 Hello everyone Thank you all for joining us today For the highest inaugural symposium My name is Daphne Manusaki and together with Efthimios Caxiras We will be the moderators for the science and engineering symposium. So at this point I would like Shall I invite the panelists now? So I would like to invite the panelists to come and have a seat at the table so Dini Jortzos, please Professor Mitkas, Apostolis Dimitropoulos, Margarita Hli and Foti Sotiropoulos All four sessions today will follow the same format a keynote lecture will be followed by short presentations by the panelists After the panel presentations There will be an open discussion between the keynote speaker and the panelists and the audience that is all of you And after which the panelists will make their closing remarks So let's start this morning science and engineering education session We are delighted to have Dean Jortzos as our keynote speaker Yanis Jortzos Is the Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the holder of the Caprilli and Dean's chair and the Dolly Professorship in chemical engineering He's a graduate of the Metzovian Polytechnia in Athens and hold our masters and PhD degrees from the California Institute of Technology all in chemical engineering He has held appointments as chair of chemical engineering and associate dean of engineering prior to assuming in 2005 the duties of dean of engineering Yanis was inducted in the US National Academy of Engineering in 2008 He's an associate member of the Athens Academy since 2013 and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor also in 2013 since 2017 he serves on the Council of the National Academy of Engineering Along with two colleagues at Olin College and Uke University. He co-founded in 2009 the Grand Challenges Scholars Program which received the 2022 Golden Prize of the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 he spearheaded a US wide initiative to enhance the diversity of engineering schools Sorry, I should have taken my mask off An effort that culminated in the creation of the American Association of Engineering Education of a diversity Recognition process now adopted by more than 200 engineering schools in the US for this initiative. He received the 2017 American Science and Engineering Education President's Award since 2022 he is the PI of the NSFI course hub West region one of the five such innovation hubs in the US To promote technology innovation in the Western United States He's an advocate of engineering plus a vision for engineering as the enabling discipline of our times Dean you're just thank you very much. It's an honor Doesn't miss therapy Yeah, did you move more Canada now after the okay, and I'm listening to science and engineering education It's a great pleasure As the ambassador mentioned being in Mekonos actually I am from Rhodes. So we beat Mekonos every day Every time of the day in terms of beaches and things like that. Just just just letting you know Actually, the next event maybe should happen in rodas pedros I I will provide the recommendations for places there My I have decided to talk a little bit about Science and Engineering Education in general With some emphasis on what we should be doing here in Greece. I think we can be Pioneers in this in some way as you will see in a moment. I Wanted to mention that This is a inaugural symposium. I suppose I have to push a button for down close from here Restore Okay Cut as I was looking at the at the Program, I realized that there was a big word mission from the bridges It was bridging in education science and innovation. So added in blue engineering as well I'm an engineer by training. I think engineering and science and are converging And so it's important to also call out engineering as well though because engineering somehow happens to be Sort of a ignored a little bit. We talk about science I think it's important to recognize the engineering and technology are essentially driving our world today together with science But I think we should be calling out the word engineering as well. So that's my little contribution to this thing there back in 2004 the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council published a Report called the engineer of 2020 Many of us in higher education engineering Read this report very carefully because it shaped the evolution of engineering education in recent years since 2004 Became a dean in 2005 and I remember how important it was for me to articulate a vision for engineering in the United States in under the United States in my own institution that was preceded actually by another report called in Innovation that happened in the United States in the 20 20th century and that's actually relevant to the engineer of 2020 The interesting thing is though the engineer of 2020 graduated two years ago And so the question is what is the engineer of the future? What is the future engineer of 2020? This is a question that's up for grabs right now I and I know that the National Academy of Engineering in the United States is trying to perhaps create a new report or a new effort in this area But what about if we actually use this as an opportunity to create the new engineer of 2020 for Greece What about if we put together a group here and try to understand what should be the attributes and The education necessary for the engineer of 2020 the Greek engineer of 2020 That's actually a proposal that I'm making here as part of my contribution I will make one more proposal in a moment And I will discuss possible big building blocks for this and Many of them will involve grand challenges the word grand challenge came out as part of the conversation that we had earlier on here I think grand challenges will become important because Purpose is something that's becoming more and more important on what we do in our life Choosing goals is an ethical decision and when whatever goals we choose Reflects what's our ethics and what's our determination and therefore the next question will be What are the grad challenges for engineering in Greece? These are essentially create an a roadmap and this roadmap will also be able to allow us to think about the Connections and the bridges that we can have between the US or the world and Greece itself I think these are two issues when I was elected into the Academy of Athens and the pistol on melon. I actually posed the same question then what are the grand challenges for engineering in Greece? I did not get an answer for the last nine years Hopefully will be able to come up with something that says these are the big grand challenges without settings these big grand challenges and goals I think we will miss a lot of opportunities to develop Systematic things to move ahead and I know that these are not easy things to do because there are politics their policies associated with that But I think it's a very important opportunity for us to pursue Because I may run out of time, I just give you the summary of my presentation here some of the key considerations I Defined technology and engineering in a very simple way Leveraging phenomena and creating knowledge This is actually what we do as engineers. We're not only and scientists We create knowledge, but also we leverage phenomena for useful purposes and there is a convergence associated with that because a single Discipline does not alone is not able alone to create this phenomena and create synergies The second is what I call the four buckets and this is sort of a muscle hierarchy for the planet There's a muscle hierarchy for individuals, which is you know How individuals progress from being safe secure healthy to enjoying life? And I think the same thing applies to what we do in a field like engineering and a discipline like engineering and scientists as well a Third very important question, and I think this is clearly clear to everybody is that the world is moving exponentially fast now in the absence of geopolitical Disturbances wars and so on so forth if we let innovation proceed It will not only go exponentially fast You will it go even faster than that and I have a theory for this which I will show you in a moment This requires purpose And because of this technology which exponentially fast you can be Therefore solve big problems, and that's actually the opportunity ahead of us How do we use this tremendous power that we have in order to solve problems and that means purpose of agility? And I use the word innovativeness, but Technology as we have seen very clearly contains also the seeds of unintended Consequences and unintended consequences can be equally powerful, and this is where trustworthiness and Human centricity come into play We cannot pretend that this engineer or our scientists are decoupled from society and that what we do It's for the sake of advancing technology itself without considering the ethical consideration that come along Social media is a classical example of this, and I will say a few words about that Finally in a world which exponentially fast skills and all it's changed all the time Therefore what's important is not necessarily skills and all this themselves But it's mindsets. What do we think about this as well as the creation of ecosystems as well? and finally, I will say a few words about our grandchild the scholars program was mentioned as part of the of the of the Gordon price, I don't know if I will have time to show you a little commercial that I have at the end Maybe I do maybe I don't but anyway I can I can tell you that this is something that finds a lot of resonance in many universities in the United States and Essentially says that outstanding technical competence Combined with outstanding character will lead to Trustworthiness, and that's actually where Greek values can offer tremendous possibilities and addition because of the fact that we have a history of of thought a history of of ethical and moral Attentive that actually can be used in how we shape a World where technology and humanity are intertwined in a closer and closer way closer than ever before And I think that will be the challenge of the future How do we make sure that technology and humanity actually get in sync and be able to accomplish? Many of the positive things that we can do so we can have a better life overall And I will also say a few words about some of the bridges that we can create and so on so forth So here's my definition of technology and engineering. I know that this is a bit You say well, you know, that's too simplistic But actually I believe in it and whenever I use it to tell people Particularly people who are not in engineering technology they sort of say home That's kind of an interesting idea that's leveraging phenomena for useful purposes So this is the way I define the the world that we're living in It's paraphrase from a book by Brian Arthur in 2008 the nature of technology, which actually a very interesting book to read In the past we have been dealing with things like phenomena that are physical or chemical or Geological we're talking about the let's say people that deal with subsurface or Climate or biological and that is an increase that I have an arrow there of increasing complexity In this direction. Now, I know physicists will say everything is physics. So no offense here Just want to make sure that for the rest of us you go from physics to chemistry to biology in terms of complexity And the most complex of all is social and behavioral And I think social and behavioral becoming part in many different ways of what we do as engineers particularly computer scientists The use of data science the use of AI is getting closer and closer to understand Social and behavioral phenomena and and also be able to leverage this for useful purposes So it's important to notice that useful purposes is not an objective world is a is a subjective world Because it means usefulness and what is used useful to someone is not useful to another And this is where the ethical part comes in when we talk about technology because whatever we do He has a purpose in mind and that purpose can be useful to some but not necessarily useful to another And I think that's something we have to keep in mind as we move on by the way phenomena means also systems and devices and tools and combinations and by purposes and also Purposes also include the discovery of new phenomena, which we do at the interface between science and engineering So for me, this is sort of a a simple way to encapsulate what we do in the in the STEM disciplines And I I use this often as an example for for for describing this now the National Academy Published last year. I'm sorry lasted in 2002. I believe a Compilation of a century of innovation things that happen in in the world in terms of innovation Most of those at that time where let's say electrification automobile in the century of the 20th century has been Phenomenal in terms of advances in technology many of these things that you see here Do not in we're not in place before that right? So one question that comes in then is what will be the innovation story of this century? You know and actually this question has been written or has been asked before Are we going to be able to create innovation that will be as transformative for the 21st century as it was as the innovation was In the 20th century and that's question. It has been asked by economists by others as well Is it possible that solving big grand challenges will be the big innovation of the century? dealing with things like climate change or The end of illness as some people talk about in the case of for example medicine Are these the things that we have to start focusing on in some different way as well? Let me talk to you a little bit about what I call the four buckets energy water air increasingly food we had a meeting in London 2019 pre-covid of the National Academies and the and the and the theme of the meeting was how to feed 10 billion people which is the expected You know number of poor people in the planet that is not a Something to to scoff off given the war that's going on right now We understand also how important food become Second bucket is security by security. I also include here national security to some extent because part of the security is also infrastructure cyber security protection of privacy for instance at the same time also Protecting from nuclear terror which is a possibility in not too long into the into the future perhaps health and Enriching life and by enriching life. I sometimes offer also So I try to connect all this to a muscle hierarchy muscle hierarchy as you know is a psychology Psychological term. I don't know much about it, but I learn about it and it has things like As you go from the bottom of the sort of the triangle to the top you go from fundamentals of Need let's say to be sustainable healthy and secure and then How to get into into situation includes emotions love the top there is Enriching your life to some extent as well and Behavioral societal aspects actually are part of enriching life What we do a lot with let's say new computing technologies Essentially it enriches life because it allows you to do so wonderful things connect with the internet Connect with other people. They're all things that relate to to the connection that we do in life in the 2008 The National Academy and articulate the specific grand challenges in these buckets a rate for sustainability Make solar energy economical provide energy from fusion by the next from fusion will solve all our energy problems Of course, it's a much. It's a very tough problem to solve Develop carbon sequestration methods at that time. It was still, you know fossil fuel was important managing the nitrogen cycle Security as I mentioned preventing nuclear terror health engineer better medicines Reverse engineer the brain. These are all part of the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenges was a committee of people that were put together to sort of say What are the big issues that we will deal into the future in engineering and for initially life? Includes as well engineer the tools of scientific discovery which means essentially how to promote science and discovery in science and so This is this grand challenges were followed by other Moonsault ideas for example from the UN sustainable development goals that were articulated 2015 if I'm not mistaken many of them have a lot of societal and human centric aspects the question is Are we as engineers going to deal with that my answer is yes because this interface between technology and humanity is becoming tighter and tighter and I think Sooner or later. We have to deal with all this this important questions as well Why grand challenges because powerful fast-evolving and conversion technology Allows us to set achievable goals for all humanity. What are the grand challenges as I mentioned for Greece? Choosing goals. I mentioned is an ethical question and I will make here a little bit of a Done in chick thing human nature does not change exponentially fast Technology does and so I think that's something that we have to take advantage of in some way And I like to bring up back again the question. What are Greece's grand challenges for engineering? Whatever we do in education of how we train our students here Perhaps needs to be informed by this Maybe we have an introductory class in the at the moment in in in polytechnic or in or the or physics or other Departments and say it's an important question for Greece right now. Let's focus our ideas about how to move our head and solve them So here now will become a little geeky and I tell you a little bit about my ideas about how innovation works first of all I Make the following point which actually not mine is somebody else's I forget where I read it if you take materials energy and knowledge Only the latter knowledge. Here's the property that the more it is consumed the more it is produced Whereas materials and energy the more you consume the less you have Well in in with knowledge is exactly the opposite. That's the fundamental basis of innovation The more knowledge we have the faster we get it's an auto catalytic reaction Andres you will know that as a chemical engineer and so when people talk about Moore's law I look at it very differently. I look at it as a simple chemical reaction Which is a linear reaction goes from a gives you a and it's an auto catalytic one And therefore the rate of change is proportional to the Kinetics as you can understand it's first-order kinetics those of four of those of you who are chemical engineers gives you an exponential You say well, that's trivial. Well, what is actually non-trivial to some extent is that if you put quadratic kinetics In other words, it takes the collisions of two such innovations to produce something new The rate of change is actually kinetics goes to the power of two and that gives you a singularity Those of you who are familiar with courts rate courts vile. He published a book called the singularities near He's a chief engineer for Google who says that the world changes not simply exponentially fast But actually it's approaching a singularity at some point in time now Courts vile has never told you what that time is going to be he at the beginning said will be to that 2030 now I think it says 2035. Maybe it's Later than that. However, when you look at the tremendous innovation in AI and machine learning and all that We are not too far from a new world where we are actually a lot going a lot faster than before You can see how dramatically AI is actually penetrating pretty much everything that we do and how we have to rethink Out the way we think in terms of Educator students by also incorporating this in their conversation. So this is my gig apart I thought that being in a in a in a group of of people like you I should mention it and that would be the end of the gig in us with respect to that Now if you look at the next financial world that changes exponentially fast And that's the technology as a function of time here And I just plotted here a curve here. No, the units are arbitrary So I don't have any everything is dimensionless. So don't tell me how I made things dimensionless. I Have a curve here What I'm trying to say here is that the world does not change this way the world changes along the tangent We are able to extrapolate linearly, but we cannot extrapolate in a way that's exponential What does this create is it creates a deficit of trust? Because the society politics governments work in this direction technology movies in this direction and because we have this gap There is a trust deficiency that that that needs to be to be to be Bridged and I think that's another part of trust worthiness that I want to talk about For our students and for us to understand that this is a simple Explanation for a lot of the things that happen in the world today The anti-vaxxers the people that believe in this and that the conspiracies there is an obvious I think is a result of the fact that we are over here as Scientists as engineers the world is over here and I think this Being able to capture this gap is very important in addition What this says is that we cannot simply rely on knowledge and skills But we have to start thinking in terms of mindset and the creation of ecosystems. Why is that? Because let's say AI today is a phenomenal technology and everybody knows about it How do you know that five years from now? There's going to be no a new technology that will be even more powerful or more faster than that We cannot understand that unless we have the the flexibility and the agility to make that change so when we talk about synergies opportunities to connect and everything I Think we should challenge ourselves not to think ourselves has been behind something But actually to try to create something new perhaps that can help us move forward Because we are all in a sense have the same opportunity to make this change and I see this support this this Organization here today as an opportunity to actually take advantage of that It's up to us to say to think this way in a bold way and say we can set the trend in this particular way And so I just wanted to just give you a little bit of that We talk a lot about innovation many of you know how this works without innovation The impact is minimal and by innovation We mean that taking the idea taking the the pattern taking the technology development the IP and making it in practice I am as we many many university institutions, and I hope that we can implement something similar to this in our citizens here is having this sequence of of seed of nurturing of Validating launching and accelerating which is sort of the the cycle of innovation that happens and then be able to be successful So in fact, I mentioned it was mentioned in my very long introduction out there I'm leading an effort based on the I core model of the National Science Foundation Which is based on Lin startup methodology which a methodology was invented at Stanford that allows you to essentially take ideas much faster This is a simple training that can happen to pretty much every student and we do this in our own institution I think it can happen here in all all all universities and maybe happening as well I'm not sure to allow us to get our students understand that Having the knowledge and the skills is not sufficient if you want to have an impact and be able to see how you create this impact And as I said, I don't want to Pay injustice to things that may already be happening I will close with a Say a few things about technology ethics Whenever we do something, let's say a startup a new and a new entity We always work at the intersection of smart legal and ethical clearly You don't start something which is not smart then nobody's going to support you if it's illegal Clearly you're going to have a problem and for the most time whatever people to start is ethically neutral You start something and say if I do this technology will be interesting and many people have a Idea of this will change the world. I mean that actually is part of a lot of the things that we do but and these are goals even by values, but we have unintended consequences and the more The more powerful the technology the more powerful the unintended consequences so we cannot not thinking not think about the fact that there will be unintended consequences and This because this will affect policy legislation politics and all that and I think If you if I were to sketch what's going on Let's say from something that starts at the intersection or smart ethical illegal often by four kates some of it stays in the core and it's the technology that provides all the It's very useful for society at large and then you have this branches out here that Brunch outside of the ethical part and I think this is where we have to be To not only understand it, but perhaps be able to Anticipate it possibly. I'm not sure and that actually provides yet another Component that our students need to know Traditional engineering education when I was up so for the new I took two non-engineering courses one was on logic Non-engineering course and the other was on some economics to be honest with you I don't even remember what it was about and this Only two course who we took outside of the technical stuff now did this Bother me to be honest with you the high school education we have in Greece does a Phenomenal or did a phenomenal job in teaching you ethics values and all that and I don't know what's the situation today? With respect to the training of student or training house Our students learn about history and values and all that but I want to make sure that this is something that is important Finally, I believe that society will demand trustworthiness from all our students now What is trust trust can be separated in two components competence and Character you don't want to trust someone who is incompetent, but he has the best character You have a pilot who doesn't know how to Fly the plane, but it's a wonderful person. You don't trust this person Conversely, you don't want to trust a Very competent pilot who he is a bad character to some extent So this is a fork fork course of credibility. This is from Steve Covey the speed of trust One is capabilities talent attitude skills mindsets results performance and so so forth and the other is character integrity Humility courage intent motive agenda behavior. I think these are things that in Greece We have a tremendous repository to think to use this as And be actually a model in how we train our students and how to Engineers to be able to create this trustworthiness that is becoming increasingly absent from from the world that we live today and I think this has to do with the fact that Technologies moving so fast the world does not respond equally fast and you create this gap So I'm just putting this as an idea. So Five ingredients for engineering education super technical skills and all it's I call it hug the exponential So if you Google it, probably it will take you to Something that I wrote about hugging the exponential staying with exponential and also shaping it Particularly in modern computing technologies computing technologies becoming the essential part of what? engineers Fundamental skills of engineers today and this could be AI and machine learning data science is possibly quantum computing quantum computing is coming along Much faster than we think could be quantum sensing Communications other things possibly quantitative and computational biology, which is another important part for medicine and health Right, so I think our students need to have exposure to this and this must become probably a standard requirement as calculus We pay a lot of attention to calculus and as you know for good reason these things perhaps need to change Convergence with a which I call engineering plus and in this interdisciplinarity now many many universities in the US obviously because they have Humanities and social sciences and others the business schools and the like this convergence happened for obvious reasons in a in a in a place Like like the in Greece. Let's say where technical a polytechnia are somehow different separated from we have to create those bridges I don't see how we can move on without creating those bridges or be able to do to do this in an effective way Both within stem and outside I mentioned innovation entrepreneurship Understanding human nature and cultures that's important as well Because aligning goals when the interface of technology humanity is increasingly intertwining intertwining is very important And obviously societal impact in the United States societal impact becoming even more important because there are so many tensions about Issues of diversity inequities, you know populations that have been marginalized and the like Maybe there are here in Greece as well. I'm not sure I don't and I'm not current of the things that are going on So I believe that as we think about the engineering education And what are the the components of that we should keep in mind all these components, which is not simply The fundamental strong technical part, which I think all of us have been have benefited in a very significant way But start thinking also in a bigger way as well So let's create the engineer of 2035. I said here for great. So I created over there and see how we can do that I volunteer to help The grandchild the scholars program I'm done in one minute was conceived in 2009 essentially has this Aspect it's a research creative multi-disciplinary entrepreneurial cultural and society conscious So what I just gave you is a bit of my thinking about how engineering education should proceed by the way This is not all curricula base. This has a lot of extra curricular activities That's something that universities have hard time dealing with because The question is do they get credit or don't get credit they pay tuition They don't pay tuition these things of this type that are all technical But for our students are remarkable our students will get together Create startups do things like this and they don't care about this is part of the curriculum or not And I think we have to create these ecosystems and encourage them to be able to be successful. I heard some very Very positive news here from all kinds of different things as well. So this particular program I received the the the Gordon price of the National Academy this year I had a video but at my time is is is over. So I will just stop here and I just wanted to Thank you for for your attention. I have a very quick creating British idea the internet is allowing us to do so many different things plus the covid Demolish and shuttered ideas about how you you collaborate. It's so easy nowadays to do join classes Actually, we have been at UAC. We have you have a platform a technology platform We call iPodia that we partner with 12 universities Across across the world and we share classes a classes taught by a professor. It's taken by both students from both sides Nobody changes money that it doesn't cross. There's no tuition exchange or anything like this and Students can benefit together. For example, we have a class with a Technion I'll just give you an example of that. We have with a Tsinghua University other places It's actually wonderful to see how students from different places work together now, of course, you know for a University public universities in Greece that require the the support of the Iporeon in order to be able to do that. We have to be agile and figure out how to do this. Anyway one final A few final things sharing curricula practice of innovation I would very much be interested in if we take the iCore program for the National Science Foundation and bring it here And that will require some sort of an agreement between the corresponding entities in the United States and here The iCore program has been very strong allows you the creation of innovative spirit and innovation innovation mindset Sharing human-centered principal values and Technology ethics that's another part because of our tradition and our history that they can actually do in a very significant way And finally creating research partnerships between US federal funding agencies and their great counterparts I know there is an effort to perhaps or a call to create a Greek NSF if we can do that and then have a strong partnership that way that would be Phenomenal and I'll stop here. I have abused my time. So thank you for your attention