A. Dizani

In 1996, I graduated in civil engineering from Sharif University of Technology. So, I realised that the humanities—and more specifically, philosophy and ethics—are very important in the engineering sciences, certainly within the social context of a country such as Iran. So, I started studying philosophy, ethics, and religious studies (more specifically Islamic law) at Qom Seminary. Simultaneously, I started to practise engineering as a licenced professional engineer (certain engineering professions require a licence issued by the professional organisation of engineers before they can practise). In 2005, I was invited to Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) to teach ethics, anthropology, and theology for BSc engineering students.

After a while, I noticed that although most Iranian professional engineers respected their personal moral rules; they knew little about their professional responsibilities. Therefore, I decided to familiarise myself with engineering ethics. After 3 years of researching and experimenting with some educational contents, I suggested a course in engineering ethics at AUT (2012) for BSc engineering students and started to teach it myself. Also, I proposed to the Iranian Construction Engineering Organisation (the largest professional organisation in Iran with 500,000 members) to form an Ethics Committee that could think about how it is possible to improve morality among professional engineers. Finally, I managed to establish a research centre in engineering ethics at the university for the first time in 2012. I was honoured to organise a very productive workshop given by Ibo and Behnam in 2017, with over 100 participants from my university’s engineering professors as well as professional engineers. We also organised a session for the students, which was very well received.

In order to get acquainted with the fundamentals of applied ethics, I got a Master's Degree at the Institute of Ethics and Education (Qom) in 2018. The title of my thesis was "Methodology of Resolving Ethical Problems in Engineering.

I am very excited that after years of work as an individual interested in the field, I am now surrounded by many more like-minded people at one of the best centres in the world in the ethics of technology and engineering. I hope I can learn a lot from my time at Delft.