Dr. Thorsten Jelinek is a public policy and strategy specialist focusing on digital governance in international relations. With more than 25 years of experience across Europe, Asia, and the United States, he is a Visiting Professor at the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Research Fellow at the Hertie School’s Centre for Digital Governance. He contributes to multilateral institutions and international policy processes, including UNIDO, the OECD, the G20/T20, and the ITU, and advises governments and businesses on strategy. His work centres on AI governance, digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, privacy, and sustainability. His research has appeared in The Innovation, Scientific Data, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, Big Earth Data, and Buildings. His book, The Digital Sovereignty Trap, examines the geopolitical dimensions of digital transformation. In 2020, his policy brief proposing a G20 Coordinating Committee for the Governance of Artificial Intelligence contributed to the T20 communiqué presented to G20 leaders. As a member of the Thematic Forum on Think Tank Exchange (BRSN), he has spoken and moderated roundtables at the Belt and Road Forums for International Cooperation in Beijing (2017, 2019, and 2023), focusing on sustainable infrastructure and digital governance. He previously worked with the Federation of German Industries (BDI) on its connectivity task force.

He is also an entrepreneur translating policy into business ventures. He is Managing Director at Wermuth Asset Management GmbH in Berlin, where he works on sustainable technologies and artificial intelligence. As co-founder of GemeinWerk, he helped establish Bauform eG, the first digital cooperative for Germany’s construction industry, to support trusted and sovereign data exchange. He has taken part in German government delegations to China and spoken at the European Parliament on Sino-Western relations and the implications of 5G mobile networks. Earlier in his career he was Associate Director at the World Economic Forum and held positions at Siemens, Airbus/EADS, McKinsey & Company, Bertelsmann, Huawei, and ZTE. He holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, an MSc in Organisational and Social Psychology from the London School of Economics, and a German Diploma in Business Information Systems from the Berlin University of Applied Sciences.

Selected publications

Jelinek T, Glauner P, Graylin AW, Qiu Y. 2026. The Post-Turing condition: Conceptualising artificial subjectivity and synthetic sociality. The Innovation Informatics.

Xu Y, Shao Z, Qiu Y, Jelinek T, et al. 2026. AI for science: Progress, challenges, and perspectives. The Innovation.

Jelinek T, Qiu Y, Guo H. 2026. Towards Earth intelligence: The co-evolution of AI models and agents for digital sustainable development. Big Earth Data.

Bühler MM, Nübel K, Jelinek T, et al. 2025. Bridging the construction productivity gap: A hierarchical framework for the age of automation, robotics, and AI. Buildings, 15(16), 2899. Bridging the Construction Productivity Gap—A Hierarchical Framework for the Age of Automation, Robotics, and AI

Jelinek T, Voss A, Bühler MM, Glauner P, et al. 2024. International collaboration: Mainstreaming artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems for carbon neutrality. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, 2, 26–34. ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10399830/

Guo H, Liang D, Nativi S, Jelinek T, et al. 2023. A future for digital public goods for monitoring SDG indicators. Scientific Data, 10, 875. A future for digital public goods for monitoring SDG indicators | Scientific Data

Jelinek T. 2023. The Digital Sovereignty Trap: Avoiding the Return of Silos and a Divided World. SpringerBriefs in International Relations. Springer Nature.

Jelinek T, Wallach W, Kerimi D. 2020. The creation of a G20 coordinating committee for the governance of artificial intelligence. AI and Ethics.