The Rector and AI expert delivers flagship lecture on the accelerating technology   On 26 October 2023, UNU-MERIT hosted the seventh instalment of its flagship Charles Cooper Memorial Lecture Series, named for the institute’s first director. United Nations University (UNU) Rector and artificial intelligence expert Professor Tshilidzi Marwala delivered the lecture “Governing artificial intelligence for a better society,” following an introduction from the institute’s director Bartel Van de W...

This week, Scientific American published a news piece on the increasingly common worldwide concerns about rapid advances in generative artificial intelligence, and how this ‘AI anxiety’ can be managed. The article features UNU-MERIT researcher Sanae Okamoto, an expert in psychology, cognitive neuroscience and behavioural science. Okamoto points out that fear of new, unfamiliar technologies has been happening for decades – even centuries, if one considers the strong concerns tha...

New investigative podcast by UNU-MERIT alumnus narrates the story of this contentious policy   In 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to declare bitcoin as an official currency alongside the U.S. dollar. But almost two years after this law came into effect, the initiative remains a failure. Bitcoin has barely been adopted by the population and the country is nearly 30 percent down in its cryptocurrency investment. [1] So why did the Salvadoran government think its Bitcoi...

A guest post by Betsabé Vásquez Martínez, current student in our 2022-23 MPP cohort   The CBP One app was launched in 2020 as a portal that provides migrants with a variety of US Customs and Border Protection services. With the introduction of Title 42 (a legal clause invoked by the Trump administration to allegedly stop the spread of COVID-19 across borders), the app became the only pathway to schedule asylum application appointments. This policy allowed the United States to turn away asyl...

  Meet the new UNU-MERIT board member Behnam Taebi As a child, Behnam Taebi was interested in nothing more than understanding how everything works, making his education and training as a material science engineer an obvious professional choice. Now, however, Taebi works as a leading ethicist and philosopher in the fields of climate change and energy, developing ethical frameworks from which to address the trials and tribulations of our times. From serving as a researcher and professor at De...

  United Nations University – MERIT · What do “green windows of opportunity” mean for developing countries?   Episode 11 of the Director’s Corner Podcast series: Director Bartel Van de Walle speaks with Dr. Rasmus Lema, Associate Professor at UNU-MERIT In this conversation, Bartel and Rasmus discuss the ‘green tech revolution’ as described in the UNCTAD Technology and Innovation Report 2023, which Rasmus made significant contributions to with his research....

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Each year, 26 April, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) marks World IP Day. The day helps showcase how intellectual property inspires innovation and creativity — yet recent research gives another perspective. For example, how TRIPs type agreements may be stifling ‘development by imitation’ and thus holding back the Global South. Dr. Neil Foster-McGregor shares his thoughts ahead of World IP day. Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) are supposed to encourage inno...

Researcher Martin Rehm and co-authors Wim Gijselaers and Mien Segers have received the outstanding paper award of the EdMedia 2014 Conference. Their paper ‘Unified Yet Separated – Empirical Study on the Impact of Hierarchical Positions within Communities of Learning,’ was presented at the annual EdMedia World Conference on Educational Media and Technology at the University of Tampere (Finland) 23-26 June, 2014. The EdMedia World Conference on Educational Media and Technology is...