Date and time: 6 May 2026, 09:00 – 17:00
Title: Digital Futures Open Research Day 2026
Where: Valhallavägen 79, Floor 2, KTH main campus, Stockholm
Directions: https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/contact/how-to-get-here/
We are pleased to invite you to the Digital Futures Open Research Day on 6 May 2026 taking place at Vallhallavägen 79. A full-day event centred on partner challenges and interdisciplinary Digital Futures’ research. This year’s program places particular emphasis on real-world challenges / problems presented by our partners, followed by perspectives from various Digital Futures’ projects.
Throughout the day, you will encounter:
- Partner challenge sessions where industry and public sector partners present their challenging problems, themes and/or specific case studies.
- Selected Digital Futures research projects and Postdoc projects will be presented
- Networking and mingling
The Open Research Day is an opportunity to strengthen collaboration between academia and Digital Futures partners, spark new research questions, and enhance the potential for core transdisciplinary approaches and cross-sector initiatives within Digital Futures.
Program Curator (concept and structure): Yifang Ban, Associate Director Dissemination and Impact at Digital Futures. Full program developed by the Organizing Team.
If you have questions, please get in touch by sending an email to event@digitalfutures.kth.se.
PROGRAM
08:30 Registration & Coffee
09:15 Welcome by Mikael Lindström, Deputy President KTH
09:30 – 10:30 Connectivity – Connecting the Physical and Digital Worlds
Session Chair: Urban Forssell, Head of AI Strategy and Innovation, Digital Futures
- 09:35 Secure and Scalable 6G Ambient IoT (SambIoT), Professor Panagiotis Papadimitratos, KTH
- 09:40 Democratizing Trustworthy Software Development, Associate Professor Marco Chiesa, KTH
- 09:45 Total Spatial Recall, Michael Björn, Ericsson
- 09:50 Connectivity as a Service (CONNaaS), Emma Stavrou and Louise Stjern, Xylem
- 09:55 Smart Grids Start with Smart Connectivity, Rahul Gore, Hitachi
- 10:00 Q&A discussion
10:30 – 11:30 Critical Infrastructures and Resilience – From Physical Threats to Cybersecurity
Session Chair: Professor David Broman, KTH
- 10:35 Resilience and cost benefits of open-source software in the power sector (RECOPS), Assistant Professor Jagruti Ramsing Thakur, KTH
- 10:40 EdgeWise: Secure and Low-Latency Vision-Language-Action Models for Adversarial Environments, Joakim Eriksson, Senior Researcher and Manager of the Connected Intelligence Unit RISE
- 10:45 Digitalizing Mission Critical Healthcare with 6G, Wolfgang John, Ericsson
- 10:50 Maintaining Reediness and Capacity against Physical Threats, Francisco Penayo, Hitachi
- 10:55 Q&A discussion
11:30 – 13:00 LUNCH & Postdoc Poster Session
Postdoc Poster Presentation Session:
- AI-enabled Self-Powered Biodegradable Triboelectric Nanogenerator (TENG) Patch for Cardiac Post-Surgery Wound Healing and Monitoring – Swati Panda, KTH
- CAMEL Cascading Machine Learning – Adarsh Prasad Behera , KTH
- Gigantic Multiple-Input Multiple-Output for a Wireless Digital Future – Zhe Wang, KTH
- Mitigating Human and Environmental Exposure to Transport Emissions via Data-Driven Approach – Henri Giudici, KTH
- Physics-enhanced Deep Learning methods for Bridge Health Monitoring (BHM) – Smriti Sharma, KTH
- Privacy of isolated points – Arnaud Grivet Sébert, KTH
- Programmability of cells – Wouter Jongeneel, KTH
- Towards Smart Cities: Collaborative Spatial Perception for Digital Twinning – Yixi Cai, KTH
13:00 – 14:00 Sustainable Data Centers – From Energy Supply to Water Cooling
Session Chair: Professor Viktoria Fodor, KTH
- 13:05 AI for Clean Energy Conversion: Learning Multiscale Dynamics in Fuel Cell Systems, Assistant Professor Björn Eriksson, KTH
- 13:10 Environmental Life Cycle Impacts of Digital Technologies and their use in Society (ELID), Professor Göran Finnveden, KTH
- 13:15 AI-based real-time analysis and monitoring of district heating substations in a hospital environment, Mikael Nutsos, Locum, Region Stockholm
- 13:20 The environmental energy footprint of the global ICT sector including the datacenter industry, Dag Lundén, Ericsson
- 13:25 A vision for Sustainable Data Centers, Francisco Penayo, Hitachi
- 13:30 Q&A discussion
14:00 – 15:00 Digital Twins – Optimization and Validation Using Synthetic Data
Session Chair: Professor Jennifer Ryan, KTH
- 14:05 Sustainable, Holistic, Integrated Framework for Ship Design and Production Transformation through Digital Twins (SHIFT-DT), Assistant Professor Yongkuk Jeong, KTH
- 14:10 Stockholm EnviroNmental Zone digital Laboratory (SENZ-Lab), Associate Professor Romain Rumpler, KTH
- 14:15 Optimization of Airborne Healthcare through Artificial Intelligence, Thomas Engelmark, Region Stockholm
- 14:20 Q&A discussion
15:00 – 15:30 COFFEE BREAK
15:30 – 16:30 Large Scale Testbeds – Supporting New Types of Research and Innovation Work
Session Chair: Urban Forssell, Head of AI Strategy and Innovation, Digital Futures
- 15:35 The effects of AI based predictive maintenance from life cycle perspective, Assistant Professor Farzin Golzar, KTH
- 15:40 Causal Adaptive Reasoning for Effective Hospital Admission Interventions (CARE-AI), Researcher Muhammad Umar B Niazi, KTH
- 15:45 aICU and SÖS Testbed: From AI development to clinical testing in intensive care, Villiam Vejbrink Kildal, Region Stockholm
- 15:50 Hagastaden, Karl Jonasson Collberg and Johanna Stjernström, City of Stockholm together with Malin Hansson, Skanska
- 16:00 AZIDEA – Testbed in Södertälje for Autonomous Manufacturing solutions, Benjamin Edvinsson, AstraZeneca
- 16:05 Q&A discussion
16:40 – 16:45 Concluding remarks
16:45 – 18:00 Mingle
End of Day
