In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the crucial issues that humanity faces during the last decades, become readily apparent. Issues such as socio-economic inequality, environmental disaster, physical and mental health illness, freedom of expression, become key-concepts of scientific and critical reflection. Could COVID-19 be understood as an accelerator?

Historically, major natural events, such as pandemics and natural disasters, have acted as accelerators, or triggers, of socio-economic transformation. In recent years, the world is experiencing a radical transformation of the production process. This transformation is characterized by an ever-increasing interconnection and automation of the production process along with an ever-increasing penetration of artificial intelligence nodes. This transformation has profound socio-economic and environmental implications that are minimally understood.

Arguably, today's COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to significantly accelerate and influence this transformation at both the production and socio-economic level. Given this, it is an imperative need to understand this transformation and the corresponding challenges and opportunities in the context of COVID-19. To undertake such an interdisciplinary task, researchers in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields need to work closely together with researchers in humanity (HUM) studies.

"RIPCON 2020: COVID-19 as an Accelerator" aims to support this interdisciplinary research task and the respective collaborations by bringing together inspiring researchers from around the globe. This is the inaugural meeting of The Rise of Intelligent Production Conference (RIPCON).