Session
Sustainable AI – Challenges and directions for future AI Applications
Tuesday July 7, 2026 | 12:00-13:00 CEST
Albert II Auditorium
Description
This session examines what it means to develop and apply AI in an environmentally responsible way, moving past the generic “AI for Green” framing toward a more clear-eyed account of both the direct footprint of AI and its indirect, systemic effects. Bringing together perspectives from law and regulation, environmental accounting, sociology of research, and critical technology governance, we ask where current approaches fall short of actually achieving progress towards sustainable use of AI.
Speakers
Martin Willame
Researcher, UCLouvain and ULB
Martin Willame is a Ph.D researcher jointly affiliated with UCLouvain and ULB, who was supported by an F.N.R.S.-E.O.S. fellowship. His research initially focused on passive radar systems using Wi-Fi signals and multistatic configurations. Since 2024, he expanded his work focus to study the environmental impact of data centers as part of the European research project EECONE (European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics). In 2025, he co-authored a report published by The Shift Project: “Artificial Intelligence, Data, Computing: What Infrastructures in a Decarbonized World?”. His research has been published in several international conferences and journals, and in 2025 he received the Best Paper Award at the Symposium on Information Theory and Signal Processing.
Alexandra Papageorgiou
IT & IP Law Researcher, KU Leuven
Alexandra is a doctoral researcher at the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), where, alongside her research on legal automation for the DataPACT project, she investigates the role of public authorities in EU environmental data governance in light of post-growth theories.
Jan Tobias Mühlberg
Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles – École polytechnique de Bruxelles
Jan Tobias Muehlberg works as a professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles, École polytechnique (BE). He researches topics involving privacy, safety and security of information and communication systems, with particular interest in dependable embedded systems and secure critical ICT infrastructures, and in interdisciplinary research on questions around the responsible and sustainable development and use of ICTs. Jan Tobias is specifically interested in societal aspects of security and privacy in dependable systems, in trusted execution environments, and in security architectures for safety-critical embedded systems. Before joining ULB, Jan Tobias worked as a research manager at KU Leuven (BE), as a postdoc researcher at the University of Bamberg (DE), obtained a Ph.D. from the University of York (UK), and worked as a researcher at the University of Applied Sciences in Brandenburg (DE), where he also acquired his Master’s degree in Computer Science. Jan Tobias was born at around 335 ppm atmospheric CO2 and grew up when the internet was wild, weird, and free.
Nicki Lisa Cole
Senior Researcher, KNOW Center
Nicki Lisa Cole, PhD is a Senior Researcher in the Open and Reproducible Research Group at Know Center Research in Graz, Austria. She is a sociologist with a research focus on issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in science and in science reform. Her approach to research is informed by feminist, globalization, racial and cultural theories and her practice is rooted in qualitative methods. In addition, Nicki has expertise in sustainability issues within the global electronics industry and its supply chains and contributes this perspective to the ENFIELD project. Nicki completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara (2011) and has worked as a researcher in the USA, the UK and Austria. Her work has been published across a range of academic and popular outlets around the world. [photo credit: Thomas Klebel]
Erik Johannes Husom
Research Scientist, SINTEF
Erik Johannes Husom is a research scientist at SINTEF Digital’s Trustworthy Green IoT Software group. His work focuses on applied machine learning, AI engineering, and responsible AI, aiming to have an ethical approach to technological advancement. He is particularly focused on the environmental sustainability of AI.