Pieter Vermaas is associate professor at the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Department of Delft University of Technology.

In Delft Pieter Vermaas helped creating the Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts research program (2000-2005), in which technical artifacts were analyzed as having both structural and intentional natures, with functions playing an important role in relating these natures. From 2006 to 2010 he researched with an NWO VIDI fellowship the use of functions and functional decompositions in engineering design methods. In 2017 he helped establish the Delft Design for Values institute aimed at incorporating moral, societal and legal values in technology through design.

His current topics are design and quantum technologies. Research on design focuses on what societal aims design, in accordance with codes of ethics, can realize.

research interest

• Philosophy of Technology
• Philosophy of Design
• Design for Values
• Quantum Technology