Sustainability
The department of Computer Science and Engineering contributes to the university's mission of sustainability in many ways. We incorporate sustainability in education and research, and work actively with equity and inclusion. Birgit Penzenstadler is the department's sustainability coordinator.
Sustainability-related research
Software Engineering for Sustainability
If Software Engineers work consciously with sustainability there is potential to change the world for the better within a short period of time. Around 2012, Birgit Penzenstadler coined the term “Software Engineering for Sustainability” which has since become an accepted concept. It requires Software Engineers to think through what a software system’s impact on sustainability may be, and if that’s what we want to implement. To support this, Birgit Penzenstadler and colleagues have developed the Sustainability Awareness Framework, SusAF. It is a lightweight assessment tool that uses a set of guiding questions and visualisation diagrams to explore the potential impacts of a system under consideration in five dimensions of sustainability: environmental, individual, social, economic, and technical.
The workbook for self-guided application is available on Zenodo for download.
International Sustainability Conferences
Several members of the department have a long-standing contribution in the organization of the International Conference on ICT for Sustainability.
Integration of Sustainability in Education
At the department of Computer Science and Engineering teachers have access to guidelines on how to work with sustainability within education. The guideline is called “Sustainify your Syllabi” and was developed by Birgit Penzenstadler. It is intended to provide a checklist of questions that can help a program coordinator or an individual instructor to integrate sustainability into their educational components.
The guidelines can also be found on Zenodo for download. If used for other disciplines they may have to be adapted.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Francisco Gomes as equality representative at the department, and Birgit Penzenstadler as GENIE (Chalmers' initiative for gender equality) representative have been working on promoting and distributing knowledge and best practices around diversity, equity and inclusion. This has been supported by participation in the COST action19122 EUGAIN (European Network on Gender Balance in Informatics) where Birgit led the working group on Strategy and Dissemination.