A.SPIRE Community Day

10 Apr 2025 | Brussels, Belgium

Sebastian Engell

Professor of Process Dynamics and Operations

TU Dortmund University

Dortmund, Germany

A.SPIRE Member

My organisation

The Technische Universität Dortmund (TUDO), Germany, is a university located in the city of Dortmund. It was founded in 1968 as a part of a government initiative to establish universities in the traditionally working-class Ruhr area. The Social Research Center (sfs) is carrying out the project work as a part of the Faculty of Social Sciences at TUDO. Is has been a part of the university since 2007, but already been founded in 1946. The overarching guiding theme of the sfs' research work is social science innovation research. It examines how social innovations arise and how they relate to technological innovations. Another focus is on the question of the conditions and perspectives for realising economically, ecologically and socially sustainable development. The sfs is involved in shaping social, technological and ecological processes of change and innovation. The research team engaged in this project is dedicated to the combination of social innovation and technological innovation, promoting a deep participatory approach with end-users and other relevant stakeholders to facilitate a joint optimisation of technology, people and organisation as dimensions of a sociotechnical system. Additionally, they address human-related challenges in the context of digital and green transformation, especially with regard to collaboration on sector-specific EU-wide skills strategies (ESSA, SPIRE-SAIS, Skills4EII).
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About me

Sebastian Engell is the Chair of the Advisory and Planning Group of A.SPIRE. He is Emeritus Professor of Process Dynamics and Operations at TU Dortmund, Germany, where he up to now has successfully supervised more than 90 PhD students, most of whom now work in the process industries. He also works for ZEDO e. V. Dortmund in projects on circular economy and Hubs4Circularity and for Enrich Global, France, in a project on supporting the Digital Partnerships between Europe and the Indo-Pacific region. He has led or contributed to many EU-funded projects on process technologies, system modelling and optimization and digital technologies for the process industries.

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Skills

  • System-wide optimization
  • Value networks
  • process operations

Interests

  • Plastics recycling
  • demand side management
  • Usage of multiple carriers of energy
  • Flexibility