Innovation meets
digital trust
Innovation meets
digital trust
An event series organised by
ETH Zurich and digicert
empowered by digicert

About

We believe that future readiness is built on trust. Trust in digital technologies, in scientific excellence, and in the people who design, deploy, and govern these systems responsibly.

This conviction led us to launch this event series as a dedicated platform for meaningful dialogue between leading researchers, industry decision-makers, and representatives from society. Our goal is to foster informed exchange at the intersection of technology, business, and public interest.

Digital trust is not an abstract ideal; it is a foundational requirement for modern business. It enables confidence in data protection, ensures the authenticity of digital identities, and safeguards critical transactions. As digital systems increasingly shape value creation across all industries, trust and security become strategic factors in connecting sectors, accelerating innovation, and supporting sustainable economic and societal progress.

Participation in this event series is by invitation only. Decision-makers interested in attending a future event are invited to contact us at eth-zurich-digicert@ethz.ch.

Your Hosts

Programme upcoming Event

Health: Trusting the body or data?

31 August 2026

Restaurant UniTurm, University of Zurich

17:00

Aperitif
Welcome
Jeannine Pilloud
Head of ETH Partnerships for Innovation
Reto Scagnetti
AVP Southern Europe & Switzerland, DigiCert
Hana Disch
Head Industry Liaison Office

17:45

Keynote
Can we design reliable AI agents for high-stakes domains?
Q & A
ETH Professor Michael Moor

18:45

Dinner

Keynote
Between Feeling and Knowing: When the Body and Data Disagree
Q&A

ETH Professor Catherine Jutzeler

22:00

Farewell and end of the event

Photos and videos will be taken during the event for internal purposes and for publication on our social media channels. If you do not wish to be photographed or filmed, please let us know on site.

Map and address
University of Zurich, Restaurant UniTurm, Rämistrasse 71, 8006 Zurich

How to get there
The University of Zurich is best reached by public transport: Trams 6 or 10 from Zurich main station to ETH Universitätsspital, then 5 minutes on foot; alternatively, the Polybahn from Central, then 5 minutes on foot.

Speakers

Can we design reliable AI agents for high-stakes domains?

Amid the recent surge in the capabilities of AI systems - especially language agents, or simply agents - it is reasonable to ask: Can these agents truly be trusted in high-stakes domains such as healthcare? Against a backdrop of reports about agents deleting inboxes, lying, hallucinating, and failing in unexpected ways, how can we design agents and agentic systems that are trustworthy, capable, and aligned, while (semi)-autonomously performing complex tasks? How can we train language agents specifically for the medical domain? In this talk, we will review some of our latest work, along with recent literature on advancing the frontier of language agents toward safer and more reliable AI in medicine.

"The body speaks in feelings, but it does not always speak in truth. Data speaks in truth, but it does not always speak in meaning. The danger is believing either one alone."

Between Feeling and Knowing: When the Body and Data Disagree

In modern health and medicine, we often assume the body will warn us when something is wrong. Yet both neuroscience and clinical practice show that this assumption is fragile. In pain research, individuals with spinal cord injury may lose all sensation in their legs yet still experience intense pain in limbs they cannot physically feel—revealing that pain is constructed by the nervous system, not simply read from the body. In sepsis, the opposite paradox appears: a life-threatening infection can progress rapidly while early symptoms feel deceptively mild or non-specific, only becoming obvious when the body is already critically compromised. This talk explores these contradictions between subjective experience and objective data, asking when we should trust what we feel, when we should trust what we measure, and how these two sources of knowledge can disagree in ways that fundamentally reshape our understanding of the human body.

Ambassadors

«As a founder and investor, I believe that digital innovation requires trust as its foundation. This series creates a rare and important space for dialogue. »
«Cybersecurity and digital trust ensure sustainable and exclusive innovation, maintain competitiveness and public trust, and safeguard corporate assets—they form the foundation for sustainable digital stability and growth.»
«An important contribution to the discussion on how we balance trust in emerging technologies with safeguards to manage their risks.»

Past Events