 So I would like to start with two remarks. In the morning, Petros mentioned some of our concrete successes and some of our aspirations. I would like to add two. One is that I've been coming to Greece now for about 40 years every summer to be a participant in a conference workshop like this, where you have some of the best Greek scientists and engineers who generally care about the country and would be willing to come back is inspiring. So organizing that, it is already a small accomplishment. The second thing I would like to mention is I often ask myself about criteria under which I will know in 10 years from now whether this was a worthwhile effort or not. Typically all these efforts pay dividends over time, not one year. So one criteria I put for myself, this is my personal opinion, not necessarily served by the rest of the highest members, although I suspect they will be positive on that view, is that 10 years from now, if the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Studies is being asked, let's say by the Greek government, by the Greek universities, by the Greek industry to help in whatever they are willing to ask. But highest is the recipient of such questions or challenges, that would be a win. And at least personally, I would aspire for such an engagement. Coming back now to the particular panel, so what do we aspire to achieve? So in recent decades, countries like Israel, Finland, Estonia, these are European countries, considered Israel also a European country, have increased their GDP quite sizeably, primarily based on innovation and entrepreneurship. The question that I'm hoping we can give some answers to, at least some insights, is can Greece increase the level of entrepreneurship and innovation? Number one. Second, how can the highest help in this endeavors? We have gathered today some very distinguished people. They have three characteristics. Number one, they all distinguish scientists and engineers. Second, they have all been successful entrepreneurs and innovators. And quite importantly, third, they care about the country. I happen to know this personally and want to give back. Thank you for accepting. So as I mentioned, our first presentation is by Dr. Nectarios Tavernarakis. I'll be brief on my introductions. They deserve far more. Otherwise, we'll be here until seven. So Nectarios is a professor of molecular systems biology at the medical school of the University of Crete. And it's also heading the Neurogenics and Aging Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the foundation of the research and technology at last in Iraq. And he's the current chair of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. To the best of my knowledge, the first member and chair in this significant European body. And Nectarios, the floor is yours. So thank you very much, Dimitri. It's really an honor for me to be among such distinguished scientists. Thank you for the invitation. So what I'm planning to do today is really tell you a few things about what is being done in Europe to foster innovation, to foster entrepreneurship, and generation of value based on knowledge. And then maybe discuss what can we learn from this experience and how can we implement perhaps similar approaches for Greece. So actually, today's discussion is very reminiscent of what was happening in Europe, the discussion that was going on, the debate that was going on back in the early 2010s. And then at the time, we had this very profound realization that in Europe, we are very good at turning euros to knowledge, but we are not that good at turning knowledge to euros, which means wealth, of course, jobs, societal impact in general. So this was realized back then. It was the time after the recession, as you know, the global financial difficulties and the crisis. So Europe was emerging through that crisis, and there was this realization, what should be done then? Now, how does this compare with what is happening to Greece now? Of course, here it's again debatable, but I think we can, to some extent, say safely that we are good at turning euros to knowledge. Maybe some people might not agree that we are that good. Of course, we are not as good as we could. That's for sure. But we do have some evidence that this is happening, and I'll show you those points and the evidence later on. But what we are really lagging desperately behind is the other step, the step of converting knowledge to wealth for society, to money, to jobs, to societal impact. And this is, of course, something that we need to do. We need to foster both research and innovation in order to be able to achieve this final goal. Research is really the process that generates the raw material that is required for innovation, at least knowledge-based innovation, because as you know, we also have other kinds of innovation not related to knowledge. But here we are discussing this conversion of knowledge to wealth to societal impact. Now, at the time, Europe, of course, mobilized and created instruments in order to achieve this goal. The very recent instrument that was just started a year ago is Horizon Europe, as you know. So within the framework of Horizon Europe, Horizon Europe, as you see, is a very big program of a budget of about 96 billion euro. I'll show you some of the details later on. There are different components. I'm not going to go into each and every component. I'm going to just focus on those that are relevant to today's discussion. So I'll essentially present information about three such components, three instruments of Horizon Europe, that I think are relevant to our discussion today. The first is the European Research Council, of course, which is part of Pillar 1, focusing on excellent science. And the second is the European Innovation Council, together with the European Institute of Innovation and Technology that Dimitri mentioned earlier, which are both part of Pillar 3 that is focusing on innovation, on generating value, generating new products, innovative products and services that will then reach the market. And this is done, of course, through very generous financial support. So for example, for the ERC, we have a budget of 16 billion euro, more than 16 billion euro. This is actually going to increase once we have contributions from associated countries, because nowadays a pay-as-you-go model is implemented by the European Commission. So any associated country, for example, Switzerland, Israel, maybe the UK, now that Boris is out, will contribute to the budget. And this is going to increase the overall budget, of course. So 16 billion for the ERC, then we also have another 10 billion, more than 10 billion for the European Innovation Council and 3 billion for the EIT. And these instruments follow both a bottom-up and a top-down approach when it comes to really achieving their goals. So the ERC is focusing, of course, on purely bottom-up approaches, and I'll give you some information later on. EIC is having instruments, funding schemes that are both bottom-up and top-down, and the EIC is top-down instrument of horizon Europe. And I think we need both approaches. We need both bottom-up and top-down if we are talking about really increasing the competitiveness of Europe. Now, let me begin with the ERC. Give you some information about how the ERC functions and some information about its funding schemes. As I said, it's endowed with the budget of 16 billion euro, 2.3 billion euro per year, as compared to 13 billion euro for the previous framework program, Horizon 2020, and 7.5 billion euro for FP7. Now, it focuses on providing support to individual scientists, so it's PI-driven. It's like the NIH R01 grants, let's say. No networks here, no consortia. There's global peer review to evaluate science and select the best proposals. It's purely bottom-up, as I said, and it supports frontier research in all fields of science, ranging from physical sciences and engineering to life sciences to social sciences and humanities. So the whole spectrum. And it does so through three major granting schemes, starting grants and consolidator grants focusing on young researchers, new PIs, either right after their postdoc or consolidating their career in around the mid stages of their career, and advanced grants that are open to anyone, not just senior researchers, but also junior researchers anyone can apply. And in addition to that, we also have synergy grants. These are grants targeting fundamental major questions, major challenges in science. And there are two to four PIs can collaborate and tackle a very important and challenging question, providing, of course, substantial funding, for example, ranging from 1.5 million euro for five years, up to 10 million euro for six years. This is quite substantial, especially for a country like Greece. And I think interestingly enough, the ERC also has a specific program that is aimed at facilitating fostering innovation. Because, of course, through excellent science, you expect that there will be ideas that can be exploited, there will be innovation. So there is also a tool called Proof of Concepts that provides support, 150,000 euro for patent searches, exploitation of research results, perhaps setting up a startup, et cetera. And the ERC is focusing on the most dynamic part of the scientific community, which is young scientists. So about two sets of funding actually are directed towards young researchers, as you can see here. And I'm not just talking about the PIs themselves. We have there two schemes, Consolidator and Starting Grants, but also postdocs and graduate students that work in the laboratories of ERC-funded scientists. And now, what has come out of this, if we are going to really assess the impact, did the ERC really make a dent in the universe? I think it's obvious that it did. And more relevant to what we are discussing today, I think over 400 startups were created through research carried out by ERC-funded scientists. And this was not even the primary objective of the ERC, the ERC was not set up to achieve this, but this came out as a consequence of funding excellent research. And as you can see, even Nobel prizes, Fields, Metals, Wolf prizes, et cetera, many other prestigious awards were bestowed on scientists that were supported by the ERC and got their prize because of research that was supported by the ERC. So fine, we have an instrument that really supports the first step, the step of converting euros to knowledge. This is what the ERC does. But how about the second step then of converting knowledge to money, to euros, wealth and jobs. And here is why we need the EIC and EIT. These are instruments, these are tools that are directed, that are designed to actually facilitate that second step. And of course, this comes out of a very important realization that I think is also relevant to what is happening to Greece now. So although the EU has consolidated its global position as a science leader, as a research leader, still it lacks behind when it comes to translating this knowledge to innovation, products and services. For example, we were talking about artificial intelligence. Europe is really a leader when it comes to artificial intelligence research, but is innovation coming out of it? Are products being generated? Are new services coming to the market? No, at least not to the extent that we would like, at least not to the extent that is happening in the US, for example, or in China. And this is exemplified by a couple of indicators. For example, only about 8% of the so-called unicorn companies, companies that have valuation of more than a billion euros, are European companies residing in Europe. As opposed to the US, where we have almost half of the world's unicorns being stationed, being located in the US. And the intensity of business, research and development in Europe is rather low, about 1.3% in comparison to more than 2% in the US. And that's why we have a very, I think, interesting, but rather alarming phenomenon, which is the so-called idea drain. We're talking about brain drain, but there's also this concept of idea drain. We also have it in Greece here, and I'm going to give you some information about that in a minute. Which means that we create innovation here, but it is exploited elsewhere because that's where the tools, that's where the legislation, that's where the environment is more conducive to doing so. So very brilliant, I think, innovative ideas that originated in Europe are actually exploited in the US or elsewhere in the world. So what is really holding back European innovation? I think there are three things that we can locate, three things that we can identify. The first is innovation performance. Actually, we lack the kind of innovation that is disruptive and breakthrough and creates new markets. This is something that we lack, or we don't have to the extent that we should. The second is innovation funding. In Europe, we have a shortage of instruments that actually allow innovation to scale up and become truly globally competitive. And we have a fragmented innovation ecosystem, which is compartmentalized, it's nationalized to a large extent, and that is, of course, a problem when it comes to flow of capital, flow of information, et cetera. So this is what the two instruments, EIC and EIT, are aiming to overcome. I'll give you some information about the European Innovation Council and then about the EIT. So the EIT was set up to support disruptive, breakthrough innovations. And it does so through three major schemes. I'll tell you about that in a minute, but it is focusing on technology readiness level. So these three instruments are actually designed to support different stages of the development of an innovative idea from the idea, from the project to the market. The EIC has a budget of 10.1 billion euros for the seven-year period of Horizon Europe, as you can see. And it implements a strategy by using an independent board of innovators, which is the EIC Council, that designs a strategy. It is designed to be a one-stop shop, both for grants and for equity. Have an agile and flexible, less bureaucratic mechanism of dispersing these funds, of course, and fast track, because innovation can't wait, as we know, together with the Europeans for innovation and technology are part of pillar three, as I said. So when it comes to the funding schemes, and I'm saying this because we can participate in those schemes that I'm telling you, Greece can participate. And one of the reasons I'm reporting to you today about these instruments is to increase awareness about those instruments. We need to increase our national participation. Greece is not benefiting as much as it should and it could out of these instruments. So just for your information, as I said, we have three schemes, Pathfinder, Transition and Accelerator. You see who can participate, what kind of TRL is required, and there are also prizes that can be dispersed. And that's it for the EIC. Let's go now to the EIT. The EIT is actually catering to the so-called knowledge triangle. So we have universities, we have research centers, and then we have entrepreneurship, we have companies. And the EIT is really aiming to boost circulation around this triangle. So through its instruments, I'm going to give you some more information. It now is Europe's largest innovation community, has a budget of more than 3 billion euro to do that, and focuses both on supporting education. So for example, universities and Greek universities can participate, businesses, Greek businesses again can participate, and of course innovation-driven projects, research as well, research centers can participate. This is done through a unique way of implementing such strategies, which calls for the creation of the so-called knowledge and innovation communities or kicks, the EIT kicks. Maybe some of you are aware, you know these instruments. There are up until now nine kicks. Very recently, just this year, we've had the EIT culture and creativity kick that was created. But you see, these kicks are aimed at strategically important areas and challenges. Some of them having to do with sustainable development goals. For example, climate, digital, energy, health, et cetera. Not going to go into details because of time. And this is really creating impact across Europe. This kind of scheme is creating jobs, for example, is creating partnerships, is also fostering education, graduate programs, and of course creation of new products and services. Just a couple of examples. Out of EIT funding, we've had unicorns now emerging in Europe. So startups, actually, that achieved the level of a unicorn through EIT funding. Lithium aviation, these are just some examples. You can Google them up, Northvolt, very important when it comes to energy. Health, climate kick have also generated such unicorns. Now, I think it's also relevant and it might perhaps have more importance for Greece that the EIT is focusing on higher education as well. So for example, the objective here is to increase the type of mentorship that we require in order to change the mentality towards innovation, towards entrepreneurship in the environment of a university. So this is called the Higher Education Institution Initiative. It has already actually started. 24 projects have been supported, 1.2 million euros. But now we also have the second wave of calls. 40 projects are going to be supported. This is going to start to be launched in November. There will be webinars and information events. And I hope that Greece, of course, can capitalize on these instruments. Now, coming to Greece, after what we've seen, what Europe has done and is doing to foster innovation entrepreneurship, what do we need to do here in Greece? As I mentioned already, we are quite weak. Actually, we are hopelessly weak in the second step when it comes to the second step. But we might have some capacity towards converting money to knowledge. We can do research, although, as I said, we are not at the level that we should be. And as a result, Greece is ranked as moderate innovator, as you see here. This is the European Innovation Scoreboard for last year, for which year we have complete data. Greece has been a moderate innovator for the past eight years. And it's actually always in that position. I checked it out. I went and checked each and every year. The European Innovation Scoreboard is around for just eight years. And that's why I'm saying eight years. Greece is not moving. Cyprus has now almost reached the level of strong innovator, and we are below. Nevertheless, it's not all grim and bad. For example, Greece does well when it comes to research, as I said, although, again, we are not at the level we should be. In a nature study, it was found at about 1.13% of publications coming out of Greek universities and research institutions end up in high-profile journals such as Nature, Cell, Science. And this compares well, for example, we are above Canada, France, Italy, et cetera. Of course, we are below the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and the US, of course. But still, we are doing decently well. So what do we have? What kind of materials do we have at hand that we can work with? We have pockets of excellence in various universities and research centers in Greece. We have good performance in terms of securing high competitive funding from international sources. We do this well out of need, of course. And we are very effective at training young scientists. We always say about our graduates, be that undergraduates who finish and go out to do the PhDs or PhDs who go out to do postdocs. Those are the best people available globally, I think. So we should be proud about that. We have that. And then we have high-skilled human potential, of course, found in various universities and research centers. Nevertheless, we are really humbred and impeded by perennial structure problems and their consequences. And this is not just something that we see now. This is not, you know, I've been in Greece as an independent scientist from 2001. It's the same thing. These are problems that I think we need to really seriously look about how to solve them. So we have an inadequate national framework for research and innovation. We need a flexible legislature that will really solve the problems of fragmentation, of bureaucracy, et cetera. It's not simple. We also have inconsistency and discontinuity in terms of national research policies for funding. This is, to some extent, being rectified in recent years. Lidek is there, for example. But we are far from achieving regularity, the regularity that we need, that we have at the European level. We still need to work really about that. And then the national funding is really minuscule. It's not enough. There is a constant problem of underfunding and it's fragmented, as I said. And there is no overarching policy that directs how this funding is distributed. So we have calls, depending on what money is available, where the money is coming from, et cetera. I mean, this is Bergeronian and I'm not going to go into all the details. There is, of course, an absence of perspective or long-term strategies. We have loss of human capital, brain drain. It's really, as you see here, the Guardian had an article. This is the world's biggest brain drain that we have here in Greece. And we also have the really abhorrible innovate here and exploit elsewhere phenomenon. It's something that we should really be worried about. So we really need instruments that would allow us to bridge this gap. These are just some of the instruments. I'm not going to go through them in detail. We can capitalize on what we do well, although we can still improve. I want to emphasize this. We can still improve on that. We are not perfect, but we need to work on those negative aspects. So what do we need? We need governance. We need long-term commitment and support towards attaining critical mass. I've heard this term earlier. Actually, we don't have critical mass in any of the fields of study. I don't know if we can attain critical mass really. Maybe we need to work different model, a different perspective. Greece as a country is rather small. Maybe this is not a realistic goal. We're talking about critical mass, but maybe we need to move away from that. Maybe we need to work on internationalization, on openness, on links with Greek diaspora, and not only, but also research institutions abroad. And we need to establish a ambitious project of international visibility. We need to become known of doing something extremely well, better than anyone else. This is what Israel has done. This is what Finland has done. All those countries that we will be discussing later on. And of course, we need measures for bridging the funding gap. This is important. We need to work with instruments such as AIF, AIB, RRF, et cetera. I don't know. So both steps need enhancement, need augmentation. Not just innovation, but also research because we need this raw material. And I couldn't resist to close presenting the case of fourth. I'm here as the chairman of the Foundation for Research and Technology as well. And how we try to do this at the Foundation for Research and Technology. So for those of you who don't know, fourth is a large research institution, nine institutes, five of them in Iraq, one in Patras, one in Ioannia. You see them there. We also have, in addition to those institutes, focusing on creating knowledge, so focusing on the first step, we also want to create a value chain that will allow us to translate this research that is done at fourth institutes into products and services. So because it's not enough to have excellent frontier, basic and applied research, you also need to have those tools that will allow you to do the translation. And that's why we've created Science and Technology Park of Crisis, an incubator where companies, high-tech companies, but also startups, spin-offs, fourth can work together with research labs so that we can facilitate this osmosis between entrepreneurship and research. We've established the Praxi Network, which is a technology transfer organism, now providing services not just to fourth, but to the entire scientific community of Greece, universities, other research centers. And through the action of these two factors, essentially what we want is eventually to create spin-out companies that will generate value. And capitalizing, of course, on intellectual property patterns, as you see there. Just some things, the Science and Technology Park, you see it here, focusing on providing an environment that will foster innovation, especially youth entrepreneurship. This is something that we are focusing on, mentoring. This is also important, and these are some of the most important activities of our Science and Technology Park. The Praxi Network, of course, is targeting the link between research and industry, the promotion of innovation entrepreneurship, and the provision of high-added value services. These are just some of these services. For example, technology transfer services, business innovation, participation in various European organizations, et cetera. And through this integration, we've, since a forced establishment, been able to really create spin-offs, some of them success stories. I'm sure that you know Forthnet, a spin-off of the Institute of Computer Science that literally brought the internet to Greece back in the 80s, early 90s. Recently, Advent, a spin-off company of the Institute of Computer of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Patras, specializing on hydrogen technologies, very relevant to current challenges, entered the NASDAQ in the New York Stock Market with evaluation of 600 million dollars. Again, a success story. And even during the pandemic, we've been able to create spin-offs that actually address some of the challenges of the pandemic. Biopics, one startup that brought to the market innovative systems, devices for the detection of pathogens including COVID, bio-mimetic, EnzyQuest, PC nano-materials. I see here, Aristo Succiadis, he is supporting some of these startups, so he knows very well. Sure, he can tell you more. And I'll finish with this. Because I think it is important and demonstrates how investment in research can actually have substantial returns for the country, even with the strictest, driest and more cynical terms of financial sustainability. So, I'm giving you this. This is actually the fourth income since its creation. It was created back in 1983. So until 2020, for which year we have definitive data, there was a state investment of more than half a billion Euro. And this came from those parts of the budget. As you can see, the regular budget was 228, about million. I'm not going to give you all the details. But with that money, with a little bit more than half a billion Euro, what has happened? Fourth researchers have attracted an additional funding coming from international and national sources, amounting together with the value of infrastructure and the private income by selling products and services and stock sales, of course, to 611 million Euro. So more, with an investment of half a billion Euro, more than 600 million. And we are not counting here the value of research, the research results that were generated, the value of training, the scientists that got training out of these activities, which is, I don't think can be counted or is something that we can put a prize on. And with this, I'll finish. I think what we need is a vision in the long-term plan here in Greece that focuses on quality, on added value, on meritocracy and on diversification. We need to implement these principles and we also need to learn from the European paradigm. There is potential, and I'm hoping that in the coming years and also with your help, we can really materialize these objectives. Thank you.