2026

Den 29 maj invigdes Stockholm Digital Sandbox och Stockholm Urban Innovation Lab vid Kristinehovs Malmgård...