# Software Engineering and Sustainability: Experience Cultivating Better Systems

- Institution: CERN
- Speaker: Michael Philip Sparks
- Year: 2026
- Language: English
- Subjects: Mathematics
- Source: [CERN](https://videos.cern.ch/record/3025577)
- Licence: [CERN](https://copyright.web.cern)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

Sustainability and software engineering are often treated as separate concerns. They do intersect. One often focuses on energy, carbon, and environmental limits. The other focuses on code, systems, longevity, reproducibility, and delivery.

This talk asks if the link runs deeper. Both fields face similar pressures. Demand rises. Resources are finite. Complexity grows. Hidden costs accumulate. I draw on work in network systems, media, broadcasting, open source, mentoring, platform-scale systems, and research computing.

If so, better software engineering is not merely adjacent to sustainability. The two can be symbiotic.

Through projects and examples, the session explores how to build systems that scale better and waste less. It also asks how systems can create more capable participants. Finally, I consider what opportunities lie beyond net zero, and how we build for that world.

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## Lectures

1. [Software Engineering and Sustainability: Experience Cultivating Better Systems](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/cern/3025577/09be3018f3f4), 44 min (CERN's player)