 Thank you. Thank you. This was a very provoking talk for all of us and it shows how How this field has grown the field of computing and AI has grown in the recent years and many of the challenges that it presents to us and we will Will not take questions right now, but a little bit later for dr. Sifakis and we'll move on with a panel where we will try to bring this huge field closer to the Greek reality and To what the highest can achieve with the AIDS efforts, so I will take a little bit of time to introduce our panelists I will say a few things about each of the panelists because I feel it will inform our discussion And I will start with dr. Timos Elise who is sitting next to dr. Sifakis. He is the director of the Archimedes research unit of the Athena research center During the last two years he was a Facebook researcher and before that he was professor and director of the data science Institute at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia in his rich academic career Dr. Salis was a faculty member at the University of Maryland at the National Technical University of Athens and then at air air MIT University in Australia He has served as president of the National Council for Research and Technology of Greece from 2001 to 2003 and as a director of information systems Institute of the Athena research Center 2017 to 2013 His research interests include data management streaming data graph data management and spatial temporal database systems Our next panelist is dr. Petros Maragos He's a professor at the School of Engineering and computer Electrical and computer engineering of the National Technical University of Athens and He is currently the director of the intelligent robotics and automation lab there He is also the coordinator of a robotics research unit at the Athena research center Before his position and at the NT UA he was a professor at Harvard University at the division of applied sciences and a professor of Electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech he has served as a member of the National Council of Research and Technology of Greece and His research and teaching interests include computer vision and speech signal processing machine learning and robotics our next panelist is a Dr. Costandia Alexandru and She is a professor at the Department of Physics at the University of Cyprus She held the research positions in Switzerland and Germany before moving to the University of Cyprus in 2010 she was appointed the Institute Professor at the Cyprus Institute Where she created and led the development of CASTOR C the computational based science and technology research center Professor Alexandru's interests are in theoretical and nuclear physics computational physics and high performance computing and our last panelist Professor Christos Kozirakis He's a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University His research focuses on computer architecture operating systems and cloud infrastructure In addition to his academic role He has worked for Google as a president principal engineer and has consulted for major companies like Intel Microsoft and Samsung as well as several startups in the Silicon Valley and and Professor Theodora Barbarigu is coordinating this panel together with me She's a professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens Previously she worked as a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs As and as a professor at the Technical University of Crete She's currently also the chair of the board of directors of ADAP as a Distinguished researcher and teacher Professor Barbarigu has a research interest in cloud computing multimedia content processing semantic web social networking technologies and as for myself You heard that I'm a professor of computer science at Rice University and the director of the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice for AI Data and computing and my research interests are in robotics AI and their application in biomedicine After this introduction, we are going to get started with the questions that we have We are going to address to all our panelists and I would like to start with Dr. Timo Sedlis Dear Timo's you are heading an effort to further promote research in AI and algorithms through the Archimedes Center How is Archimedes different from other institutes in Greece Would you like to discuss that? Thank you very much Lydia and Hello, and I'm very happy to be here One of the reasons is that Hi, yes, and Archimedes. I feel Have written two papers, you know, most of us are academics and we know that Sometimes we write papers and we say this was proven independently by another team So at about the same time we thought about the same problem and the problem was Everybody talks about brain gain brain drain the diaspora and what we can do about it so I think the paper we wrote is you want to maximize brain gain minimize brain drain and Include diaspora in the development of Greece. So There is a next student of mine sitting in the back of the room costis das kalakis Who is the ensued enthusiast? I am I would say representing experience and we have my own professor Christos Papadimitriou who is the wisdom so we included I'm sorry. We didn't use a machine learning system or an optimizer We used our brains to come up with an idea. So Archimedes was an idea that said Suppose we want to help to keep young people in Greece bring people back and Till we bring permanently people back Increase the linkage with the diaspora in a pragmatic and realistic way. So I Would say the only difference with hi-has is that we went to the implementation step So the implementations Archimedes now why AI data science and algorithms? I think Professor as if I just made it clear AI is a hot area nowadays Some people say the whole computer science is almost AI nowadays because it involves all disciplines And then we all know that parts of AI. I'm not saying all AI parts of AI Doesn't work without data and of course to make this efficient you need algorithms So we came up with the idea. Why don't we put as a theme AI data science and algorithms and try to build in a concrete way Something that will allow us as I said to improve on all these parameters So how is Archimedes different Archimedes is let's say a research Institute That at least in the beginning it will not have its own researchers instead. We invite researchers from all over the world mostly Greeks I would say to collaborate with us and In a week's time We have the deadline of a call that we sent out To you know around the world for people to submit ideas to become research collaborators So by becoming a research collaborator you say here is a theme that we should work on and To work on this we will involve students PhD students. We will involve the researchers from Greece mostly but also from abroad and In these particular areas because we believe are important areas We want to make a difference So we want to make somehow Greece appear in not only as many publications as possible But also in other kind of actions that may be relevant with respect to the society with respect to education Etc. Etc. So the difference between Archimedes and other research institutes is that We don't We don't say Come up with our own people to do the work instead. We consolidate efforts from as many people as we can To do high-level scientific work Now this sounds very very idealistic for Greece and very nice So I must confess we were happy that we found funding to do that So for the next five years there is funding from the recovery and Whatever I don't remember the acronym Resilience facility from Europe With the help of the Greek government with the help of the Greece 2021 committee The latter basically said we support this action for the future of Greece So we got let's say endorsement from by some people and finally we got the funding. So the funding is For Greece and this is how I like to present Archimedes I would like to think of Archimedes as a national graduate school in AI data science and algorithms Okay, it doesn't belong to any university. It doesn't belong to a single place Yes, we're under the auspices of Athena and Janis Emiris Is here the president of Athena research center, but our goal is to bring All the good mindsets or the great mindsets that we can find Form a broad and from Greece to work in this very important area so This is my few minutes introduction to the question how Archimedes is different and of course I can come back later as well Thank you. Thank you very much for the time being. Let me move to Dr. Maragos was sitting next to you Last year several of the members of HIAS in collaboration with colleagues from Greece Produced a report a white paper that was called robotics in the AI era and And this report aspired to prompt the creation of a roadmap for robotics in Greece Now here on is a project that was initiated with this report and you are leading it What are the lessons learned from this collaboration to be applied maybe in other projects? Thank you, Lydia and hello everyone I'm very glad to be here and thank you for the honor for participating in this forum Inspired by this Report from HIAS which was prepared last year actually a year ago and motivated by the fact that There is currently missing a robotics institute in Greece a team of three faculty members from the National Technical University of Athens specifically my colleagues Vanguettes of Adoblos, Kostas Kiriakopoulos and myself We conceived the idea of the goals actually structure The strategies for feasibility and sustainability of creating a robotics institute In Greece named Helenec Robotics Institute in short here and This would be hosted under the Athena research center Then we proposed to This idea to the National Council for Research technology and innovation and This proposal was unanimously approved And afterwards it was also approved by the Ministry of Development Before submitting the proposal to the National Research Council The It was this the summary of the proposal was discussed with several members of HIAS and There were several advices on its course Afterwards there were several steps after the approval by the National Research Council There were several steps and during these steps Again the National Research Council for Research and Technology was very supportive Equally supportive were members of HIAS and also Athena research Center which would host this Robotics Institute, let me say a few words about the goals of this robotics Institute It has two main goals the primary goal of course is to advance the science and technology of robotics in the artificial intelligence era By covering a broad spectrum of research and development activities That reflect current and emerging challenges of national and European importance It is It is based and designed around three major research directions First safety and security robotics second field robotics including areas in agriculture, maritime, transportation, logistics And third healthcare robotics including surgical robotics as well as robotic systems that provide assistance mobility or cognitive assistance to people with special needs In addition The hero will also build a maker space to support the validation demonstration of research activities Education and training essentially Help with shifting the culture in our country from Having let's say students and young researchers who are very talented only in theoretical areas To sift their interest Also in in the more practical Areas to build things in other words to diffuse a mentality of makers Secondary an important goal of here on is to initiate and coordinate Actions for mobilizing and collaborating with the whole Greek robotics ecosystem Among university teams teams in research centers and industry Proposing essentially a broad strategic vision and diffusing robotics research and development in Greece in a variety of ways Currently there's an ongoing effort For here on to to be formally founded by the Greek government now in terms of the lessons learned I think this very positive outcome Which We see this in national effort. I think it was the result of a multi-level synergy Synergy and synergy and trust Synergy and trust among colleagues Who are in the broader area of robotics in the era with different expertise? Synergy and collaboration between Scientists in Greece and scientists from the Greek diaspora specifically from highest And then synergy between The scientific proposal and vision With national council for research and technology and finally synergy between that and the ministry of development It required all these four levels of synergy and trust for this very positive outcome Which we which we hope that It will create essentially As I said before a broad strategic vision and diffusion of robotic technologies in Greece and beyond So this this lessons then from this multi-level synergy and trust I think could be equally applied to other areas such as energy and or biomedicine but This would also Require kind of a unified framework for research So that these approaches become systematic This is for now, and I'll be glad to come back with Information on this. Thank you very much. Thank you It's wonderful to see efforts such as are he medicine and here on being initiated in Greece I would like to move now to Professor Alexander You have been involved in the establishment of caster C the computational based science and technology Research Center at the Cyprus Institute, and you've been its director since 2012 Can you tell us a little bit about the center focusing on what enabled caster C to successfully build the Scientific and industrial a user communities in Cyprus First of all, I would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here I'm really honored to take part in this initiative, which I think it's Great and I think we all need it in this part of the world. So thank you very much First I will start with that my personal motivation of starting the center in Cyprus and then the setting That we had at that time in Cyprus I am a computational scientist needing big computers and When I took my job at the University of Cyprus, there was none And my personal motivation was when we need something here The second motivation was broader. We created a university in Cyprus the first one in the 90s We educate the students and there was nowhere to go after that So we said we need to create an ecosystem Like the one for example in Germany with the Max Planck's Institute and the flower hoppers and the universities To have this research and education setting so There was an effort to create the Cyprus Institute and within the Cyprus Institute One of the priority areas and I was very much involved in that was to create the computation based science and technology research center and The setting and we heard about it a lot here Was to be in the disciplinary so from the beginning the structure That the centers should have and this is very important because we heard that there are ground challenges We want to attack in this era And for that you need in the disciplinarity So the concept was to create an interdisciplinary research center Gathering together leading experts in computational science Computer scientists mathematicians That can address Global problems of significance using computational methods and infrastructure So this was the underlying clue of keeping or together the computational approaches and methods so This is some people call it one stop shop and this is important actually When you come to collaborate with industry and maybe I would say a few words later on Also, then timing was important 2008 we had pan-European structures being formed for high-performance computing the partnership of advanced computing in Europe were formed where You know the concept was to create the European infrastructure for computational science and engineering and it was an opportunity to jump on this train and I'm saying this because I think Greece has now this opportunity because Greece is now investing In a peta scale facility of 30 million and I think this is an opportunity increase has now to create this computing environment And we Benefited from international collaboration This is also important in the context of highest We partner with the nationalist center for supercomputing applications of the University of Illinois And also with the you like super computer center of Germany the biggest in Europe And this was very important for us to create the right environment and the right processes How to access machine how to design machines how to approach user communities. It was extremely important So an element and that we put emphasis on was state-of-the-art computational infrastructure But also the knowledge environment around it Together with the University of Illinois who designed actually and I'm very proud of that the biggest machine in the instant Mediterranean It was the second Europe hybrid machine of CPUs and GPUs and I'm very proud to do that second to EPFL And this gave us Knowledge on the graphic cards Technology that was just starting at the time. So that was an advantage for us To educate our scientists and researchers In this kind of technologies, of course, we need their skill technical personnel Don't underestimate it the machines need to be efficiently run and we did not have personnel to do that So we had to import personnel actually imported somebody from the University of Waterlade in Australia to do that So you need you need the The right skill technical personnel, but also you have to retain talented researchers Around the center for the knowledge environment to develop the codes and the algorithms So you need the application scientists who have the vision the grand challenge that it has to be Sol but you need an interdisciplinary group around them to develop the algorithms and and the codes and you need this in the different interdisciplinary Interactions and the people who can do this in the disciplinary interactions So this is how we started We trained other researchers in in Cyprus. This is important because You you build your support around you you build the scientists that are cool then your ambassadors to the government You need an institutional leadership you need you need an institution that will go after and make the case for you To get the funding and this and the support the government the support that you will need to build such a thing So building the user communities is very important because you can demonstrate that is needed Bringing competitive funding and it was the right time for the developments in Europe It's extremely important because the politicians regard. This is a Success so they're willing then to you know, acknowledge the work So I think I will stop here Yes, this is fine. Thank you very much for sharing this experience For dr. Cosirakis, I mean we it was the point of you know, needing infrastructure was just made The you work in computer architecture. You work in cloud infrastructure What are the emerging trends in computing technology that the Greek research and technology Research and development community should track and potentially benefit from can you Comment on this question sure Thank you Livia and thank you all for being here. It's great to participate in this event I will talk to you about what I see as a important crisis and opportunity in computer technology We kind of experiencing a perfect storm right now in computing on the one hand the Computing appetite of machine learning and other such applications is is infinite super exponential We need faster and faster computers to train impressive models for all sorts of applications On the other hand, if you look at the way that we build computers, it's it's come to a halt More slow dead. It's slowed down a lot. We simply cannot meet demand by going about it businesses usual And that's creating a lot of fears many people believe that we're gonna see a slow down in all technical fields because we can no longer Build the right computing for them And it will impact everything from entertainment all the way to drug discovery and everything in between Others are worried about creating inequality Mosul was a wonderful way to democratize technology the computer that Only big company could afford today You will bite in three years right and and it was great Everybody would catch up eventually and if Mosul has slowed down then this may no longer be the case a rich company Or country may be able to accelerate the pace of innovation why everybody else will be left behind Of course, there are also many concerns about the environment. We can talk about them some some other time So what does this mean? We are changing the way we are designing computers in the old world We had these very big teams hundreds or thousands of people very experienced designing Computer architecture ship systems compilers runtime systems These are people who essentially took the dividends of Moore's law and turn them into some interesting design That could solve a number of problems and now we're changing this to the following what we're doing now is a putting very small teams together People that can cast small design problems Into optimization problems into design exploration problems and we use math or AI techniques or whatever you want to call this To basically explore big design spaces in a way that empirical design could just not do it And we don't try to build general computers anymore We try to focus on some specific tasks some important tasks and produce domain specific or application specific solutions Which are as fast as you need for this domain even though they cannot solve all the problems in the world Now, why am I telling you all this? Why does it make sense to discuss in in this forum? This kind of major shift in the way we build technology will will lead to changes in industry There will be many companies that we know that will demise and many new companies will will pop out of nowhere And it will be huge But it will also have the same effect on regions and I think it's an opportunity for Greece that we can discuss in The old world was very difficult for us to compete We don't have the thousands and thousands of super experienced engineers for better wars These big design centers that happen elsewhere that happen in Silicon Valley China in Israel and so on we just didn't have them But the new world we don't need that big Infrastructure anymore What we need is a small number of people who are very capable in math to formulate design as an optimization problem Or design space exploration problem We've heard from previous panels that we have that the grid education system high school in university Produces talent which is exceptionally strong in math and most of us realize at the moment that we go to the US And we have a limited not huge but enough expertise in designing systems most of it abroad But there's still places in Greece which do great job designing systems You know for example my friends at the University of Crete So we can exploit the small nucleus and try to take advantage of this and in the big shift of Design create something for Greece that turns out to be beneficial not only for research output to increase our research profile in the world but also creates a Vibrant economy with both big companies and small companies So now how do we go about this? I hope that our Institute can start a discussions that may lead to a significant effort in this space It may be similar to our he means on heroty here. It may also be different Let me give you one example for right now at Stanford. I'm leading this lab called the platform lab, but it's 10 faculty roughly trying to figure out the right way to build future system We've always been funded by industry I have not written a single NSF or double proposal for eight years, and I really enjoy this We cannot track industry funding to Greece We can also hedge our bets and make sure that we attract funding from multiple sources to make sure we have a vibrant ecosystem One issue at European Union funding one wrong decision by the government does not lead to all these wonderful things dying We have a portfolio that we can use that The second thing that I hope this Institute can play a role with is that even if there is funding It's difficult for a bunch of people to get together in one day to have a wonderful collaboration It takes time to get to know each other. It takes time to develop a topic So we should provide some mechanisms to do this Some of us may have gone to places like the Daxel seminars This is a conference center or whatever. It's called a couple of hours From Frankfurt in the middle of a forest that the German government basically locks up computer scientists for a week at a time You get to go very deep into a problem within that week a lot of very meaningful ideas and collaborations Have been generating place like this and we can do something like that Take the best of the ideas or the best problems of this cast and go deep We all know wonderful places can be hosted can host this kind of things and a bunch of them in South and Crete that I can Suggest and then finally the one point that I want to make is that This event it's it's it's a great place for senior people to exchange ideas if you look around most of us You know you've been around the block a few times We should also think about how do we help the new generation the PhD students even the graduate students The postdocs the assistant professors in Greece to benefit from this There's a number of things that we can do One thing I'd like to suggest is that we start a mentorship program If we all were in one university the students postdocs in that university assistant professors They would have a blast right like we have so many people to talk to we can create the virtual equivalent of this thing Each one of us signs up for virtual mentoring of two or three people Virtual coffee one hour per month or something like that and we give this opportunity to our young colleagues here This will help these young people a lot I think that we will observe the results in 10 years 20 years that they would be amazing But it will also allow us to beat the relationship with people here So when it's time to do the collaboration or he meets in here on whatever comes next We can immediately learn something very meaningful the moment the resources or the timing is there Thank you. Thank you very much for this discussion I want to give the opportunity to dr. Cifakis to comment a little bit on What are the key elements of an ecosystem that will allow Greece to compete in the areas of Computing an AI you've thought about that you've written about that. Can you discuss it a little bit? Yes I've written about that, but I will say nothing specific about AI because these are general ideas and here Also, I summarized my experience as the president of a set National Council for research and technology. I think that There is some confusion in Greece about what it means to develop an innovation driven economy And you see very often in the newspapers I think we're saying that this region will become a Silicon Valley. I don't know I read recently about you are Nina for instance or whatever I mean, this is an important trend of course if the number of Startups increases, but we should understand that in order to have an innovation driven economy we should have something more stable and more sustainable and I like this concept of innovation ecosystem that we had worked also as In the council when I was the president of the council. So what is an innovation ecosystem? It's a system that where you Gather together three types of players industry What we call centers of excellence and startups so industry and these three types of players have complementary roles, okay industry brings problems to centers of excellence brings also money to the centers of excellence and the centers of excellence so do all the basic research and And of course startups are lightweight structures that Can efficiently transfer Research results into products and services. So there is a nice complementarity and this is a stable structure And I think the problem is how in Greece and also this concept of Center of excellence is a kind of universal concept. I mean You can you go to Israel you go to Singapore or Germany? You will see this type of collaboration and the question is how in Greece we can create This type of structure So first of all the universities the research institutions should be able to play this all and I think that There are I mean still the Reserves landscape in Greece is too fragmented. You need the forest for centers of excellence two things at least you need Critical mass and This is missing because of the fact fragmentation as I said and today in order to do some Reserves visibly internationally you need critical mass and you need of course excellence You need to have the best people and to be able to keep them in the system And I think that there is a problem because there is an open market in Labor and and the best people live Greece So I think that The decision makers should make an effort to pay better salaries to more better motivate All all the professors the assistants all the personnel the researchers and this is missing so This is what I wanted to explain that we should try to build innovation ecosystems and I think that Greece has all I mean all we have the potential the human potential we have the geographic position and Of course, I will not compare us to countries like Israel where these things happened very easily But I know other cases For instance, I know very well the case of Barcelona Barcelona They start it from nothing, but the region they decided to put some money to attract to create To to create all their legal framework also to build such such an ecosystem So I think that we could do something similar in Greece and Of course here we will need the collaboration of course The government should take some measures The universities should be more open to collaborate Effectively with real-life economy, which is not the case I mean to the extent I I know the situation in Greece and and and Okay, I think that there are a lot of things to be done and in particular and today I had a question to the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Education unfortunately, I could not ask it but I will put it on the table now when I was the president of a set We had proposed that there is a specific framework for the collaboration between the Greek scientific diaspora and the Greek research institutions and this is an obvious idea I mean this is an idea that has been implemented in Israel in China in many different countries In different manners, but this is an obvious idea. This is something obvious to do. Okay, it's not about Collaboration in general with other institutions as we have today. It's something very specific. Can we Transmit this message to the government. It's something obvious to do. Okay, and Personally, I am very much in favour of that and I think that this can Trigger some very interesting process for instance to have joint projects to have earmarked Visiting professor position. Okay, we can have a list of things that we can propose Yes, and this does not cost so much money and this this will Create a huge synergy. Okay between the diaspora Yes, thank you for these ideas and it's it's wonderful both you and professor cosirakis offered ideas about What could be done and also how high as I could help and I just wanted very very briefly to give the Opportunity to the three other panelists to insert ideas on this topic But that I will give you about a minute each So dr. Salis, how can he meet this and highest for example and highest collaborate to have a larger impact on their goals? Well in my opinion Since we share kind of the philosophy and the goals, I think we can join forces In order to support for example mobility of students mobility of researchers My understanding is that these are low-hanging fruits that we can always Find ways to support Okay, thank you. The the second one particular with highest is that As I said earlier, I have I have the impression that I can meet this is gonna be kind of an experiment For a particular area. We can share our experience on how this experiment goes and and Obviously in computer science, we use agile methodologies and I must confess that we are also Using these methodologies. I want to start with something fast Then we'll observe how this goes and we'll tune it. So I think we should keep in touch and try to Try to pass this information. Thank you for future. Thank you Can I ask the same question to dr. Maragos regarding hero? Yes Well, one of the main goals of here on this Initiate and collaborate Closer again one of the main goals of here is to initiate and coordinate collaborations among Dora now Now okay Well, one of the main goals of here on is to initiate and coordinate collaborate collaborations among the whole Greek robotics ecosystem both in Greece and with members of diaspora like highest members so All members of highest Welcome to to collaborate with the here on researchers in a variety of ways including joint research projects organization participation in short courses workshops or preparation of targeted, let's say studies Regarding some some topics in robotics in the era In addition to that Among the specific plans that here on has to strengthen the ties with Members of highest and Greek diaspora in general is to to have available travel grants so that Members of highest for example could visit and Spend time at the premises of here on and collaborate with researchers from here on In addition to that we plan to offer fellowships to accomplice researchers both senior and Junior Thank you. Thank you very much and let me finish with dr. Alexander and Can highest help? Application scientists in Greece and Cyprus remain competitive and how Yeah, thank you very much. Well, I think highest has already playing a very important role as a scoping instrument, I think this this for me is very impressive that you had identify a direction and Made the the government funded. I think I think this this is fantastic So scoping promising directions technological direction from Greece I mean I come from a personal country. We cannot do everything. So We cannot copy the US and we need mechanisms to identify Promising directions where we can excel Let's say first on the European level and then on the international level And I think this is a very important mission that highest has undertaken very successfully, and I think this this can be continued and and and For me the important thing is to really identify the areas and and get the funding and the structures to create something locally I think it's important to have something in Greece and then build a collaboration With the rest of the world. I think this is really going to be fantastic Having common projects common students Thank you very much. Thank you. We are going to open the floor for questions right now and dr. Varvari would be Good afternoon from me I'm as Lydia said I'm gonna coordinate the questions and ideas session and In this task, I'm I feel I'm totally replaceable by a machine So it's gonna be easy for me to do that so I'll start by stealing one of the professionals if I can see Terminologies so now he's gonna be we're gonna have the highest neural oracle In what sense in a sense that there this is a gray model Where is there some principles behind the network and there's some? Reactive interaction the principles is that we have excellence and we have Philopadria and willingness to help the Greek community and those are basic principles and Of course, then there is the creativity the interaction between this body of very Of excellent and very willing to help people so I'm gonna invite you to ask Questions to the panelists, but also state your ideas because What we want to do here. We went up. We want to end up with an Actionable set of ideas some things that we can do to go forward in the area of AI and computing Please So there is a Greek diaspora program, which is which I think that gets funded from the International Education Institute and Nyarkos Foundation and this program has helped a lot of Greek diaspora Scholars to spend time in Greece and teach Jointly teach courses and also mentor students and do research And I think that that call up at the University of Crete and that's fourth Among other universities here in Greece. We have got a lot of support So I one action point perhaps for the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Studies Is to try to lobby to get some more money not only from foundations, but also from the government to To have follow-up of these collaborations. Okay, so this is one number two I think that it would be great if We had more Like in the context of this Institute, we could have more funding for collaborations also in In universities outside of Athens, there is a lot of demand For universities in Ioannina, Patras Crete etc. So I think that they should take this into consideration So, thank you very much Yeah, I'll have the matrix and then We have a special section on AI There's a reason for that AI is definitely promising and to some degree succeeding in revolutionizing Education as well as industry I don't think we are there, but definitely promising the question is How in your mind Greek institutions including universities research labs and so forth Will adapt and what should it do to adapt? And I would like to hear all panelists on that front Okay So shall we start on the left with? Christos, I'm not sure I can comment about What specific about Greek institutions needs to change since I don't spend enough time to have insider knowledge But I can tell you about what happens Everywhere first of all you need to be much more open-minded about open-minded about boundaries of areas and everything else It's very easy for us academics to basically say I've been doing something the same way 20 years Teaching it researching it and so on. You know, why should I change? I think we have a very, you know, open-mind approaching this thing that Field boundaries would change Disciplines will get merged the will overlap in all creative ways You must be willing to experiment and that goes everywhere in research in teaching in majors in PhDs and In school organizations. This is a really good time for experimentation and being open-minded I really like what I think Tim was saying earlier about the viewing everything as an experiment And and keep in mind that you know, it's science right most experiments fail We learn more from our mistakes and then we do it better the next time Dina, what do you think? Well, I'm you know where I swan booming area, right? But what I would like I think to focus more is current challenges. I think we should broaden it a bit We are faced with current challenges and we need Many disciplines to come together. I think this is a change in the scientific approach is not just physics department and math in the Department and the philosophy department. I mean we heard this morning I think I think if we focus in solving cross challenges and our education system teaches people to address challenges we need in this is interdisciplinary and for me the Computational infrastructure and know-how is an enabling technology That can be used by many grand challenge Questions because they are growing you need methods to analyze them Complexity is growing so you need infrastructure and scientists to understand how to deal with it So for me, I think the system should be the question the the key question should be Grand challenges and in disciplinarity. I don't know if this answers Thank you. Yeah, Petro So far at Greek universities In many individual teams they have developed a strong experience in this area that you mentioned AI and machine learning Research experience and through courses that our applications would say of AI and machine learning Both universities and at research centers. So there is strong experience in that recently we are seeing now a growing trend To a more foundational training of students like for example Toward this goal there is an established I would say an established graduate experience at Greek universities of Organizing these interdisciplinary masters. So now several Greek universities You can find master of science Especially in data science and machine learning in addition to that I Would see And also at several units several departments like ours for example at NT UAE There's now courses on the foundations of machine learning starting in addition to that I Would see young students and young researchers being inspired By the applications of this area Especially through collaborations With institutes such as for example the institutes that are related around Greece related to AI Applications and nowadays Archimedes or in the near future here on so I think Having the presence of such research institutes or research centers Dedicated to this Very broad field. I think will inspire Many young students in addition to this interdisciplinary teaching experience they have now Thank you Teemo and I think I don't have to add anything in the detail In the tails, but I would say Dimitri that What I see necessary to adapt to changes is to get out of your comfort zone unfortunately educators Most universities in Greece are pretty much kind of Narrowed around their own areas, but they don't think What we do as a as a university or a department itself So I would like to see more people getting out of their comfort zone and start discussing together rather than Kind optimizing their own path Yeah I will repeat what I said the critical mass and excellence. Oh, yes critical mass and excellence This is something very very important and we don't have this in Greece and in particular for research in AI because a specificity of research in AI is that Leading labs are Corporate labs are Industrial labs or big tech companies look at publications look What are the leading figures today in AI? Okay, most of them have at least some type collaboration if they don't work directly with industrial labs, okay, and You can imagine about what I'm speaking here all the Gaffam Club, okay, so one more reason to restructure research and create Critical mass and excellence to be able to compete in AI. Yeah Well, I In that enabled education disrupted technology disrupted collaboration and that was a disruptive change now if we Stay into collaboration of different disciplines and we don't come up with Experimental news ways like, you know, Timo said, you know, the only thing that Timo said says be different Try new things because I don't think we still have we yet have the right Answer to this question how to do collaborate. We have to find new vehicles to do that but We have Petros One question I wanted to ask actually inspired but what professor Kozirakis was saying earlier about how things are Changing cloud computing small teams and so on and and some of the other discussions about interdisciplinarity I wonder let's say if we look far into the future and yes, we have computing. Yes, we have AI What do you think is coming next? What what would be the thing that we could focus and start preparing the teaching of the new generation? So we go back and teach them how to do proofs and theorems Which is an art that seems to be lost slowly or so we be teaching them something else Which I don't know what it is, but be interested to hear maybe from Christos and all of you What do you think we should be? There are many ways to approach this question one is what's next in technology And I don't have a crystal ball and whatever I guess will be as good as anybody else I won't go there But let me tell you one thing which which I really believe in about teaching and I think it's a bigger pathology in Greece we've become very good about teaching people math and People on their own become very good at virtual concepts and programming and because you have committed to do and then when it comes to Doing things that require Physical capabilities motor students luck. So many of the application people do Using AI actually require physical art craft artifacts And and for some reason, you know, I guess, you know, we we're not that good about preparing them for the physical side of the world anymore so having as somebody mentioned earlier, you know classes or activities that Help people, you know, enter the makers community build physical prototypes understand how the laws of the physical world interact with the laws of the Virtual world can be impressive and and we see it in in competitions time after time like when COVID Started there were all sorts of people trying to build medical assistive devices and just programming It would not help actually something you have to build a pump that to this chip and effective and can be close to a patient and so on So I think that's something like, you know, the physical world is something to to focus on I think we're doing a great job on on the math Theoretical physics and someone who's continue We should also make sure that people learn the principles of of certain topics the principles of of AI the principles of programming Not just how to use resonant 50 or how to program in Python, right? But pay some attention in the physical world as well. We'll take a Question from our rector here It is a delicate issue an urgent need and It will bring us Maybe outside of our academic comfort zone That we need to address I think that of the possibility to contribute to Through science and synergies of course to strengthen our national security and defense Could this panel put this issue in context with regard to the content of this session Okay Petro So robotics is the closest and also AI and how to do that in the contest or and also Okay, so well the outside gun well Robotics as Dora mentioned is the closest Safety security robotics sensors the turkeys are coming up with that. See what are we doing? Yeah, that's But to exit out of the comfort zone, let's say the universities that's what you mean Then I think the you know the University rules should allow also projects that Encourage the collaboration between university research labs and industry for once to begin with and second Also, you know why not something like the United States where University research labs are free to submit proposals for example to on our Provided that it's publicable research So, you know this framework should be established first To get our outside our comfort zone and and help our country toward the goal that you mentioned At the same time or so train students both theoretical level and foundation a level as well as giving them An experience to build things Timers to feel comfortable answering this question I think I'm gonna be quite general I think the area you have chosen is an area that any country that respects itself should have a Kind of a center on This is typically as far as I know something that the country establishes. It's not it's not the academia It involves industry it involves academia, etc. And I I would first like to see the country establishing a couple of as Professors if I get said centers of excellence Which are not necessarily in the narrow sense academic. Okay, so yes We need to have a center of excellence on security and defense in the country And that's an effort from industry academia. Everybody to do that We are open and we have always contributed in these kind of efforts, but unfortunately, I don't see the country designing Centers of excellence like these that it should have Over the years and it's not something that we established and we live it to die on its own. I promised cost us You you're done. Okay. Yeah You asked for a question. Yes, this is a question for a professor suffocates So one thing that I was very impressed on a while back is using commutational thinking to come up with designs That are completely non-conventional, you know, either for manufacturing parts and so forth Do you think so the idea would be that the human and the computer can do something together that either couldn't do on their own Is this an area of opportunity that perhaps we can say we can try to promote and also teach The next generation of engineers to adopt. I mean, is this something that could be a real opportunity for highest and and Greece Yes, of course. Yes. Okay. Yes, of course, we can do something that direction But can I can I make a comment about defense? Okay, please. I mean having worked all my life with defense industry Yes, I cannot resist making a comment I'm really puzzled by the fact that Greek governments have never taken the initiative to do something serious on Defense, okay, and this is something I've never understood. I will not say more about that I know a lot of stories, but I'll I'll stop here. But that's a scandal. Okay, because Remember when the Turkey started the drones program. Okay, I I have participated to a NATO school in Antalya Okay, with some American and and some Israeli scientists and NATO school in Antalya and we're teaching Autonomous systems at that time right with and other people from Berkeley. Okay, so It's clear that we could have done a lot on industry and for some reason I cannot explain We we did nothing and I think that if a government defies priorities about how to innovate certainly defense and other Areas and other sectors of economy should be a priority and we should invest on that and of course I mean this is this is the way to go Stop here. Yeah, the very quick things here What do you think about the ideas of Russia a steward Russell of Stanford on AI and autonomous lethal weapons and all the Activity in the US regarding this is a very worth Attended lectures. They are available on the web. Yeah, and I was an ethical issues I don't want to discuss here. No, it's not. It's not Ethical and it's interesting watching Russia sure Okay, I won't be very concrete and I want to give you all a challenge Timo see if you can come out of your boundaries So I want to second what she fit said about the fact that we need to move from model based To model based and other based design I don't know how many of you know it but for years we have been designing aircraft from model based system engineering No screw gets constructed before, you know, the whole thing is done 777 was done like that 787 we now try to do this with medical instruments and as he correctly pointed out We now fight face the need that We are beyond What the models can do and we need examples and so forth so the challenge for highest and Archimedes and here on All of you is can you get together a group to work to develop a methodology and tool suite To design these systems to take for example robotic arms or autonomous cars and so on so forth with combining this methodology and For furthermore teach it. Now as you know, we create an institute in 85 to Develop model based and engineering took us 25 years to do and now in the last five years We're moving in this direction and we are moving we are both a master's program and even pushing it to undergraduate So it can be done. You have people here. You have people abroad that they can help you So take this as a question or a concrete suggestion Right, it is something that's needed and most of the problems that we discussed today are systems programs So this could be done the new calculus if you like quote-unquote that you need to teach engineers and then What because you like you said about linking these two projects and design comes in naturally Okay As the part that gonna give you the examples or the prototypes or the data to correct your model based methods and so on so forth Okay, that's my Thank you. Somebody wants to comment on that or we're gonna take that as a suggestion. Let's take that as a suggestion We had a question over there Yes, so I'd like to touch on another issue of AI something that I guess did not want to discuss It has to do with the ethical consequences of AI and the privacy That can violate on human rights like we're moving closer to an era where AI with a brain-imaging Technology can learn the language of the brain and can think tell what we are thinking of and while there is this dual use of Dual use technology characterization and regulations for other technologies. There's nothing for AI so maybe it's time for somebody and Maybe Greece should take the lead in this to come up with some Regulations that will protect human life and maybe he has could also help along those lines Yeah, of course, that's the question to you. Yes. I think there are European regulations or that are already rather strict, okay about Privacy conviviality and also now there are regulations about how to use AI I mean, there is a there is a framework now this debate is Is about ethical issues can be a long debate. So I don't know whether Greece should be a pioneer in that. Okay. I mean for me it's not the priority Okay, I mean for the moment Sorry to say this. Okay. Sorry to say this Yeah, I just wanted to to comment here that Professor George's gave a nice presentation earlier on engineering. I don't see any difference between trustworthiness in engineering and in AI and As an example, I'm very happy that I saw for the first time in my life Maslow's pyramid on a slide When I was invited to give a talk on data science for social data Which is which includes all that stuff. Actually, I also used Maslow's pyramid to say at every level how data science can help if we manage to get people to appreciate That apart from technology, there is something else which is called life and what we need to aspire to In in in like in in the same time Improving technology and engineering and science, but also remembering What our goal of being in this planet is about? I think it will help a lot Finding the tools and the regulations and everything comes next But I think the students need to be educated along with the Technical education that there is something else for example trying to apply what they learn to obey Say the rules of society If I may add one comment here We can also produce very valuable tools as a research community So for example, we can debate where you draw the line for bias and AI But at least we should develop tools that help us understand bias same thing for all sorts of other applications of AI AI explainability It doesn't answer all the ethical questions, but it helps and I think our research community has the obligation to produce these tools Exactly the same way we did with other technologies in the past. Thank you very much We have we'll take these two last questions Please okay a small a little bit pragmatic, let's say question and I understand that highest goes far beyond being an advisory board it wants to put things into work and Establish the interaction and knowledge transfer between Greek Academy academia and diaspora and my question is Is there from the organization organizational point of view is there a Plan a managing plan the management structure that you have in mind How will you do that? Do we have the means the legal tools or the funding tools to do that? this my question I Think that we have the better. She's the the right person to try to crack on your question Okay, well as I was trying to explain this this morning What is the goal that we would like to have for hiatus is first of all to have the house of hiatus Which is a physical entity a place where people from all over the world could come and meet and discuss and exchange we could have different Thematic areas we could have all sorts of things like that. So first of all, we have to find a house Then we have to find Someone who's keeping the house up and was organizing things. So for all this you need money and Perhaps a thing that is about hiatus is that we have made a concerted effort at some point to look for funding At least outside the government and outside all these different Vehicles so we're hoping to contact rich people. I think perhaps if someone doesn't buy an expensive soccer player They can buy all of us. So that could be One way that we can look for that But this is fundraising is something that is occupying our minds and I believe that many of us are There's excellent people in hiatus that are very experienced in fundraising and I have high hopes that we will be able to do that So I think that's the first step and then Engaging the community further getting the people to participate. I think I'm humbled by what I see today It's it's an honor and humbled and everything else that I can say there is every panel was fantastic. All of you Are amazing. There's more people that are in hiatus that are not with us today. I see tremendous potential. So The board that's the board we have at the moment. It doesn't mean that we will always be there I don't consider myself that I will always be the chair of hiatus. I think it would be nice To see people coming up and participating But I think we have a duty at this board at the moment to try to make these first steps and then eventually to To make it something that would be left and continue with a full diaspora. So If I talk too much or the thing is that In this board we have at the moment an experiment also Which is to combine people of the diaspora who live abroad Greeks who live abroad with Greeks who live in Greece Has been amazing. I understand probably The colleagues that we're abroad and come here probably have similar experiences. I'll be very happy to exchange experiences there and it's been amazing has been very useful a lot of positive surprises. I Think United we can do. I don't see any obstacle for Greeks that are united So I'm optimistic Okay, and we had the last question from there Hi, Janice and it is University of Athens and Athena Research Center My question is related to AI and then data science and computing in general Possibly in connection with one of the other sessions on education You know about centers of excellence Multidisciplinary and and all that Currently AI and computing in the Greek tertiary education system is housed in schools of Natural sciences or in schools of engineering But the Swatchman College I mean at MIT and in other top universities Wisconsin and others are the trend is to Take away and create Individual colleges or schools in the Greek terminology that are horizontal to everything else and all the other sciences and and Humanities so that the central part that AI and computing plays can be better Served in education and then in research Do you think that this model that we see in in the US in certain other parts of Europe? Can fit and how critical is it to do a move something like this or? You think it's it's okay to leave stuff within Natural sciences or engineering the way it is now. I think that's a similar point that Dimitris made earlier And there were some discussion early on on that, but he do you feel you you want to? Change the structure. Yes, please I Can come in a couple of things? I don't think there's a single model that will work for everybody and you know, everybody should follow it To the details I can hear for example at Stanford. We've been hesitant to launch a new Colleges maybe for a good reason and for a bad reason or the other had we have many instruments that provide flexibility We can do join appointments and the graduates can design their own majors for crying out loud. So There's a lot of other ways we have you know, the humor center. I ease that you which is across the whole University So I Agree with your point that there should be mechanism flexibility across the board now What exactly they are? I'm not sure and they don't have to be exactly the same in every university Maybe I should I would like to comment on that. Yes. I think this kind of Across the board would be useful I think there is no one unique way to fit everybody, but I do feel that In places like ours where there is a lot of inflexibility Maybe creating new structures like the Archimedes. It's a useful concept to bring this all together I Don't know how easy these to restructure Something in the University. Maybe it's possible To create something within the University Research Center or an excellent Center of excellence where many departments contribute you this has been done in other universities And I think that would be useful to have joined appointments Across your university departments and this would be an instrument that I think could be implemented We have here the rector. Maybe Implemented yes, and it will be useful. I think interactions across across disciplines demos before that I want to Comment on what Christos said Stanford, I think they're designing their departments around big goals now The big department is the sustainability department at Stanford, right? It's a new school. It's a new school a new school So, I mean this maybe an idea would be to create school so create Efforts educational and research efforts behind big goals like the ones that the myth is mentioned during the Break the UN goals not poverty zero poverty and so on and so forth But I want to give two timos and then one last word to you because we're 15 minutes late and we're getting this conversation between us and the coffee. Yeah I just want to say that in response to Janice's question This is a constant philosophy issue around education and I think in Greece We have made the decision to teach principles in various fields and then People can form graduate schools or things like that in in consolidated areas And I remember my experience with China for example, and you and I know They they moved from schools to computer science to schools of big data the big data went away Schools of data science. I don't know probably now they're doing schools of AI but this change kind of indicates that all your education is kind of trying to follow the trends and Who sets the trends so our experience with a Greek system, which by the way, I'm fond of designing teaching principles. I Find it excellent and then yes It's getting outside of your comfort zone and designing for example degrees across departments. That's the different story degrees across departments is very very important, but departments or colleges This is this is kind of a difficult for Greece. I think this is Yeah, I've spent a lot of time with the Stanford guys on the new school on environmental sustainability It has taken them You know seven to ten years to really create the institutes etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. If it was not for the one billion dollar Gift they would not be able to pull it together. That's all it's just all True, but it is an idea to Innovate in an organized Solutions of problems and educational systems around problems, but around disciplines But that's what I may want one quick comment There is already seems to be a lot of flexibility in getting people together at research institutes that I was at Ford for a visiting committee last week and in the Institute of computer science I met everything including biologists psychologists in an issue of computer science So you can already do a lot and then trickle down right like you know Whatever you learn you can trickle down into master's programs and eventually reach down the undergrad so go for it Okay, let's continue that during coffee. Thank you very much