Dear colleagues and friends
It is a great pleasure and a true honour to welcome you to the 3rd International Conference on the Ethics of Engineering Life — ICEEL. I welcome you on behalf of the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering in Switzerland, which is headed by the University of Basel and ETH Zurich.
First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Pontifical Academy for Life — and in particular to its President, Renzo Pegoraro — for many years of friendship and cooperation in our Engineering Life Ethics Think Tank and for co-hosting this conference. My thanks also go to the Director of the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering, Professor Thomas Ward, for his longstanding support of our ethics initiative in Basel, as well as to the members of the organisational and scientific committees for their dedication in preparing this meeting.
I would also like to extend a very warm welcome to the more than 300 participants from 46 countries who will be joining us online in the coming days. Your presence reminds us that the questions we are addressing here are not confined to one place, or one culture — they concern humanity as a whole. Throughout the programme you are invited to post your questions in the chat. Our team will moderate them and bring them into the discussion whenever possible.
And let me express my deep appreciation to you — distinguished experts from around the world, gathered here in Rome today — who will shape this conference in the coming days. In your contributions, you will not only share knowledge, but also open spaces for reflection, disagreement, and genuine dialogue. It is this collective commitment to thinking together — across disciplines and perspectives — that forms the true heart of this conference.
We have chosen a very challenging title for this edition of our conference: Quid est homo? Quis est homo? — inspired by the ancient verse of Psalm 8, where a human being, looking up at the night sky, asks: “What is man that you are mindful of him?” I am not so sure that we will be able to completely answer those questions until tomorrow evening, but we’ll work on it.
If we approach the first question — What is the human being? — in terms of structure, biology and mechanisms, then it is primarily the natural sciences that offer answers. And indeed, the life sciences are providing extraordinary answers. Advances in gene- and cell-based therapies, regenerative medicine, translational medicine and tissue engineering now allow us to intervene in living systems in ways that — only a few decades ago — seemed unimaginable.
But the second question of our conference — Who is the human being? — cannot be answered by science alone. It is not a question for a single discipline, or a single societal group. It touches the very core of the human condition. It asks about dignity, identity, meaning, responsibility, and freedom.
For these reasons, everyone should be invited into this discourse: the sciences and the humanities, politics, the arts, patients and their caregivers, the world’s religions — and all those who wish to engage. In doing so, we echo Plato’s well-known anthropological declaration in the Myth of Protagoras: that all human beings are equally talented and qualified to decide on issues of justice in the polis — in society.
Engineering Life has brought us to a crossroads — a crossroads that concerns us all. And it is precisely at this intersection that our conference seeks to create a space for dialogue. Accordingly, this year’s conference focuses on panel discussions rather than on isolated lectures.
At our NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering in Basel, we believe that ART and MOLECULE belong in dialogue with one another. This is why our ethics approach is called Art of Molecule. It echoes our conviction that ethical reflection on the engineering of life must go beyond academic disciplines alone. It comes as no surprise, then, that art plays a prominent role in this conference — not as entertainment or an accompanying programme, but as an integral part of our discussion. The artistic contributions in our programme are not side events. They are keynotes in their own right. Art invites us to explore questions that cannot be answered by science alone nor by religion alone. We can and should learn from the ways in which artists perceive, interpret, challenge and express the ongoing transformations of the human condition — and allow their perspectives to deepen our own reflection on the highly delicate and complex process of engineering life.
This afternoon we will have the privilege of welcoming the acclaimed Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, whose work has explored for decades the shifting boundaries between body, technology, and identity — questions that resonate profoundly with the themes of our conference. And tomorrow evening our dialogue will continue in another artistic language — the language of music.
At the intersection of East and West, rhythm and reflection, Turkish percussionist Burhan Öçal and Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov will give a concert where different musical traditions meet. Perhaps music and cinema remind us in a particularly profound way that the question What and Who is the human being? cannot be answered by analysis alone, but must also be explored through resonance, encounter, and shared experience.
And it is precisely in this spirit that we now begin our conference— by bringing together science, philosophy, religion and the arts to reflect on one of the oldest and most pressing questions of our time: Quid est homo? Quis est homo?
Thank you very much, and welcome to our conference.
Ralf Stutzki
Head of Ethics, NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering
University of Basel & ETH Zurich
