Stakeholder involvement we have been discussing as core element developing concepts such as Responsible Research and Innovation or Values by Design. Yet how can we involve stakeholders, i.e. those affected by innovation and research processes and outcomes – yet not able to influence them. Dr. Almudena de la Mata (CEO of BlockchAIn Intelligence) shares her methodological insights of how to do this. Giving concrete examples, she explains to the host, Dr. Claudia Werker (Delft University of Technology) how to do it to make cities and finance more inclusive. Solutions do not only increase the participation of stakeholders, e.g. by giving women better access to financial services but might also involve nudging them to choose for better solutions by providing a blockchain-based reward system in the case of more inclusive cities.

In health care women are still treated as if they are small men even though they are not. We know very well that women and men suffer from different illnesses, present with different symptoms while suffering of the same illness, and react differently to medication. While there are some best practices scattered across the various disciplines of medical health, an overarching picture of what is needed for inclusive health care for women is missing.

Please listen to one of the women who are about to change this: Prof. Dr. Hanneke Takkenberg, affiliated with both the Erasmus Medical Centre and the Erasmus Business School in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Together with two colleagues she just founded founded the Netherlands Women’s Health Research & Innovation Center. In this episode of our podcast series Inclusive Research and Innovation (IRI) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), Dr. Claudia Werker (Delft University of Technology), asks her about her engagement for women’s health. Hanneke shares how inclusive health care for women requires more interdisciplinary collaboration between different disciplines in health care and beyond, more and other kinds of data collection as well as close collaboration with patient groups and Femtech firms.

Data is a major challenge for IRI in STEM. Collecting data of diverse individual human beings comes with at least two major challenges. The first one is being in line with the legislation on privacy and data use. This often includes dealing with ethical issues that might arise. The second one is analysing this data in a meaningful way.

In this podcast we meet Dr. Nikolas Dintzer and Dr. Santosh Ilamparuthi, two data stewards of Delft University of Technology. They share their insights on how to collect and analyse (sensitive) data of diverse, sometimes vulnerable, human beings with you and the host, Dr. Claudia Werker. Nikolas and Santosh demonstrate that there is no size fits it all in data collection and analysis. Moreover, they show important and valuable it is to talk to data stewards very early in your research process. In doing so, you can figure out your way towards a compliant, ethical and meaningful data use in your IRI in STEM project.