Kenneth Heijns is Director of the Innovation and Impact Center at TU Delft.
Having previously worked as Managing Director at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), I had the opportunity to work on innovation and education for cities. As a mechanical engineer by training, I began my career in telecommunications and strategy consulting before joining Delft University of Technology in 2007. Throughout my career, I have focused on fostering collaboration between society, government, industry, and academia, spanning diverse domains such as radio astronomy, high-energy physics, aviation, the energy sector, architecture, and the built environment.
From my perspective at the AMS Institute, where I worked closely with municipalities, I saw first-hand that resilience engineering is a very real need. We need only look around us to see the external pressures on our systems. These could affect the very essence of our society and the way we live, work and relax. It is these basic human needs that require us to pursue education, research and innovation in resilience engineering.