Prof. Dr. Sebastian Pfotenhauer

Academic Career and Research Areas

Sebastian Pfotenhauer is the Carl von Linde Professor of Innovation Research and the former founding director of the Department of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). As an STS and innovation researcher, he is one of Germany’s leading voices on issues of innovation, justice, and the common good, on the governance of new technologies, and on responsible and co-creative innovation practices. He is also an expert in establishing large national and international research consortia that combine expertise in the social sciences and engineering and develop innovative participatory formats for inclusive technology design. To date, he has secured more than 100 million euros in funding for such initiatives.

Sebastian is the spokesperson for the DFG Cluster of Excellence TransforM (Munich Center for Transformative Technologies and Societal Change), which focuses on social science research into new technologies, as well as for the BMFTR Future Cluster MCube (Munich Cluster for the Future of Mobility in Metropolitan Regions), Germany’s leading initiative for sustainable mobility innovations. From 2018 to 2022, he coordinated the European Horizon 2020 project SCALINGS (Scaling up co-creation: Avenues and Limits for Integrating Society in Science and Innovation) to investigate new formats of societal participation in robotics, autonomous driving, and urban energy systems. He is currently the academic director of the TUM master’s program Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology (RESET) and chair of the VDI Advisory Board “Technology in Dialogue.” Before joining TUM, Sebastian was a fellow in the Harvard Program on Science, Technology and Society and a research scientist and lecturer in the MIT Technology & Policy Program. His work has been published in Nature, Science Robotics, Social Studies of Science, Research Policy, and Science, Technology & Human Values, among others. Sebastian received his S.M. in Technology & Policy from MIT and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Jena, followed by postdoctoral training in STS and Innovation Policy at Harvard University and MIT. In his free time, Sebastian is a co-founder of the queer-feminist bookstore glitch in Munich, enjoys visiting museum exhibitions, and plays the violin with the Stüba Philharmonic.

Awards

• Leading Technology Policy Fellowship (MIT), MIT Technology & Policy Program (2010-2013)
• Dissertation with distinction („Summa Cum Laude“) (2009)
• MIT Education Excellence Award for graduation with 5.0 GPA (2010)
• ERP Fellowship, German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy / German National Academic Foundation (2008-2010)
• Undergraduate fellowship, Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst („Academic Foundation of the Protestant Churches“), (2000-2005)