 Stacy Connaughton, I'm a professor in the Brian Lam School of Communication and the Director of the Purdue Policy Research Institute, or PPRI as we call it here at Purdue. PPRI is so pleased to have this opportunity to co-host this lecture series with the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, as well as the Office of Global Partnerships and the Colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts. The Ambassadors Distinguished Lectures series at Purdue was developed to bring ambassadors and other distinguished diplomats into the Purdue University community to share their firsthand knowledge and experiences on a diversity of topics related to diplomatic challenges and opportunities, particularly in areas where Purdue has capacity to affect positive change. The series invites an engagement with real world issues across disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and agriculture, along with the social sciences and humanities. Today we are again so delighted to have with us Brazilian Ambassador Nestor Forster Jr. to speak about Brazilian diplomacy in innovation, technology, and agritech. At this time I am delighted to introduce the honorable Bonnie Glick, who will in turn introduce the Ambassador. As the former Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the US Agency for International Development, and with her extensive experience in diplomacy and in industry as well as university communities, we are so fortunate to have her here at Purdue. Bonnie, please come to the podium to introduce the Ambassador. Thank you Stacey that's so very kind and I really appreciate the welcome here every time I come to Purdue. This is like a wonderful break from where I live in Washington DC. As Lucas just said from the Brazilian Embassy there's so much space here, and it's really true in Indiana in the heartland of the United States. There's a lot of space there's a lot of green space, a lot of activity that fills that space, and we feel it every time we come to campus, and we have an opportunity to interact with students with faculty and with people who are live streaming with us. And it will be taking questions as well on the on the link online. We're so happy to have all of you who are able to join us here in person. It is so wonderful to be able to see faces, and to engage with both the faculty and the student body in an area that's so important to the world, which is innovation. Brazil is uniquely positioned as a country that is at the leading edge of innovation, and Ambassador Forster here in the United States has innovation and Brazil's unique expertise in areas around innovation as one of the key structures of Brazil's diplomatic representation here in the United States, and around the world. Ambassador Forster is uniquely positioned to fill this role for us here in the United States to present Brazilian innovation. He has served numerous tours of duty here in the United States, not just in Washington DC, but in Hartford, Connecticut, in the Brazilian Consulate, as well as in New York. And it is by and he's also served in Canada, and in Costa Rica so he is really learned in the Americas, North America and South America. And for us, it is a unique pleasure to invite Ambassador Forster here to talk to us at Purdue University about innovation diplomacy, Brazil's position in this role as a leader in the global economy, global development and global diplomacy. Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for coming here and please, we're all excited to hear from you. Thank you very much, Bonnie Glick, for that kind introduction. It's, I'd like to, you know, thank everyone who worked to organize this event here tonight. I want to thank Dean Chang and Dr. Conathan, who's going to be speaking with us. I thank Dr. Flavio Ibedo for his warm welcome and Dr. Donna Weinstein, with whom we met earlier today. I also want to thank President Mitch Daniels for a very warm welcome. Let me tell you something. This is not working so we'll be aside. This is for me, it's a bit of a dream come true to be at Purdue tonight with you and to be able to tell you a little bit about my country. And I think it will become clear why I say it's a dream come true. If we take into account the long history of cooperation of this institution with institutions in my country and the great fruits it has produced so far, and we look forward to having an even bigger harvest in the years to come. What I'll talk to you about tonight at the topic here is innovation and technology and techs and so on. Before we jump into that, I don't like to speak on a void, on an ether. Before we can innovate, we need to have, you know, something to innovate from. So I'd like to share with you just a brief set of slides here that I call Brazil Update. I want to make a very brief mention of where we are today in economic terms. I also like to touch on a very momentous discussions about climate change and the environment and so on. And the many things we read in the press about Brazil, not always accurate, I must add. And I'd like to set the record straight for you tonight. And then I'll delve into the topic of you know what we have been trying to do and what we call innovation diplomacy, which involves the works of many units of the Brazilian government around the world we have over 200 representations around the globe. And of course I'm going to be focusing what we're trying to do in the United States and was in Washington and the network of consulates we have in this country which is about 10 in 10 different cities, including the great city of Chicago and the next door here to Indiana. Let me start just by highlighting, you know what we've done in terms of the recovery from the pandemic. I'm not going to talk about the health issues that's mostly taken care of. Thanks be to God. You know just want to bring to you information that you know our economy speaking up strongly last year with the recovery lost ground during the pandemic we have a very robust growth of 4.6% in 2021. You know, a huge increase in foreign direct investment in Brazil, Brazil being one of the countries, especially in the developing world, which attracted most foreign investment. We also had a huge effort from the government in trying to help those most hurt by the pandemic, including people who could not stay home in their pajamas and with their laptops needed to go out, you know, win the bread for their families. So there was a stronger fiscal impact, especially doing 2020 in Brazil, and we are glad report that we have recovered, and we're in a very fiscal solid fiscal position this year. The labor market speaking up and unemployment is down significantly. And the most importantly and this is a direct impact for our relation with the United States and even with the state of Indiana specifically is that after a fall in our foreign trade in 2020 pandemic related. It picked up strongly we had an increase of 35% in our bilateral trade with the United States last year, and, including with Indiana which jumped over 20% I was just checking the numbers. We had a bilateral trade Brazil, state of Indiana of $1.2 billion last year from the economy. I just want to talk a little bit about the Amazon, you know, we cannot talk about Brazil not talk about one of the greatest and natural assets we have in our countries are the only one but certainly the greatest. And the first thing I like to point out so people don't get misled about the Amazon is on fire and the tipping point because the road is going to be built etc. Is that the Amazon, what you see there with the flags on the north part of Brazil. It equals six times the size of the largest American state which is the state of Texas. So the Amazon equals the Brazilian Amazon equals six times the state of Texas. You could also say that it equals six times the size of Ukraine, Texas and Ukraine have about the same area of territory. So the Amazon is six Ukraine's Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, as we all know of that. We have a very important part of that is very well preserved. Actually, it's over 80% of the Amazon is untouched. And I'm going to explain to you a bit more about that. It has a lot to do with what we see here if you can in the back and read what's in there. This shows, you know, for the Amazon by your what we do here, and you know, the amount of areas which are protected areas by law. You know, some part of it is indigenous reservations in these lands 25% about 28% are. I'm sorry, 16% conservation units we're talking about national parks and preservation areas, and about 28% is a very unique thing that we have in Brazil, which is a requirement of our forest record that if you own land in the Amazon, you have to work on 20% of the land you want 80% must be put aside must retain its original vegetation. So that amounts for 28% of the preservation we have in the Amazon, these are private citizens were playing a great role in terms of preservation, keeping the forest standing. And we've been working in many ways including multi electoral fora, such as the Paris agreement you saw the conference we had in Glasgow last November in C, trying to find new ways creative ways to remunerate these people. So they have no incentives, not to follow our law it's very strict you have nothing similar in any other part of the world, you know requiring you to keep 80% of your property on the side. If you put everything together you put the light greens and the hard greens together you get to 84.1% I think is, which is protected and preserved areas in the Amazon. So to give you know, just an overview that that's tremendous asset supports what you know the United Nations say it's the largest biodiversity of any country in the world we're very proud of that. We have between 15 and 20% of all the species in the world are in are there in Brazil in general, spend, you know, a large extent in the Amazon, over 100,000 species of animals 40,000 species of plants. And what I like about this, aside from the pink dolphin which is one of my favorite animals and you can only find it in the Amazon river I've been there I saw it it's really, you know, incredible as smart as they're cousin from from the seas. But you know pink, all pink male and female all pink it's very funny. Now, what I like is going to say is that, even though we have this tremendous biodiversity, it's, it's growing year after year. There are about 700 new species of animals which are discovered every year in Brazil, specifically in the Amazon. So it's not drinking it's it's growing stronger. And this is what we bring to the table, the preservation of 84% of the Amazon, which is, you know, almost half of the Brazilian territory with this great biodiversity. Then we move to energy. And I like to highlight this, you know, I'm sorry about bragging a little bit but I have to face up lots of criticism which we find unwarranted so we need to talk about the good things. We're talking to propaganda. This are hard data you can verify it's all sourced. It's not sourced here will provide you with the source. So this is Brazil's energy mix. And we say that we are today, where many countries many more advanced countries have pledged to be in 15 or 20 years. What am I talking about. I'm talking about the fact that about half of all the energy consuming Brazil comes from renewable sources, half of all the energy. It comes into electricity electric sector in Brazil that's 85% comes from renewable sources. Large part of that is hydro about 60 something percent, but you have biofuels you have a growing role played by wind, about 10% of our energy comes from windmills. And we have new projects to, to, you know, increase that I'm going to talk about when we get into the technology part of it. But you can see it's something, you know, to be to be proud of to some extent this combination of environmental assets, the biodiversity supports what we're doing with the energy. And of course, this is a direct impact on the environment, a positive impact. Let's move on to our main topic here, and then we'll delve into some of the specifics the connections you want to make, including with your great institution here of Purdue University. So, you know, we have a scene in Brazil, which is very vibrant in terms of innovation. We went see the numbers there we went with the number of startups in 2015 from 3000. We went to 13,000 in 2021 so little over five years, we almost quadrupled the number of startups, the investment growing up tremendously as well. Brazil has been a leader in the number of unicorns we are number three in the world in 2019. 2021, we had our first deca corn, a new word for me, I don't know the youngest, the younger part of our audience here might be familiar with that. That's when a unicorn reaches 10 billion dollars or they call it deca corn. I just learned the word recently. And you know Brazil has more than half 60% of all Latin American unicorns. I'm going to be talking a bit later about one almost unicorn, which is currently housed in this university in which we had the pleasure and the honor to visit this afternoon and I learned a lot there I want to share something of that with you. Just let me highlight what we've been trying to do in terms of what we call innovation diplomacy. As I said, we try to use you know the resources we have our diplomatic representations and consulates around the world. We have 200 something 215 to 220 different offices in mostly every country. And we have a program which we've been using for the past five years we call it innovation. And it has just a basic ideas of what we try to do in terms of specifically attracting investments, identify opportunities between countries. And of course the US has a very important role to play with its own innovation ecosystem which is supposed to be one of the most vibrant dynamic in the world. So we try to identify you know whatever synergies partnerships can be developed between Brazilian companies, American companies, how we can attract investment in high tech areas to Brazil. We try to support not that it's wrong in their internalization the internationalization of the long word of startups, and of course promoting you know high tech product services and so on. And among those are our agricultural products, I'd say, but one of the most important aspects of what you see on the right side of the diaspora diaspora mobilization. So we have this expression of Brazilian scientific science and technology diaspora, meaning people like Dr Rebeiro here who have left Brazil, and have studied a lot, you know, masters doctorate postdoc studies etc in great American universities, and have come to great positions here had important research centers. And that we see we think that these people play a very important role in trying to make these connections that I mentioned between you know Brazilian companies Brazilian research institutions and so on. And these people these presidents were here in the US they agree with us on that. And that's why we have this annual event that we host at the embassy usually at the end of the year early December. Of course with the pandemics we had to miss that last two years, but we are very excited to try to do it this year. Here let me briefly introduce to you my colleague Lucas frota Lucas heads our section, entirely devoted to promoting investment and increasing trade between our countries, you know, export exports imports both sides. And look has also helped us organize this meeting, we have a sector at the embassy for science and technology which plays a role here. And we usually bring around about 100 people from around the country to Washington DC. We have the science and technology diaspora award, which we give at this occasion. But most of all we promote big workshops in a focused on specific issues on how we can increase the connections the synergies there, the networking. So, you know, I hope to see some of you perhaps there later this year in DC, when we do this, specifically, you know about the work that the agenda of our embassy here. As director body click mention that the cat go here. This is an important part of what we try to do. And we're very proud of what we achieved last year when Brazil was the first Latin American country to join the so called Artemis project. I assume most of you will be familiar with it, at least from your Greek mythology readings you know Artemis was the sister of Apollo. So that's why Artemis is the project that will take the first woman to the moon, and then beyond the project supposed to go to Mars, later on, based on on on on whatever can be done in terms of a lunar base to do that. So Brazil is joined the project, and we are looking we're meeting actually next week there's a meeting between the Brazilian space agency and NASA to look into ways how we can, you know, do concrete things about this, bringing the private sectors on both sides. And we see enormous potential because it's space. And there are data out there, you who are more familiar technology must know this data better than I do but for every dollar you put in invest in technology in space the multiplying effect is, you know, usually at several times larger than in other areas. It has 1400 projects already identified within Artemis. Brazil is thinking about two things, you know, one is launching a nano satellite to orbit the moon, and from the lunar orbit to observe the climate on Earth. There are special things you can do about the climate on Earth from a lunar perspective, if you will, that you cannot do from, you know, an Earth orbit. So that's one thing, and that will involve a great institution we have in Brazil, which is the Air Force Technology Technological Institute, ITA, Institute Technological Aeronautica, just outside Sao Paulo in São José dos Campos. And that's where our aeronautics industry started, Embraer connected to that. And with the greatest story of connection to the United States, this is not to with Purdue University but the MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was the of our own technological institute. And today we have their Embraer, the third largest country cluster, I'm sorry, of aerospace industry in the world after going here and the Airbus consortium in Europe. And that we have some 300 companies that are based there in São José dos Campos, we want to bring the whole purpose used to bring, you know, more projects, more viability to about 10% of those companies which directly related to space. And we have many startups in that area as well. So we're looking to ways how to make that, you know, maximize that potential. And the other project, and this is very dear to my heart, I have my little diplomatic dream is to do that robotic vehicle that's mentioned there, which would conduct mineral experiments on the surface of the moon. We're talking with different Brazilian companies which might have an interest in, you know, supporting the project, but my diplomatic dream about this would be that, you know, NASA scheduled to land on the moon in 2024. That might be a revision of that date. We would hope that they would be able to keep it because in 2024 Brazil and the US are going to celebrate 200 years of unbroken diplomatic relations. The US was one of the first countries to recognize Brazil's independence, President Monroe back in 1824. John Quincy Adams was then Secretary of State played an important role in that. And I think it would be, you know, very significant for both our countries to have this lunar vehicle with both flags flying there, you know, signifying this unbroken two centuries of friendship. Brazil doesn't have that with any country in the world with any other country in the world. But what about your South American neighbors, we have great relations with all our 10 neighbors in South America. We recently, a young colleague of mine in the foreign ministry found out that actually Argentina recognized Brazil's independence ahead of the United States for three months, you know, he was spent, you know, many hours in libraries and looking to old documents and so on. And he found that and that's nice. Okay, so it was, I don't know, late in 1823. But the sad thing about this is that the relationship with Argentina was broken just two years later in 1825 we went to war with them. You know, when, you know, cisplatin war which ended up creating Uruguay and so on. And again in 1850, I'm not going to delve too much into that. The special thing with the US 200 years of unbroken, you know, relations with you know, great moments, very close moments, others not so much. But the friendship element has always been there, you know, based on these values we share of you know, democratic values, the rule of law, economic freedom. And the respect for human rights, you know, perhaps a few years ago, this kind of talk would sound very abstract and that's why diplomats talk about this abstract concept. But in the world we live in today, I think we can see how concrete these things are and how they bring countries together, especially moments of challenges and crisis. As I said before the, you have there the diaspora played a very important role, plays a very important role in approaching research institutions in both our countries. And of course this institution here plays a very played plays and played a very important role. I don't know if you're all familiar with how deep those ties go. It goes all the way back to the 1950s, when the first missions from Purdue University, went to Brazil. They went specifically to a university which was nascent back then it's called Visosa University State of Minas Gerais. And before I went to the airport this morning I was speaking with our Minister of Agriculture, a great lady called Teresa Cristina. And I was telling her, look, I'm going to fulfill my dream of visiting Purdue University had this great invitation. And she said, oh, they did a great thing and they did a great thing for my alma mater for the university I went to which is Visosa so you see the connection there, and you see the fruits in many forms. This is one of them. Look at Brazil, what was going on in Brazil agriculture in the 50s and 60s. You see, you know, a very low tech operation, low productivity, very hard time finding the right seeds the right techniques to plant in our tropical climate and our tropical environment. That's when, you know, these the influence of Purdue began to be felt with these people having a new outlook on how to do things in agriculture. People nobody talked about ag tech back then I'm sure but you know was there they're doing just that they're bringing technology into agriculture. And in 1972, the Brazilian research company was created. It was a, you know, created as a state company, they had something different it was not one more state company, where you put your, you know, relatives in good jobs. It was created with a very, let's say private sector outlook was organized like a private company and that's part of its success that's why I highlighted. And then you see that beginning, you know, from the first years. Leaders from Embrapa came to study here in West Lafayette and Purdue University. And, you know, this connection never stopped. She had begun in the 1950s, 60s with Vissosa, then Embrapa connected with Purdue and the people who studied here who did a master's doctor here. They took to Brazil this novel idea of having a scientific approach to agriculture, so called science based agriculture right. And what we did is to adapt whatever they learn here in terms of agricultural techniques and try to apply that to the specific conditions of Brazil ecosystems, you know, mostly tropical not all tropical part of it is temperate. And there you have the numbers and how it has increased, you know, since 2000 we have multiplied by three, the number of Brazilian students here in Purdue. We're just starting to Dr. Chang that we need to multiply that by 10 perhaps, you know, and there's even a mission going from from the university here in June to Brazil to try to help promote that that rapprochement. And, you know, we are all for it. One more fruit here of this great cooperation. If you look back in the 1970s Brazil was a net importer of foodstuffs, meaning Brazil could not feed its own population. 50 years later, the picture has changed a bit. You see there are some of the main crops and some of, you know, protein groups there. And if you look at the middle column there you know the first one is production, the second is exports. This is the first in sugar, coffee, orange juice, soybean, beef, poultry, second in corn, fourth in pork. So that's really impressive. And what accounts for that, you know, part of it is this institution, the cooperation we had, science based agriculture, which does great things for the environment as well. Let me move on here. So you see here in a, I just like to highlight this to see, you know, what it means in very practical terms. So if you look at the crops between 7640 years, 76 to 2016, we had a fourfold 400% increase in agricultural production, 400%. So it's, it's doubling every 10 years, right. And what about the amount of soil you're using for the resources they use land use for it. It increased only by a third. It's incredible disparity. Look at the graph on the right. You see that flat light at the bottom that's the area used for crops in Brazil. You see the red line going up that's output production. The disparity is what's called productivity, right. You're using basically the same or, you know, the same amount of land and you're producing several times more. If you look into livestock, livestock, as you know, it's very land intensive and gets blamed a lot for whatever people don't like about Brazil. And but if you look at it, this is a hard data, you know, between 1990 and 2018, and we could update you to today, we have an increase of about 140% in our beef production 140% increase. What about the land usage, it declined, it declined 15%. How do you explain that productivity, you're harvesting the beef earlier, you have more advanced techniques for production for inseminations, speech selection, etc, etc. You end up with this, which is good for the environment. It's good for food security around the world. In the case of beef, it's good for our Sunday barbecues as well. We're very fond of that in the part of Brazil where I'm from. Let me make that joke. So, yeah. And, you know, according to you, the USDA here in the US, you see the graph there at the bottom, Brazil is the country which had the largest increase in productivity in the last 20 years, among the biggest agricultural production countries. So, talking about the environment, this is a graph that shows the amount of crop land used in countries. Look at Brazil there at the bottom, that's 7.6% for those of you who cannot read in the back, 7.6%. You keep going up there, China is almost twice as much. The US three times as much. Then you go to Europe. Look, it jumped from 7% in Brazil. Germany is over 50% of their territory is used for crops. And you can go, you know, 60% in India, you go all the way in the northern countries, Ukraine there, 74%, etc. This tremendous environmental impact involved in that. So that's another, this highlights the importance of technology, of ag tax of the cooperation I have mentioned here several times, which enables us to with a small part of our territory produce such a great output. So, you know, we have become a leader in the whole ag tech business of our very vibrant startup scene. We have, you know, about 1500 focus specifically on ag tech, 90% of the investment on ag tax in Latin America goes to Brazil. And, you know, I just want to share with you, I'm taking too much time here. This is almost the end of what I saw here when I visited the technological center here at Purdue this afternoon earlier this afternoon, this company called Solfin Tech. Solfin Tech, that's a funny name. Solfin Tech, I have to get a hold of it. Solfin Tech started, I don't know, 10 years ago, they're almost in unicorn, they're getting there. And what they do is really something that we usually think, you know, when I make my presentations here, you think abstractly, you don't realize these things are already happening. What am I talking about? They are using all the inputs that go into the production of grains, for instance, they are using technology as much as technology is available, meaning they equip whatever machines are there to disperse fertilizers or to sow seeds or to use crop remedies, whatever. These are all connected online, and they apply, for instance, they apply fertilizers, they apply crop remedies, according to sensors, which is basically artificial intelligence. It's not more one or two things being used, but it's a bunch of things intersecting, like, you know, the level of humidity, the whole meteorological outlook for the region at that specific moment. It's all in real time online, so it's spraying a crop remedy, it's taking into account the speed of the wind at that moment. You see this sort of thing, this is done remotely, of course, and this brings a degree of precision to agriculture, which agriculture never had. And I find it fascinating that if you think about, you know, I'm very fond of the history of food, if you look at, you know, how food production evolved throughout history. You see that these things that some of us like from, let's say, from the European countries, which have developed this appellation and this demarcation of land specifically to produce this wine or this cheese or this whatever kind of crop. This was developed over time and over time and, you know, with one generation passing the little knowledge that they had of the terrain and the technique and this and that took centuries to get to this very special wine or this very special cheese or whatever. Today what we're seeing with the technological revolution, which has kind of standardizes everything massively produced, etc. We are paradoxically seeing, and I just heard this afternoon, what they call decommodation, which is going back to the old times, because people want to know, where did my cheese come from? What was the environmental impact? Are you cutting the rainforest to make my barbecue and so on? With technology, we can do that. There's a tremendous degree of traceability and with that comes accountability. So I was really excited to see that. And I just want to wrap up here before too long with, you know, what we've done. So I traced it for you a brief picture of what we're trying to do here in terms of the culture of technology and the environment. And these are just highlighting some of the things we did with our commitments in terms of environmental preservation, climate change and so on. This is how things evolved, but the important one is one on the right on Glasgow, how Brazil was able to increase its objectives. Just want to make the final point that these are not empty pledges. These are not just for show to appear nice at the picture. Brazil has committed to energy transition by 2050 or has increased its national determined contribution to reduce its greenhouse gases from 43% compared to 2005, which is the base year to 50% by 2030. You know, all these tremendous, tremendous advances. This is not for show. This is based in what I was telling you, mentioning it to you before here agricultural technology and what Brazil already brings to the table in terms of our energy mix of our environmental preservation. And the last thing which is very new that this zero methane program sent us three days ago by our minister of the environment and the president. And this is basically going to use methane emissions, which come from land fuels comes from livestock from animal waste in in livestock production, etc. They're going to use this to generate biogas and specifically my own met biomethane and the idea is to replace the diesel fuel that's used in buses and trucks around the country. This plays a big role in transportation in Brazil, about 70% of it can be replaced by this new initiative, which of course is the Brazilian contribution to the reduction, so called metham pledge which you also did in Glasgow. This is just in a nutshell we could talk much more I'm sorry if I went a bit over time, but I thank you very much for your audience and I'm ready to have a conversation and whatever questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you for you. Yeah. Thank you. All right, well we are getting settled into our chairs here please I encourage you all to be thinking of questions to ask the ambassador and director click based on our conversation so far things that you are going to hear as we continue our conversation. And that also very much includes those of you listening to the live stream. Our dear friend Heidi Arola from the Office of Global Partnerships is going to be watching the chat. And so please please do feel free to raise your hands perverbably online to ask some questions as well. Those of you here in the room as a question occurs to you. Please raise your hand. I encourage the students to do that very much. And we will we will call on you. Ambassador thank you for such a wonderful and engaging conversation I had heard that you are going to be engaging and you did not disappoint so thank you so very very much. And I wondered if you might. Since we're at a university of higher education. What is one of the many wonderful things that you talked about that Brazil had Brazil has done in the areas of tech diplomacy and innovation that you would like the United States to learn from Brazil. In terms of, well, you know it's usually. Can I use this mic. I have my own. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the question. It's usually the other way around right we are always thinking about what what Brazil can learn with the US. And I totally get your point it's a two way street. And, you know, I don't think I can point to one single specific thing. Perhaps this what we've been trying to do with our diaspora. The thing is that the US doesn't have a big diaspora the other way around you're a big magnet you attract people here to study in the great American institutions. And perhaps, you know, we have many people who have gone to Brazil in other areas, perhaps getting that knowledge together that can produce great results it's our experience with our people here in the United States at least. Wonderful wonderful. You know, director click this gives me an opportunity you know you were instrumental in bringing the ambassador here you and Dean Chang and the Center for tech diplomacy at Purdue the series that you have founded and begun and the center in general. How did you all decide to do it and why at Purdue. I have a feeling that the students know why at Purdue probably far more even than I do I Purdue fancies itself accurately to be the cradle of astronauts. And we like to think of it now to as the they also say cradle of basketball and hopefully will that'll play out this week. I, but also we like to think of it now as the cradle of tech diplomacy. When you think about where technology happens around the world but particularly in the United States, your mind almost automatically goes to Silicon Valley. And to argue that that is not necessarily where one's mind should go. And when you think about diplomacy, you immediately think about Washington DC, or New York. Okay, but America, and the role that the United States plays is more than just the role that's played on these two coasts of the United States. Which Daniels often says and I often echo that the Switzerland of the United States is West Lafayette Indiana. And this is the place that's neutral ground where stuff is created where technology is built and is built upon. And so there was a natural reason to have it here at Purdue. But I think also the welcoming nature that I hope Mr Ambassador you've seen since coming here to campus, the welcoming nature that we have here at Purdue is something that makes it a very natural place to have as our, our foothold in Switzerland. Thank you director click. We have Professor Gordy, who has a question for us. I have traveled back to India from time to time I have become used to the go Ray which was my name growing up but it's become go in this country. I'm an immigrant from India, but the thought I had and this is something great that our president, Mitch Daniels has done here at Purdue very early in his presidency. He made an executive decision that students at Purdue will own the intellectual property rights to their discoveries and their inventions. The question honorable Mr Ambassador I would have is, you talked about innovation in Brazil and particularly educational institutions and their collaborations with Purdue, including my colleague, Professor Fabio Rebeiro center. What are the intellectual property rules laws that apply to students in Brazilian universities and how do you encourage their discovering new ideas and inventions and filing for intellectual property. Professor very thank you very much for that great question. Look, I'm glad to report I was we're talking about startups and so one. We just Brazil just passed a new law to address exactly your concern. So the startups and innovation law, especially by Congress last year, and it addresses many of the questions pertaining to how you streamline, you know, intellectual property protection, and regulates specifically how you know public institutions private institutions and students might interact with that. I will tell you that it's exactly the same as you have here in Purdue University under the leadership of President Daniels, but I can tell you that it's been considered one of the most advanced legislations to promote innovation to support the startups including what you know that the activity of researchers and students. Wonderful. Do any of the students in the audience have a question. Be thinking, I want to make sure we include you if you would like to to engage with the ambassador directly. Mr ambassador and nation oftentimes has two fundamental tools that are at its disposal to influence the behavior of others. One being diplomacy, right, the other being I'll call it a state of force, right, through the Department of State in the US through the Department of Defense if you will in the US context as well. Recently we've been hearing a lot about the use of technology in the latter right in the use of force, but I'm wondering if you might again focus us on the former right on the diplomatic side and give us perhaps some examples of how tech diplomacy has been useful in your experience in conflict resolution or bringing people together, right, humanitarian reasons, if you will. Yeah, great question. Yeah, that's, you know, very much in in everybody's mind. Let me tell you this, I mean, you're talking about the distinction between the hard power soft power and technology specifically on diplomacy. It's been a great tool for us in many respects. For instance, let me give you some concrete examples. The ability you have through social media for instance to interact with Brazilian communities and this of course applies to any country, you know, through our or a concert network and you know addressing the concerns of specific communities in a timely fashion. It's it's fantastic something you know you're going to dream before if you're doing it before you had social media email whatever. At the same time, I like to highlight when I talk about you know technology and diplomacy about the challenges that it brings to us to our activity. I'm a career diplomat I've been doing this for 37 years you can imagine that in the early 90s when I posted posted abroad for the first time in our embassy in Washington DC. The internet was still a nascent animal, you know, and it was different we worked more with written sources, you know, newspapers or physical things and you got the print out of the hearings on Capitol Hill and so on. And I'd say that it poses many challenges perhaps the biggest one, bigger as much as it is useful and nobody's going to dispute that especially at this place. And then this talk, but one thing that we miss sometimes is for a long time, diplomacy, foreign policy had its kind of its niche it's protected space it's bubble space if you will, because you know diplomacy deals with what is more permanent in the interests of a country deals with you know, more perennial fundamental and changeable values of what my country what does Brazil stand for, not today or tomorrow but you know, you know, for a long time, what is the history of the country are the values you defend and so on. So, you know domestic politics wouldn't interfere too much with foreign policy, it's kind of protected online communication social media center ended that world. It's not that it's ending it's in the wild ago is just realizing the effects right now. And you saw this in this country and we are seeing it around the world. How does the connection between what's going on in domestic policies which are day to day what's going on the hill today you say in this country here you know, in foreign policy you know what's going on the State Department today well it's been going for a while right. I'd say this brings tremendous challenges for our activity for for diplomacy to be as effective as it is I'm not army to you know let's go back to turn the clock back. But I think we need to at least have clarity about the division between what's you know the long term longer term objectives the permanent interests and what's more you know passing. You know, will not be here in a couple of months or years. I think I'm wondering if if you have anything to add given all of your background and we could talk about challenges to that you might see as as well. Sure, I mean I think this era that we're living in now, and now by now I mean today. And we're seeing in real time in Europe. I know that's not the subject today but we're seeing in real time misinformation and disinformation at play in a live war. And that's the use of technology for good or ill as the ambassador was saying we're learning information, but we're also suffering from a barrage of disinformation and it's hard for people to separate out what is real what is going on. And what is this massive disinformation campaign from from an aggressor. So it's the world is complex technology in a university setting in a laboratory by and large is designed for good. As we saw from the ambassador's presentation, all of these things are advances. And yet at the same time, one of the aspects that we see with tech diplomacy and technology being at the fore is that it can be turned on its head. And that is something that we have to be cautious about. We've got some hands that have come up I'm going to invite this young woman here and if you might introduce yourself to the ambassador as well. Hi, nice to meet you. My name is Juliana I am a PhD student from Brazil. And I'm doing my PhD in seismic stability of lunar lava tubes. And I just heard about this innovation that related to NASA that it's where I get my data from. So if there is some connections between the interests of Brazil having some connections with professors here or how can I contribute to bring this technology to my country while I'm doing my PhD here. Wonderful Juliana glad glad to see you you know to have a Brazilian studying what you said is that it's size because I'm a PhD in civil engineering but my focus is underground structures. I'm studying the lava tubes on the moon. So it's seismic stability of lunar lava tubes. Yeah, fascinating fascinating. I think you know we have what was mentioned about the Artemis project and Brazil joining this. That's the sort of thing that we need to bring you know, research that's being done here by this case a Brazilian at an American institution. So there's research and it seems, you know, kind of very, very unique what you're doing, but I'm sure there's a connection to very practical applications of that. And that that's the beauty when technology, you know, comes to fruition. And we are here we are ready to work with Brazilian researchers beat through our diaspora initiatives be directly if you if you contact us to see how perhaps you could join this project that we're talking about there might be in our connection there with what we were talking about exploration of minerals in the lunar soil. It's it's one idea, but it's it's really great to see you know, Brazilian young lady like you studying here in such a specific area civil engineering congratulations. Thank you. I saw one more hand come up I be I believe that is Dean shyvely Jerry shyvely from the College of Agriculture. Thank you for the remarks really enjoyed them. We're very lucky because we have a veteran of us agency for international development with us. And you may want to speak to this but my question is directed at at the ambassador. As Brazil emerges on the global stage as a force, if you will, both in the technology space but as a large global economy. I'm curious how the country views its responsibility or its relationship with respect to bilateral and multilateral assistance, especially in the international development space. We've received a lot in the past. And now I wonder how you think about emerging on the other side of that. In the years ahead. Thank you very much for that question. It's something that we are, you know, paying close attention to. And as you said we receive so much in the past we were still receiving we have ongoing cooperation with so many institutions. One of the things we're doing, and it's not that we intend to do we're doing already is through and brought up through this agricultural research company to bring the technologies we have developed specifically for tropical agriculture to other countries in the world which may profit from this. We have projects in Africa, you know, countries which have sometimes similar conditions to ours. I know that we already work in Mozambique, for instance, in Angola. And, you know, other African countries not necessarily Portuguese speaking countries. And we're trying to do things with beyond that in India, for instance, we had a great presidential visit there over two years ago. And one of the things we considered is how can we bring this whole technology that Brazil developed for ethanol, you know, ethanol is alcohol made of sugar cane. Brazil is the largest producer in the world has developed, you know, lots of technology with that, including this company I visited this afternoon here they began working with the sugar cane industry and so on. So, you know, things to do to to know about that and why is that important why would be great to do that with India and perhaps with China and other big countries around the world is this a car powered by ethanol sugar cane, ethanol produces about between 60 and 70% less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. That's one thing. The second thing, it's a renewable, you know, you can plant the sugar cane every year it's an annual crop in Brazil actually can produce two crops in the same year. But they are doing something new in technology, which you know I find it very exciting which is this, you usually use only the stock of the sugar cane plants to produce the alcohol, the rest you throw out. They developed a technique to use what they call second generation ethanol which uses the leaves of the plant so using the stock and then use the leaf, and you can increase production by using the leaves between 30 and 40%. Same carbon footprint same plant same land etc. are using second generation you increase in production. But wait, call now and we'll add third generation ethanol on this. It's you know it's I was shocked when I was told this well when do you intend to do is already doing what's third generation ethanol. Once you've processed the stock and the leaf, you have a refuge which you know, people usually throw it back on the soil. Yeah, kind of a fertilizer. Now, they now are putting this into a pool and using some micro agents, biological agents that turn this refuge into bio electricity source of electricity and this electricity is firing the whole operation of the ethanol farm. So this is incredibly sustainable and you know, incredibly forward looking in terms of the environment climate change etc. But this is something that we are very excited to try to bring to other kinds we don't want to sell more ethanol we sell a lot and so on I heard this from the largest producer in Brazil said, look I'm not looking for new markets we all have you know them all. What I want is to teach people how to you know, use this new technology. So that would be I think a great way professor to you know, to give back and I'm giving one specific example because I know a bit about that I did some research but that extends to other crops and you know fundamental crops for some countries and we're ready to work with them. And sometimes doing trilateral cooperation with American institutions for you for instance could be one of them. You know, and we work with the USDA in what we call trilateral cooperation with African countries and other parts of the world. Well everyone this has been an amazing do we have time for one more question. I have a question from the chat. Yes, let's do let our online audience ask a question. Yes, so Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Purdue, Professor Domendra Saraswat has a question. It's a little bit specific, but it is Brazilian agriculture statistics point to a fantastic development story. What could be behind the fact that only two Brazilians have been recognized for their contributions through the world food prize. Good point. Good point. Let's start. Let's start. Let's change that. Yeah, I'm all for it. Yes. Well we know that there are many things that play into that but I think there's you know growing recognition of the role played especially by by other centers around the country, which play a role in agriculture research, and we all for recognizing more that those great great leaders. We have I mentioned her by name because I'm a great admirer of our Minister of Agriculture, a woman who came from the sector of agriculture in Brazil. Her family had a small farm. She was one of the first women to graduate from Visosa in the class that had 100 men, I think two women or or she was the only one something like that. And she went on to be a leader of a union leader. She went on to be a private sector, you know, run a big private sector company is always in agribusiness and so on. She was a federal representative in Brazil. Now Minister of Agriculture, she's done it all, and she's done it very well so perhaps she's my candidate for recognition of next prize food prize. Oh, Mr. Ambassador, Director Glick this has been such an enjoyable conversation and our hour has passed us so I am going to turn it over to Director Glick for a very special presentation. So Mr. Ambassador just a small token of our gratitude here at Purdue, a small gift to demonstrate the global nature of what we are doing here upside down. It's the globe and open on Brazil in the US here on the right page. Exactly on the Purdue page. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. And on that note, many thanks to all of you for being here to Dean Chong to Dean Plout and and all of you in the audience and streaming online with us. Thank you all have a great evening. Thank you.