What is the role and responsibility of Technical Universities in contemporary democracies? What kind of educational transformations do we need — and why are technical and political developments inseparable? Sebastian Pfotenhauer recently joined a key note panel at ETH Zurich on “Designing Knowledge, Engineering Society? Technical Universities and the Dilemma of Democracy” together with Holberg-Prize Winner and STS Scholar Prof. Sheila Jasasnoff (Harvard), Bioethicists Prof. Effy Vayena (ETH), and STS Scholar and Historian Prof. Margo Boenig-Liptsin (ETH). Sebastian argued that, interestingly, technical universities are increasingly emphasizing the qualities of social science and humanities (SSH) education in tech contexts, with new programs emerging everywhere, while traditional SSH universities increasingly try to emulate the ways of technical universities, e.g. around tech entrepreneurship. He also argued that the future of our democracies is fundamentally shaped by the distribution of scientific and innovation investments, for example of the Excellence Strategy. The panel was part of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Science Democracy Network (SDN).