Speakers/Raoul Weiler
I am located in Belgium in Antwerp. During the last years my activities focus primarily on sustainability issues as a planetary challenge, the use of low-cost ICT in schools and communities as a contribution to the eradication of illiteracy and bridging the digital gap, and facilitating the access of all to the oncoming worldwide information and knowledge societies, as well as on sustainable economy questions. At present, I chair and founded the Brussels-EU Chapter of the Club of Rome (CoR-EU) and am a member of the Executive Committee of the International Club of Rome (CoR). I am a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), member of Scientific Advisory Board of European Papers in the New Welfare, a member of the Board of Greenfacts and the president of the new created DigitalWorld. I participated as a NGO participant at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (WSSD, 2002) and the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva and Tunis (WSIS, 2003 & 2005) as well as at the World Social Forum in Porte Alegre (WSF, 2005).
My academic background is engineering with a degree of engineering and Ph. D. in chemistry both at the University of Leuven (KUL), Belgium and spent several years as Post-doc in the US and France. My industrial career started in a chemical multinational in the Department of Applied Physics and ended, until retirement (1996), as manager of the ICT department. I have held teaching positions at different universities, in particular at the University of Leuven in the Faculty of Bio-engineering Sciences (KUL), and gave lectures about the relationship between technology and society, especially about the problem of sustainability and ethics. I am the co-author and editor of four books on sustainability, global change and philosophy and ethics of technology. Recent publications: Ethic Aspects of the Convention on Climate Change (2005) and the Proceedings of the joint World Conference of the Club of Rome and UNESCO on ICTs for Capacity-Building: Critical Success Factors (2005).