Dear colleague,

We would like to remind you of next week’s talk in our Lecture Series:

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. (17:00) Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Topic: “Drones, Swarm Intelligence, and the Future of Cyber-Physical Societies”
(scroll down for abstract and CV)

Speaker: Franco Accordino and Monika Lanzenberger (European Commission)
Moderator: George Metakides (Digital Enlightenment Forum)

To participate in the talks via Zoom go to: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09
(Password: 0dzqxqiy)

The talk will be live streamed and recorded on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism

For further announcements and information about the speakers in the Lecture Series, see https://dighum.org/#latest-news. Please note that you can access the slides and recordings of our past events via that link.

In case you missed the event by Viola Schiaffonati you can watch the recording of “AI-related risks: A philosophical analysis”.


Next Digital Humanism Events:
24.-26.06 Digital Humanism Conference 2026 in Vienna
06.-10.07 5th Digital Humanism Summer School
stay up to date via our public calendar

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Stefan Woltran




—–
Sign the Vienna Manifesto: https://dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at
Follow us on Bluesky @dighumtuwien.bsky.social>
—–

ABSTRACT “Drones, Swarm Intelligence, and the Future of Cyber-Physical Societies”:

Drones are rapidly evolving from niche flying devices into autonomous, AI-powered components of a broader digital infrastructure connecting airspace, data, networks, cloud-edge computing and intelligent systems. This lecture explores the emerging “drone stack”, from chips, physical platforms and connectivity to onboard AI, distributed intelligence, swarms and autonomous control systems. We will discuss how drones are transforming sectors such as disaster response, environmental monitoring, smart agriculture, logistics and mobility, while also raising profound societal and ethical questions. We want to explore both, the opportunities and risks associated with this transformation, including sustainability benefits, new public services and industrial innovation, but also challenges related to surveillance, privacy, weaponisation, labour disruption and democratic governance. The lecture will outline the industrial and geopolitical dimension of drones, including market trends, strategic technologies and Europe’s position in the global ecosystem. Finally, we will also analyse the evolving EU regulatory framework, including the U-space architecture and the European Action Plan on Drone and Counter-Drone Security, together with their interactions with AI, cybersecurity, data and platform regulation.

Short Bio of Franco Accordino:

Franco Accordino is the Head of the “Investment in High-Capacity Networks” unit within the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). The unit is responsible for the deployment and take-up of very high-capacity broadband networks underpinning the Digital Single Market and promoting the European Commission’s vision and policy actions to turn Europe into a Gigabit Society by 2025. He worked on IT innovation within the European Commission in his role as HoU for Knowledge Management and Innovative Systems. His studies include the combined use of ontologies to model policy making concepts with stakeholder engagement, formal methods to describe the policy making processes, data analytics to provide evidence to policies, e.g. in terms of forecasts and back cast foresight techniques, and machine learning techniques to support the policy making process, e.g. summary of stakeholders views, influence analysis, etc. Franco has published in the field of formal methods for complex systems specifications, data analytics and foresight methodologies (Futurium platform).

Short Bio of Monika Lanzenberger:

Monika Lanzenberger is the Head of Unit for IT Solutions at the European Commission, DG ECHO – Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations. The unit develops and operates Information Systems and ICT infrastructure for over 3000 users spread all over the world in the field offices and at the ECHO Head Quarters, officials, EU Member States and citizens. She has been working at the European Institutions since 2009 on policy and implementation of Cybersecurity, ICT for health research, and other areas of EU research funding, including grants awarded by the European Research Council, with duty stations in Brussels and Luxembourg. At the Vienna University of Technology she teaches classes in Semantic Technologies and Ontology Alignment, where she also held a position as assistant professor with the Faculty of Informatics until 2009. She was a Post-Doc Fellow in 2005-2006 at the NTNU, Trondheim, Norway and the Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor, Luxembourg. Monika has published about knowledge engineering, ontologies, shared vocabularies and information visualisation. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the Vienna University of Technology in 2003.

Short Bio of George Metakides:

George Metakides is Professor Emeritus from the University of Patras, Honorary President of the Digital Enlightenment Forum and Advisor to several international organizations. He is often a Visiting Professor in European Universities. He is involved in the analysis of the economic, political and social impact of digitization, related cybersecurity, data protection and regulatory issues and the promotion of international cooperation towards a digital ecosystem respecting shared human values. With a Ph.D. in Mathematical Logic earned from Cornell University in 1971, he pursued an academic career at MIT, Cornell and Rochester University before returning to Greece as Chair of Logic at the University of Patras. Since 1984 he has held senior positions with responsibility for Research & Development policy, funding and international co-operation in European institutions including the Directorship of the ESPRIT program He has contributed to the establishment of international institutions (including the launch of the World Wide Web consortium in 1993), has received a number of awards and honorary degrees and is a corresponding member of several National Academies.