Martin Brynskov, PhD (CS), is an academic and digital standardisation expert at University of Copenhagen in Denmark. His research explores how machines and people – and everything in between – perceive, conceptualise, reason about and act in the worlds they co-inhabit, as individuals, as organisations and as communities of all sizes. He refers to this as Interaction Technologies unfolding in a Place-Based Computing paradigm.

Dr Brynskov has led some of the world’s largest pilot studies on smart and sustainable cities and communities, as Associate Professor at Aarhus University and later as Senior Researcher at Technical University of Denmark (DTU), leading groups focusing on connected communities, interoperability and ecosystems in the context of data spaces, local digital twins, artificial intelligence and internet of things. He is currently with University of Copenhagen as Scientific Director of AI and Data and responsible for the AI in Science Summit 2025, launching the Resource for AI Science in Europe as part of the Danish EU Presidency. He is also Founding Board Director, and previously Chair, of the Open & Agile Smart Cities & Communities (OASC), a Brussels-based global network of cities and communities.

At DTU Compute, he has built and led a number of large projects and related consortia, including the European Data Space for Smart Communities ("DS4SSCC", 33m€), “CitCom.ai”, the European Testing and Experimentation Facility (TEF) for AI and Robotics for Smart Cities and Communities (40m€), "BIPED" (7m€), building a Positive Energy District using Local Digital Twins, “CommuniCity” (5m€), which facilitates 100 pilots to learn with vulnerable communities where the gaps are when deploying emerging technologies like AI and the metaverse/CitiVerse, and has engaged in the New European Bauhaus lighthouse project “Desire – an irresistible circular society” (5m€), the EU Mission on Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities as part of the NetZeroCities support platform (50m€), and as the public sector lead of the EU AI-on-Demand Platform (DeployAI, 28m€).

Dr Brynskov co-chairs the Danish Standards Committee S-491 on Data Management and Data Spaces through which he co-leads the efforts in Europe to produce harmonised standards for data spaces (CEN-CLC/JTC 25/WG 2) and represents Denmark in the United Nations standards work for IoT, Digital Twins and Sustainable Smart Cities and Communities at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU-T/SG 20).

In the past he has led the large-scale pilot efforts OrganiCity (7m€) and SynchroniCity (20m€), led "NGIoT", the European Roadmap for IoT Research, Innovation and Deployment 2021-27, and has been part of the evolving fields of "Urban Interaction Design" as well as "Media Architecture", being the research lead for the FET-Open project UrbanIxD, and chairing the Media Architecture Biennale twice (2012 and 2014).

Dr Brynskov is a researcher, innovator, educator, facilitator and speaker, connecting people globally from his base in Copenhagen, Denmark, his native country.