 The keynote lecture will be followed by a panel session, and our panelists were chosen from Greece, Europe and the US to reflect the various approaches in science and engineering education, so let me introduce to you our panelists. Pediclis Mitkas is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and also serves as the president of the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education. Prof. Mitkas received his diploma in electrical engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Pediclis Mitkas is the president of the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education. Apostolis Dimitropoulos is the secretary general for higher education at the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Μαργαρί Ταχλή is a professor in robotic vision and director of the vision for robotics labs at the Heideha Zurich and the Cyprus University of Technology. Apostolis Dimitropoulos is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Nuclear Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he currently serves as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Εφθήμιος Καξίρας is a professor of physics at Harvard University and the department chair of the physics department. Thank you, Εφθήμιος. So, Dear Professor Mitkas, as president of the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education, you find yourself in the position of having a clear view of Greece's higher education landscape, its strengths, weaknesses, area and areas where there may be room for change. What changes in STEM education in Greece could help students develop skills that may be in better sync with the economy and the job market? Let me give you first some numbers about the current situation in Greece, since the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education collects the data every year from all the universities in the country. STEM education is strong in Greece. If you consider the number of undergraduate programs of study, about 140 in the country, in the 25 higher education institutes, out of a total of about 430 programs of study. So, approximately one third is STEM and that includes of course all the programs of study from the former technological education institutes that transferred as university programs a few years back. The number of students follows a similar trend. The newcomers in 2020 were about 25,000 in total in STEM and 60,000 students in non-STEM programs. The number of graduates, unfortunately, the number of graduates, it's a universal trend in Greece, does not follow the number of incoming students. The number of graduates is about 15,000 for the year 2021 in STEM and another 40,000, 41,000 in non-STEM education. So, the graduation rate is about 65% for the country if you just take the ratio between graduating over incoming students. The STEM education is strong I would say because most of the programs are in the engineering realm, so 76 programs in engineering and those are five year programs. As you know, the diploma of engineering in Greece is a five year degree and it is heavily loaded with science and engineering classes. Out of the 60 almost courses that students have to take, as Professor Yortos mentioned, very few are non-science for engineering, if any, two or three in each program of study. So, our graduates are usually well received in graduate programs in the country, outside of the country and of course they are well received by employers in Europe and in Northern America. The problems, it's very high, I would say unacceptably, but there's very little we can do, very high student-to-faculty ratio in all programs in Greece but in engineering and in science also. So, that does not allow the teachers, the professors to use all the teaching paradigms that are available in other education systems. For example, weekly homeworks, midterms, if you have an audience of 300 students and you don't have any graduate assistance, there's very little you can do to hand out papers or projects. Some universities, some programs of course are better than others. So, there is a quantifiable, I would say, difference in quality between the better or the best programs in the country and those that are still lagging behind. Not just in terms of faculty and facilities, but also in terms of the ability of students to follow the programs. As I said, the programs are very demanding and because there are a lot of students entering these programs in certain that are not the best choices or the first choices, you end up with students that are close to 12,000 out of 20,000 units. So, basically average students. The program continues to be very demanding, so a lot of these students stay in the system and they cannot graduate. Now, what can we do? Perhaps we'll go to another round of responses because that's a whole different story, let some other people talk. Thank you very much. We're coming out to Apostolis Dimitropoulos, Dear Secretary General. Since you assumed office, you have initiated a series of meetings and discussions with your counterparts and with university authorities in many countries around the world seeking to create joint educational programs. What are the goals of your efforts and how can internationalizations not only broaden students' horizons, but also contribute to Greece's brain gain as opposed to the already strong brain drain? Okay, thank you Daphne. First of all, I'm deeply honored to be invited and participate in today's event. In my capacity as Secretary General for Higher Education at the Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, I would like to express the strong will for cooperation with the Greek diaspora, with Greek scientists abroad. I know that this is something you have heard many times in the past by officials, but I will try in the short time I have available to show that this is not just words, we are trying to make, turn words into concrete actions. Let me start by saying that Greece currently implements a wider internationalization strategy in which higher education, we believe, has a strong role to play. Our main focus is the opening up of our universities to the wider world by launching as Daphne already mentioned, launching synergies with foreign universities that may involve the creation of joint and dual undergraduate and postgraduate programs, programs taught in English or other foreign languages, participation in summer schools, exchanges of students, academics and researchers, exchanges of good practices as well as any other joint initiatives the universities themselves will choose to develop. Our vision is to turn Greece into an education hub attracting students, scientists and investments from other countries and other continents. And that's a vision shared by the Prime Minister Kiliakos Mitsotakis himself, the Minister Karameos and myself. Let me start by saying that Greek universities cooperate closely and extensively, we know that with universities in other European Union countries in the context of the Erasmus Plus program. Moreover, almost one out of four Greek universities today also participate in European universities' alliances, the landmark initiative of European higher education. Within the framework of internationalization in our capacity as ministry of education, we support and strengthen synergies with universities in countries, not only in the European area but also outside it. I'm happy to mention that we are already in a mature stage of bilateral cooperation between Greek and American universities, between Greek and British universities in the post Brexit era and also Greek and Chinese universities. And our most recent project underweighs the exploration of possibilities for cooperation with universities in India. As a government we have prioritized both the upgrading of higher education and the strengthening of the extroversion of our universities. For that, to achieve that internationalization is a priority goal in all funding instruments we have available. That is the National Development Fund, the European Structural Fund, ESPA and the RRF Recovery and Resilience Fund. It is also noteworthy that within the new public allocation framework for universities we introduced recently, based partly on the university's performance, it is very encouraging that 11 out of 24 universities have chosen to be evaluated by their performance in the axis of internationalization. This indicates that internationalization has become a strategic goal of these universities and we also support all universities to develop their strategic capacity by establishing units for strategic planning. We have already results out of all these. We have the first programme for English language programme at the University of Athens on Classics, History and Archaeology. We have the first medical programme at the University of Aristotle last year which attracted over 1200 applications for only 60 places. We have this year the Athens University Medical programme which yesterday I received the information that attracted 1440 applications from 46 different countries that applied to study in the University of Athens English Language programme. And I know that other medical schools also are in the process of planning their English language programmes. Moreover, 3 months ago our university submitted over 200 undergraduate, postgraduate or doctoral study programmes for financial support under the new scheme designed by the ministry to support the internationalization of universities. These are 200 foreign language programmes, mostly English language, a good number of them jointly organised with foreign universities abroad and we are confident that many more of them will soon evolve into joint or dual degrees with foreign universities. Let me also say a few words about the law that is currently discussed, debated in the parliament and that one of its aims is to increase flexibility, autonomy of universities and making it much more easier to develop their international cooperation activities and become much more open and post to the wider academic world. One of the provisions, sorry, some of the provisions that will support this in the new legal framework is that we revise and we make it much more flexible for Greek universities to have visiting professors, visiting researchers, to have joint chairs and adjunct professors, to have dual appointments, to have endowed chairs where visiting professors can occupy, to have ERC, the European Research Council chairs, where those that they have ERC funds they can ask for a annual post within Greek universities and also of course the possibility for academics from abroad to participate as external members in the re-established university boards that the law also introduces. We know we had an experience out of the pandemic and let me take the opportunity to mention here that the really special achievement of Greek universities during the pandemic that within two weeks they managed to turn into distance teaching and learning are the 96% of all courses offered and the rest 4% were only laboratory work that was not possible to turn, was not easy at least to turn it online. We try to build on that now and we really give the possibility for all Greek universities to organize at postgraduate level fully distant learning programs and in that programs academics from abroad can offer distant courses and that means that for you that you work and live abroad you can have the possibility to offer a course in Greek university, a full course in Greek university and it is also a new possibility that Greek universities will also be able to have lectures at an undergraduate level from a distance, from online with the support of technology. In all this we strongly believe and I will close with that, I know that I have run out of time, we strongly believe that Greece has a rare if not unique advantage and that is the Greek diaspora and the many Greek scientists abroad that can play a really important role in all this internationalization strategy we try to implement. And for that it is self-evident that events like today's are really valuable, thank you. You have received an important award for your work in robotics and computer vision and as many people in the audience are also interested in computing and artificial intelligence based on your experience what should be the goal of Greece be for research and development in artificial intelligence and computing? Thank you very much Daphne. Yes, so I think what we need to do is to rebrand Greece's image as an attractive destination for research and development in AI and computing and robotics and this is of course not to discount any ongoing initiatives that I think we heard some of them before. But overall out of my own experience or maybe let's say that, so what I think in terms of rebranding Greece's image in creating an attractive destination for R&D in these areas is that we need to appeal to the society, to the industry, to the students, to the faculty. So society and industry, we need to create this culture that with the work that we do in universities we are meeting the needs of the industry and the society and as academics I'm sure you agree we all want to do basic research. But the model that I have seen working very well in the UK and also in Switzerland, even better in Switzerland is that there is a lot of application driven, a lot of need driven research that is very rewarding to students feeling that they're making a difference also to faculty. I mean it as well. It raises visibility and recognition from the society and the industry. I remember one of the first articles that I participated in because ETH is doing this great media campaigns. The title of the article was ETH Zurich, The Temple of Knowledge and I was like wow, really? But it comes to show how much appreciation the society has for the academic developments and research that happens within ETH. And how can we make something like this in Greece happen? And I do think that working on topics like this that can make, if you'd like, a closer difference, a shorter term difference is important in attracting more funding, more collaborations, more students. And I think in general this field of AI and computing is something that is a field that doesn't necessarily need a huge investment like biology and medicine, clean rooms, etc. And then going to the rebranding of the image for students and faculty, we heard some great ideas before about, you know, we'll know, exchange visits are the thing, right? So send your students abroad, we bring our students here, master students, PhD students. At ETH we started having this robotic summer school, which is a week long competitive to enter summer school for master and PhD students. And there's one day symposium with invited speakers and then there's a whole week where the students team up with each other and they get hands on tutorials and workshops, they work on robots, they work on a task, a common task that they're given. And then at the end of the week there's a competition and of course that we all know that motivates students like nothing else. And it's brilliant to see the ideas, the ideas for collaborations, the ideas for startups that come out of, you know, small efforts like this. And to bring to my last point on how we can rebrand this image for faculty and research leaders, it was mentioned before, sabbatical visits at UL professorships and maybe here comes in a bit of the personal story. I've been 10 years in the UK, 10 years overall in Switzerland, studying and working. And some of you in the room already know that I've been flirting with the idea of returning back home for some years now. Home for me is both Greece and Cyprus, but Cyprus is where my parents live, so it's more like home right now. So I've been flirting with this idea of returning home and contrary to all career advice, I'm starting my new steps in Cyprus now. And contrary to all career advice and probably some of you already here thinking, oh my god, what is she doing? I guess the question is back on to you, back on to us. Why do you think that, right? What is it that we need to fix to make sure that other people don't have to make so many sacrifices? And I say this and I start getting emotional so no, calming down. But overall I'm thinking that how can we make a nourishing environment for this brain game, for bringing people back, to give them independence, to give ERC grantees this opportunity of getting tenured position and there's a star there. I was talking to a friend two days ago because we were both on the second stage of the ERC consolidator grants. Now you know if I don't get it, I failed. And he was telling me I tried to ask in Greece whether they would give me a position and people were avoiding the response and people were also saying ERC grantees don't necessarily get a tenured position. And since we have people here from the government, I think it's good also to know that we need incentives, we need better salaries and people also, or here powerful people from the university, we need reduced teaching load. Let's try to make this a more friendly environment, a more nourishing environment for people to want to come back without sacrificing everything or a lot of what they have done so far in their lives. Yes, so with this I'm concluding. So essentially takeaway message is rebranding Greece's image as a research and development center for AI computing robotics, focusing on students, on faculty, on industry and on society. Thank you very much Margarita. We're now coming on to the last panelist, Professor Sotiropoulos. You have assumed many different positions at the university administration and you have extensive experience in engineering education programs. What scientific and technological areas would be a good fit for Greece and how could these be implemented in an academic curriculum? Thank you Daphne for the great question and also allow me to express my gratitude and appreciation to the leadership of AIAS for organizing this and for also giving me and all of us the opportunity to be here. I'm really thrilled and excited to be part of this. So allow me to offer first a couple of general remarks about the state of higher education in the US right now that builds on the visionary presentation by Dean George and many other things we heard that sets the stage for some of the things that I would like to propose for Greece. I think right now we live in an exciting time for higher education. It's a time where we all in higher education thinking of disruption, dealing with disruption because there are three major converging forces actually that are converging to disrupt higher education. First of all the pandemic highlighted the impact of technology. We talked about this. How do we deliver knowledge? Are we moving toward the hybrid university of the future where we can use technology to do a lot of the old things, traditional things we've been doing but in new ways and at the same time create space to focus on training creative thinkers, problem solvers, entrepreneurs, innovators and again building on the things we just heard. The second important force is really this emerging era of intelligent machines that we just talked about where humans and intelligent machines will have to enter into this symbiosis time. How do we prepare the workforce for this? There are some really important questions there and the third piece is hugging the exponential that Professor George has mentioned which really implies that the students of 2020 the students of the graduates of 2020 of 21, 22 and going on they're going to have to be retrain, retool, upskill several times throughout their careers and how are universities ready to provide this kind of education. So I would like to offer four specific areas when it comes to Greece the opportunities that I see to develop higher education programs that are well aligned with higher research stress and they will be, they are actually, I think they have a potential to save the Greece of the future as a model knowledge based economy for the region and the world for that matter. The first of all is what we already have been talking about is how we educate the workforce for the era of intelligent machines. Some people refer to this exciting time as the technoscene when technology is really ushering in a new era in human culture and is redefining human experience. So there are important challenges for what the future of work looks like when AI and automation could cause a big chunk of humans jobs to disappear so in response to that we need to think of putting programs together that can cultivate in our students higher level cognitive skills that machines and algorithms will be less likely to be able to replicate. Critical thinking, ethics that Professor George has talked about the ability to design and work with complex interconnected systems entrepreneurship, compassion, cross cultural understanding and since the ultimate objective hopefully of all of us is not just to develop cool powerful algorithms which is very very important of course but to actually use them to solve problems that improve human life and lift human beings up, we need to focus on developing, we need to think of how we train a new generation of highly skilled innovators capable of human centered design of AI and technology solutions and Professor George has also alluded to that. It goes to this how do we do the smart, ethical, legal, effective and so on. So I will submit to you that I think our vision for the future of education while STEM is very important should go beyond STEM it should focus on new transdisciplinary paradigms that include new kinds of humanities, arts, social sciences, law and so on trained students, students who are sufficiently proficient in the basics of computational thinking but have also been enabled to cultivate higher level cognitive skills and are able to engage in this transdisciplinary design of the knowledge based economy of the future and the design piece is the important thing. The second important area is that I think is really important for Greece is the thinking of how are we prepared, are we doing this, are we training the workforce that we realize and sustain the net zero economy of the future. Greece just recently passed its first climate law committing actually to a very aggressive goal to become net zero by 2050. Now this is a monumental challenge not only for Greece but for the world as a whole but also it's an opportunity to think of how can Greece lead in research in education and community engagement which is really important to achieve net zero. So we need to think of putting together programs and degrees that will supply the workforce with the green innovators and entrepreneurs and also education that will produce informed citizens for our future of democracy. Because a big factor as Prof. Giorgos mentioned is fake news, disbelief in science and so on. So I think this is an opportunity for building complex and multifaceted set of skills that require cross disciplinary integration. It's not just how we model and assess net zero pathways, engineering advances to develop technology and renewables and batteries, energy efficiency, electrification, food production, construction materials our entire way of life need to be redesigned to be net zero. And again understanding global law, public policy, geopolitical issues and so on as we see with the war in Ukraine right now and so on. An incredible opportunity for do we have programs that prepare students to be effective in this type of workforce. The third piece is I think the workforce that will drive the so called third evolution in medicine which is defined by the convergence of medicine, biology with engineering and technology. I understand that in Greece traditionally biomedical engineering has been lagging behind for reasons that I don't quite understand. But I think there is an opportunity to leapfrog this right now by building training paradigms across medicine and most fields of engineering because the opportunities go beyond biomedical engineering. They cut across computer science, applied mathematics, electrical and computer engineering and on and on and on material science. So we're talking about nanotechnology, drug delivery, drug discovery, organ regeneration through 3D printing, neuroscience and neuro engineering and so on. The engineers need to understand the clinical challenges, the doctors of the future will have to be prescribing nanobots that will deliver medication to your blood vessels. So they need to be technology savvy. Do we have programs for actually doing this? The last point which is kind of general that I would like to mention is training innovators and entrepreneurs. I think this is a big thing how we produce students and graduates that have the entrepreneurial mindset into their way of thinking. See education not only as a credential for employment but as a preparation for entrepreneurial endeavors. And I will stop here because there's a lot to talk about this but I would like to put this on the table for discussion and questions so thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much. I think Professor Mitkis wanted to make one more point. Well, you have to remember that in Greece the universities are not as close to the industry, to the national industry. I don't know if there's any representative of the private sector in this audience. I assume that we're all academics but this is a major impediment for all things that happen in Greek universities both in terms of research and in terms of graduation rates. If the national industry cannot absorb all the graduates of the Greek universities they don't have a real incentive to finish their studies. And Professor Klee mentioned that we need to rebrand the Greek university. Yes, we have to make sure that the national industry works with the universities and with the research centers to develop solutions for them. And this is an uphill battle but it would make tremendous change for the universities and the universities in the country. Thank you very much. I will now pass the microphone to Professor Kaxiras who will coordinate the question and answer session with the audience. Okay, thank you. Good morning from me as well. Daphne already mentioned my affiliation so I'll jump right to the questions. So we had scheduled about half an hour for questions. We're running a little bit late because everybody, I take that as an indication that everybody is very excited to share their thoughts. We have so many ideas to communicate and this is wonderful. But I don't want to cheat the audience from the possibility of asking questions so we'll steal a little bit of time from the coffee break if needed. So please raise your hand to ask questions to any specific member of the panel including our keynote speaker. They all presented very inspiring thoughts and if you wish you can identify the person to whom you... You are asking the question or address it to the entire panel. Yes, so let's start with this. Yes, thank you. So first of all I would like to congratulate all of you for garnising the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Studies. It's a great effort and I would like to say the following. I would like to ask a quick question. I have been in US for 12 years as a graduate student and then as a faculty. And now I'm at the University of Crete and the Fourth which I believe that it is a no-assist in terms of research, science and innovation increase. So my question is the following. All the comments on the insightful observations that you made were extremely important. But I think that in my opinion the critical aspect that it is missing here is the funding. Funding from the government. We are struggling to do research with very few resources here in Greece. And many times I believe that it is a heroic effort from our part. So I think that I mean Greece does not lack from collaboration, mobility, adaptation, curiosity, intellectual curiosity. We have passionate students, researchers, faculty. What we really lack is funding. Funding from the government. This is number one. And number two, okay it is less bureaucracy. We are struggling with the bureaucracy. We are doing a heroic effort here in Greece. So we need to address this issue. And the third last part is the relation between industry and university. But I'm more optimistic about this. I already see things changing in Crete at least. And last comment and wish. I really hope to have this activity also in Crete. And it will be an honor to host you as University of Crete and forth. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you for the question. Actually the issues about funding and bureaucracy are more like statements rather than questions. And I'm not sure what HIAS can do about those. Take the last part of your question and try to see if our panelists would like to address this. Well you seem to be more optimistic than I am. So I guess you have a better answer. Yeah, the connection between industry. Definitely there's several steps that universities have taken over the last few years that bring them closer to industry. And the trust is improving between the two parts. But there are whole sectors that do not seek solutions at Greek universities or research centers. And like those of us who are in Greece to wonder how many of our research results have been adopted by the Greek industry. We work mostly for European research projects that have the European industry needs in mind. And we provide good solutions but I don't think they are adopted by the I, by Ote, by the Greek army. Which does very little with the Greek universities. So we have to build these channels. But building on this perhaps is there anything, is there any actionable items that we could help with in enhancing this interaction? I think there is an action item. And the action item is the next iteration of this event to also invite people from the industry to begin with. This is very important. I just want to make a point that the National Academy of Engineering by construction is supposed to be 50% people from the business world and corporate world and the other 50% from academics. To the chagrin of the academic community because they have less, has more competition to get into the academy. But actually this is happening in the United States. It's for engineers, not sciences, but for engineers. Thank you professor. Actually we do have contacts with various parts of the industrial and entrepreneurial world in Greece. But unfortunately we don't have representation today or adequate representation today. But this is a very good point. I think it's important for us to continue in that direction. Just real quick about the potential actionable items in terms of connecting industry with universities. One of the things that we are doing, many other universities are doing right now, is focus on project based learning. Engaging teams of students that in projects involving students from different disciplines to working throughout their educational experience to solve an important problem. This problem could be funded by industry, could be defined by industry for instance because it helps train the type of workforce that they need. It could be in partnership with the government. I mean for instance Greece right now has led in terms of using technology to take on bureaucracy and there's a lot of progress that has been made in a very brief period of time. Now I think there are opportunities if we think of introducing project based experiential learning where you get teams of students along with faculty. And that also provides opportunities for collaboration across the different countries and engaging all of us from wherever we happen to be. To develop these teams and get industry engaged in that but getting students to solve problems. To actually do things that could ultimately either help create the skills that they need or achieve something very important that could lead to entrepreneurial activities. It could be of value to industry or to government or to communities. Thank you. So let's take a question if I may. Thank you very much for the sexual meeting. I want to talk about this point because as far as I'm concerned I'm involved in these kind of programs in Greece for almost 40 years. This is a major weakness as Professor Mitkos mentioned. So I am from the University of Maryland. I also work with the Royal University of Technology in Sweden and Technic University of Munich. So I can give you the experience from there. Engineering must connect to industry. That's a must. It doesn't happen in Greece. How it can happen? By encouraging apprenticeship programs like we have in Germany where even high school students go and work in industrial labs and intensives with industry. Currently we are trying to work out a collaboration program between Sweden, Greece and Germany. To bring these kind of programs to fruition. Where you get students from universities and high schools to get involved with this. And one idea that I'd like to ask the Hellenic Institute for Advanced Study to help or make it a challenge. Is to try to get foreign companies who have satellite parts in Greece to get involved with that. And then that can be a good start and then you can actually expand it and so on and so forth. And this links very nicely with something which is called in Europe in the US, Total Innovation Systems. Where you teach students from the first year to graduation, to entrepreneurship, to bootcams and so on and so forth. All this is a package goes together. If it doesn't happen in Greece you are not going to see engineering and in particular education in engineering link to economy. This is a very important part. We have to link to economy and society. Thank you. Any of the panelists would like to comment? Please, please, please. I would like to make a hopefully short comment about the lack of funding and bureaucracy. I am one of those that believe that at this particular moment lack of funding is not the problem. We have at the Ministry of Education only, we have one billion for universities including educational activities or research activities. However, the difficulties, the European regulations that we have to handle so that we can use that money. On those regulations that are under our control, the national level control, you know probably that one of the goals of the law that is now debated in the parliament is exactly to make the handling of research funds much more easy to handle within the universities. I mean the LK regulations and so on. I'm sure you are quite familiar with that. But this is not the only regulations we have to comply with. There are also European regulations. We have the funding but it's difficult to really manage that. Thank you. So let me see. Please go ahead. Μάκτα Λαγούδας from Texas National University. I really love being here. Thank you for coming along. I wanted to make a question which is very practical. I run a large showcase for capstone projects, about 1200 engineering students. I run Innovate for Defence and Innovate for Homeland Security. I'm interested to collaborate with universities here. I feel like we are talking maybe among ourselves if our all external people. What is the follow up? How do we find the people right now? I'm glad to see Dr. Mitkas. We were at the University of Thessaloniki. We are developing collaborations with them but how do we follow up with others who are interested? I would love to take some of the international companies and have them do capstone projects on both sides. Our students will benefit, your students will benefit. So my general question is to the organisers. How do we follow up on this? Thank you for the question. Let's see if the panelists have some thoughts on this. I think it's easy. Just spread out the word. There are going to be people from universities participating in HIAS or interested in HIAS. These connections as it happens all over the world. You need one or two persons in each department or each school, faculty or engineering for example. And then they will run their own process. So you have to spread the word. We have to spread the word about HIAS. Or do some events like hackathons for example. Thank you. Maybe HIAS can figure out ways of acting as a forum as an exchange mechanism for these possibilities. Yes, Dimitris? A question I would like to ask. Dimitris Bertimas, MIT. So science and engineering in the last 100 years I would say developed primarily in silos. There is a chemical engineering department, there is a medical physics and so forth. In recent years particularly intelligence and so forth has the promise and sometimes the reality to unify and revolutionize fields in such a way that the structure of universities that it is today at least in some environments like mine is questioned. Recently MIT has developed this source man college of computing which is really a source man college of artificial intelligence in which people from different departments collaborate. In my view I'm excited of course there's local bias. I'm excited about this prospect and I would like to ask the panelists whether you feel such an idea is good for Greece and is also realistic for Greece. Okay, so let's see who. Yeah, I mean first of all I think it's a great idea whether it's realistic it's a different story. But I think you put it very well. All of us in academic institutions we are organized in ways that are hundreds of years old and right now this is kind of sweeping everything. It's this integration of across disciplines and not only within STEM and engineering but with other disciplines as well and the opportunity. So I think the real opportunities for universities everywhere is how to develop these ways, how to break silos and create these structures really that drive this move forward into the future. Now I think there are a lot of practical ideas difficult it's not only in Greece but in the US as well. Because our faculty colleagues they like to do things a certain way everybody feels that their area is very important and I understand that. But I think if we focus on a transdisciplinary mindset which is not only doing basic research but also applying to solve problems and make a difference to community and society as a whole. That might provide an organizing framework for actually motivating a lot of these things but you brought up a great issue that I think it is important. That's what I was talking about the opportunity for disrupting higher education but it's also one that it's not easy but it will happen. I think that will be the universities that live in the future. I think that there is an initiative on robotics evolving developing out of this institute and we're going to see how this works. If it is inclusive or if it involves a lot of people from different departments then it's going to be a good example for other thematic efforts. And of course you know very well that funding is always the driving mechanism for that. If there is driving if there is funding for an issue then people will follow. Yes please. Yes funding is important but regulations are also important and I think it's important to mention here that again the new law makes I think a breakthrough by really making it possible for every single department to offer different degrees, different programs leading to degrees. Alone or in cooperation with other departments of the same school or of different schools or of different institutions, different universities. And that's what I think for the first time that it really happens and that means that students will enter into one department but then the possibilities to really choose about what exactly what program they will follow and they will complete is going to depend on their own choice. Thus this opens up the possibility for all trans interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs. And one of the things apart from the legislation that is going to make it really possible and flexible that flexible in the sense that it will not require any longer the approval by the ministry. It will be a decision by the institution and the accreditation by the accreditation agency and I'm already working on preparing the financial support for these new programs to be supported so that we can see in the near future. We see a different landscape of programs offered by Greek universities along with the foreign language programs, the new programs, the interdisciplinary programs in areas and disciplines that are really important for the future. The concept of joint departments is picking up a lot more steam in the US than now but mostly between different schools for example engineering and medicine. By medical there are lots of joint departments across the world, I mean the US in this area. In our own school we have a joint department, the School of Cinematic Arts that has computer science and cinematic arts and provides people that do games for example. These are interesting areas because you bring people from different backgrounds and put them together and then we have a joint degree to some extent. So I think it is happening whether it is possible to happen in Greece, unfortunately I can't tell because I don't know but it would seem to me that it will be interesting to actually branch out from an engineering school to a non-engineering school in the same university to create these partnerships. I think there is a lot more to be discovered in that intersection. Thank you. So let me see for more questions. Yes please. Hello, yeah. Gianakis from the University of Minnesota. Thank you all, organizers and panelists for a wonderful event and the panelists for your comments on education. Based on my limited experience with evaluation boards and accreditation boards, another one issue that was not brought up relates to self-governance of Greek universities. So my question is how can HAYAS contribute towards self-governance of Greek universities and I'm pretty sure Professor Mitigas and Apostolopoulos will have more to say about that. Another one issue that comes up in all these evaluation boards, number two is the graduation rate. Yes, thank you. So who would like to comment on this? Well, I will have again to defend the law that is now the parliament and if there is one title for this particular law, I would have chosen to call it the autonomy law for Greek universities. There are many, many new responsibilities that are transferred from the ministry to the universities themselves and that will definitely make things less bureaucratic, easier and will make the system much more flexible and adaptable to the future. That is one thing. The second point about the graduation rate, that's really, it's really cool. Well, thank you. I'd like to remind both the panelists and the audience to think of the questions and this discussion in the context of actionable items. And I think a possibility would be for HAYAS to be able to communicate with agencies, governmental agencies and translate the new law into a possibility of enhancing these interactions or something like this. And I'm glad we have representatives from the Greek academic institutions and the Ministry of Education to help us along this way. So I'll take the next question. Yes, please. Thanos Panagiotopoulos from Princeton University. Just following up on this comment on actionable items and also the new law that's being brought in. I'm under the impression that it reintroduces to some extent the concept of councils for the units that bring in or can bring in external academics to support the administration director and the Tosimboulou Edrimatos, the old idea that's being revived. Would it make sense for HAYAS, for example, to be a conduit or a pool or members or advertise the availability of that and help establish those councils in a better way than the old law? Thank you for the question. Any suggestions? Sure, why not? I don't think that there's going to be an organized effort to distribute professors and various councils in Greece, but spread the word again and see if people are interested. It is crucial if these councils begin to operate and they are established, we need to have the best people we can get from inside and outside the country. But it will require a lot of time because they are actually executive boards. As a secretary general, I should refrain for suggesting specific things and I think it's my obligation to obey with the principle of several governance of universities. That means that the universities themselves will choose who to appoint as external members to the university boards. I can only say that we'll be very happy to see academics from abroad like those present here today to participate in these new university boards. Thank you. Let me take one from the back. Κυριακόπλος from National Technical University of Athens. We spent quite a bit of time discussing about the possibilities and the way to somehow connect the activity of the universities with the private sector and particularly to the so-called quotes Greek industry, whatever that means. In other words, we consider the issue of how to make our students employable and useful to industry, but we didn't spend any time, at least today, about how to make our students creating jobs instead of looking for jobs. We didn't discuss at all about the opportunities of having spin-offs, new companies with a new economy to make our students not go after the industrialists but be the new era industrialists. Any comments? Yes, thank you for the question. Let me just mention that there's a whole session in the afternoon devoted to this issue and I think we'll have many more opportunities to address these types of issues in the afternoon. I don't know if any of the panelists would like to make a quick comment on this and then we can move to the next topic. A quick comment, I don't know if any of you were at the General Assembly of SEV, the Association of Industrialists in Greece about a month ago, and the President mentioned that the spin-off, the startup scene in Greece is getting bigger and bigger. He quoted some numbers like 7000 new jobs have been created and the overall zeroes is approaching billions. They are looking at it, they are supporting it and we are recording this. There were 13 new spin-offs reported by the Greek universities last year in 2021 and the number is much different from the zero that was five years ago. Thank you. There are so many models out there for education part that actually are feasible, they are not onerous, the material is not complicated, you don't have to take five courses on innovation and entrepreneurship. This can be easily created or implemented, it's just a matter of making sure that, again, I don't know what bureaucracy exists in terms of changing curricula, but certainly you can do this without major issues. The models out there are easy, they are very well received by students, you have competitions, you have then VCs come in, you have angels, you have all kinds of people. Creating these ecosystems can be done. Just a matter of making decisions that this is what we want to do. Thank you. Just real quick, sorry I didn't see that Professor George was coming up. I think Professor George has covered it very well, I think there are models, it can be done and essentially there are four major things. One is to change the student mindset that entrepreneurship is actually a valid outcome of their education, they need to understand that. The second is curricular integration, how we incorporate entrepreneurship in different aspects throughout the entire curriculum, not only in engineering because entrepreneurs will come from many other fields. The third is changing faculty mindset because we have faculty that are not thinking, many of us are not thinking along these ways, so how we do this. The fourth one is really mentoring structures and connecting and promoting entrepreneurship, connecting students with successful entrepreneurs and so on. But I think there are models if possible and this is really an exciting endeavor for the future really. Okay, I will take one last question because I didn't want to cheat you from the question time but I don't want to cheat you from the coffee break either, so please go ahead. So my name is Nennis, Athanasios Nennis from EPFL and I just have a few comments that could be actionable items. So first of all for the effort to recruit new professors or established professors back to Greece, the brain gain. The other thing that could be done that highest can help out is with the two body problem. Very often there is a significant other and many cases have failed because of that and I speak from experience. So highest can help facilitate finding career placement for this significant other. The other thing that could be done is essentially that we can have workshops organized to expose students to all the things that could be done. And this is regardless of the program that we have here. So it's not just to the universities but it's something that the highest can do. Thank you. Thank you for the very helpful comments. Since this was not a question, I'll take one more question. So let me see. Okay, one from the back there. Hello, my name is Dionis Christopoulos, I am from the Technical University of Crete. We have mostly focused today on education at the university level. But the secondary educational system is also very important as Professor George has mentioned. It used to be a gem of the Greek education. I'm afraid this is not so any longer and I speak from experience. Seeing what is happening in the secondary system and also that has an impact on the quality of the students that we admit in the universities. So how can highest help to address this issue, especially since all the recent governments have not really done much to address the problem. Yeah, thank you for the question. Let me just make a very quick comment earlier on before this session began. I had a chance to talk very briefly to Dr Dimitropoulos. I think that's a key point and I think we can do a lot. I think if we put our minds together, there's a lot of possibilities and opportunities. Let me see if the panel has some more comments. I don't know if the former minister of education, Kostas Gavrol, would like to say something about high school education. Because I'm not an expert in high school education. I don't want to say. I don't know. I don't know if the general secretary. Chairman, if I may. I think you're right about high school education. I think the most important thing is that there is a social consensus that high school is not the way you get into the university. But there is an institution outside high school. The so-called Frondisteria, the shadow education that gets you into the university. The objective result of this is that high schools are no more those institutions that educate you. They don't even prepare you for universities. So that I think is a very serious ideological issue concerning high schools. I will not take your time commenting on various other things, but I think very quickly. Thank you. I'd like to stop the session here because there's relatively little time left for the coffee break. I'd like to resume our next panel at 11.30 sharp. Thank you very much.