 All right, welcome to the panel on new kids on the block. We're excited to have some young regulator guests with us today to talk about the efforts of their organizations. Before we get into that, some quick housekeeping. The Wi-Fi code for attendees is in all caps, RIC 2024, that's R-I-C-2024. Please remember to silence your electronic devices. Questions for the Q&A portion of the session will be submitted electronically both for virtual and in-person attendees. For those of you in the room, you may have scanned the QR code for this session on the displays in the foyer, but if not, please take a moment to scan the QR code displayed on the screen to your device. It will drop you to a page specific for this session where there will be a Q&A tab for you to input your questions. For those of you joining virtually, once you've logged in on the Join the Session tab, there's a Q&A box where you will input your questions. Questions from both the online participants and those using the QR code will be added to the same queue and will try to get through as many as we can. Your feedback is important to us, so let us know what you thought about the RIC this year. Your insights help us shape next year's program. You can provide feedback through the platform by selecting the Feedback tab in the session or by accessing the link on the RIC website. Today's session will provide a forum for young nuclear regulators from around the world to discuss how their organizations are recruiting and retaining the next generation. The presentations will highlight knowledge management, leveraging educational opportunities, training, benefits and more. This discussion will also continue the conversation from the youth panel at the IAEA's International Conference on Effective Nuclear and Radiation Regulatory Systems, preparing for the future in a rapidly changing environment. We will begin with presentations from all the panelists before the Q&A part of the session. Now I would like to introduce our panelists. I'm Miranda Ross, a materials engineer at the NRC in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. For this session, I have the dual role of leading as the session chair and contributing my insights as a panelist. I will also provide information on the NRC's initiatives for recruiting and retaining young regulators. Joining me today is Ms. Nicole Allison, who serves as a nuclear non-proliferation officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, CNSC. Nicole began her career with CNSC in 2017 as a technical co-op student. Her current role as a nuclear non-proliferation officer began in 2019 following the completion of a nuclear engineering undergraduate program at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, where she earned a bachelor of engineering and nuclear engineering. Nicole's work includes conducting risk informed reviews of import and export license applications for proliferation-sensitive nuclear commodities, supporting the implementation of Canada's bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, and providing technical advice in various international non-proliferation fora. Next will be Ms. Alexandra Alexoya, a junior nuclear advisor from the Romanian National Commission for Nuclear Activities Control, CNCAN. Alexandra began working as a junior nuclear advisor in 2021. Her work is in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Division, Radiation Protection, Radioactive Waste and Transport Section, where she works on regulatory reviews, licensing and control of radiation protection activities, waste management, including spent nuclear fuel and transport activities for installation and activities within the nuclear fuel cycle. Subsequently, we will be joined by Ms. Mira Almahiri, a specialist inspector from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, FANR. Mira is the first Emirati female to work as a nuclear safety inspector in FANR and one of the youngest board members appointed to the UAE government. She received a bachelor in science in mechanical and nuclear engineering from Califa University, a master of arts and international affairs from King's College London, and an executive diploma in policy making from McGill University. Last but not least, we will hear from Mr. Soratos Tantadiravit, a nuclear engineer from Thailand's Office of Atoms for Peace. Soratos earned a scholarship from the Thai government for his PhD in mechanical engineering from Imperial College London and started his career in nuclear at the Office of Atoms for Peace as an inspector for radiation industrial applications. His current responsibilities as a nuclear engineer in the Nuclear Licensing Group include focus on licensing of research reactors and a national waste management facility. Additionally, he is a trainer of a radioactive source security management course for national stakeholders and was given the opportunity to lead the national competency building program in the transport security of radioactive materials. As the session chair, I wanted to provide you with my contact information before we begin the presentations. I'll now join the panel and we'll get started with the presentations starting with mine. Today I will be discussing how the NRC is fulfilling the mission today and tomorrow. First, I'd like to give an overview of what I'm going to talk about today. I'll start with the recruitment pathways and outreach that the NRC utilizes for different activities. Then I'll go over the Nuclear Regulator Apprenticeship Network, which is NRAN, for the recent college graduates. Next, I'll discuss the grants and scholarships, which is for college students. Then the internship and co-op program, which is also for college students. And finally, I'll discuss a week at the NRC, which is a high school initiative. The NRC has multiple approaches for locating potential hires. We have four, we have two locations, the headquarters locations and four regional offices. When public job postings are made, they're made for all of these locations to ensure that we get the most amount of applicants that we could. One of the later initiatives that I'm going to talk about is the internship program, which really serves as a pipeline for NRAN and direct position specific roles. Additionally, the NRC sends representatives to career fair events. This is a great way to form connections with students before they're really looking for their post-position jobs. It helps create a pathway to directly connect the NRC with students. If we have alumni from those schools, we do try to send the alumni back to those schools, which helps form an even stronger connection. Finally, I'll be discussing engaging early and making connections. This really covers a lot of our initiatives. First, I will be discussing the NRAN program. This program is special to me because this is how I came into the NRC before I started my current position as a materials engineer. NRAN is a full-time developmental program for recently graduated engineers and scientists. This program is a cohort environment and it's developed to create well-rounded regulators in areas of projected agency needs. This includes positions in our headquarters and our regional positions. As mentioned before, this program leverages the interns and co-ops but it also leverages the grants and scholarship recipients. With that said, not all members of NRAN are from those pools. I joined NRAN without having any connection to the NRC prior. I actually learned about the NRC through my career fair and the developmental program aspect that NRAN offered in addition to the NRC's mission was what really attracted me. To give you a better understanding of NRAN, I will now go over the format. The program is 18 months with the first three months spent as training and this training covers everything from being a regulator to general nuclear engineering to the NRC history. It really serves as a crash course for all things NRC to help the NRAINER have success in their apprenticeships. The NRAINER is encouraged to work on an internal qualification track throughout the 18 months. This progress will allow the NRAINER to make significant headway on their qualifications once they enter a post program position. Part of the cohort experience is having monthly meetings to meet together and share updates on what everyone's working on and these meetings really allow for the NRAINERS to tell each other what they're working on and see if maybe a different area the agency interests them. Also during these meetings older NRC folks would come and give some of their knowledge to really expand what the NRAINERS know in the agency. There are three apprenticeships which are essentially rotations that last five months. Of these apprenticeships, one must be in a position at headquarters and one must be in a regional position. This allows for the NRAINER to experience both areas of the agency and learn what may be the best fit for their skills and the agency's needs. The final aspect I'd like to discuss is mentoring. Each NRAINER is given a senior level manager who acts as a career mentor. This mentor is a great relationship to have when navigating new apprenticeships and determining a post position. The NRAINER also has mentors who we call, peer mentors who we call disruptors and we call them this because they are positively disrupting the agency with their peer mentoring. Finally during the apprenticeship the NRAINER is given a technical mentor and this is someone who's in the branch that they are currently residing in and their job is really to help get the NRAINER up to speed and understand what they need to know to really provide success and help within that branch. Moving on to what the NRC does to engage and support and attract college students. I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide because there is a lot more information on the nrc.gov website. The NRC has scholarships for nuclear science and engineering degrees, grants for accredited U.S. institutions, trade schools, community colleges, and minority serving institution grants. These programs are a great way to connect with college students about the NRC before they start looking for those post graduation jobs. Additionally, many of these scholarships and grants have a requirement that the recipient must serve six months in a nuclear related employment for each full year or partial year of academic support which helps connect that pipeline to the NRC. Again there's a lot more information on this on the nrc.gov website so I encourage you to look at that if the grants and scholarships are of interest to you. Another way that the NRC connects with college students is through the internship and co-op program. These are both paid positions. I know that sometimes that can be confusing so just to clarify they are paid. The difference is really that the interns are more temporary. They're typically here during our summers when they're off from school whereas our co-ops are longer positions that allow the students to work a certain number of hours during their academic study throughout the year. Oftentimes we convert the interns into co-op positions so that they continue to work on their NRC work. The NRC tries to create exciting experiences for the interns and co-ops through our next gen and embrace NRC programs where volunteers in the agency create seminars and activities to acclimate these students. Additionally this past summer there were also small mentoring groups that were led by some of the members of the NRAIN cohort. This allowed the NRAINers to help guide these interns and co-ops through their summers and foster relationships with them. The final program I will be discussing is a week at the NRC. This is a high school initiative that we have. It's a program that's a four-day experience for high school students to help deepen their knowledge of nuclear technology and federal nuclear regulation. The students have seminars and activities to help teach them about the work that we do at the NRC. As you can see in the picture the high schoolers get to come to headquarters and for a lot of them this is really exciting because they've never been in a federal building before so it's a fun opportunity. This is also an excellent opportunity to connect with young students before they're even thinking about college degrees. Exposing young students to careers that they may not know about is a great way to leverage connections with our next generation and we might even end up changing a kid's life because we brought something new into their life. To wrap up all these initiatives I want to highlight the benefits of them. Knowledge transfer is extremely important because bringing in these young and eager to learn regulators allows for the more experienced staff to share their knowledge. Many of the staff in the NRC have been working for over 20 years and have a lot to share with the younger generation. NRAN embraces the knowledge management by requiring at least one knowledge management entry to be made during each apprenticeship which helps build our overall knowledge management within the agency. Creating a support network is also a huge benefit. Programs like NRAN the interns and co-ops allow for the young people to join together. They can look to each other for problem solving or just bouncing ideas off of each other and they can also learn what different areas of the agency are because they can talk to each other and learn what one person is doing in the region versus at headquarters. I know that from my experience in NRAN I benefited significantly from knowing other people within offices having spent some time in one of our regional offices and headquarters expanded my network even more. I know who to contact about different issues and that arise and I may not have gained that without my support network. Another benefit is sustaining a highly technical workforce. The NRC's grants and scholarship program encourages highly technical students to seek work at the NRC. The NRAN program brings in engineers and scientists specifically and all of our programs highlight the importance of our mission and technical work. Finally retention is overall increased because these programs allow for young regulators to be integrated very quickly and efficiently into the agency. This integration is part of why I enjoyed my first year and a half of working here so much. To conclude the NRC has initiatives from high school to new college graduates that all support the agency's needs for today and tomorrow in the future. Thank you. Before we transition to Nicole's presentation I asked each of the panelists why did you choose a career in public service specifically in the nuclear field. Nicole's response was she first became interested in the nuclear field during her schooling when she chose to pursue a nuclear engineering degree. She always had a love for math and science and had an interest in nuclear for the role it can play in cleaner power generation. As she went through university she did not imagine this would be her career. During her time as a co-op with CNSC she enjoyed both the culture of the organization and the work in non-proliferation in international safeguards. She has found the merge of technical policy and geopolitical knowledge to be very challenging and exciting. I will now hand it over to Nicole to present. All right thank you Miranda and good morning everyone. My name is Nicole Allison. I'm a nuclear non-proliferation officer with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and through this presentation today I'll be giving a brief snapshot of the talent-focused programs and career development initiatives that are being implemented by the CNSC as well as share some of my own personal experiences and perspectives as a young regulator who's still relatively early in developing their career. So just as an overview to the presentation first I'll very very briefly touch on who the CNSC is and then I'll dive into three main topic areas. First are student programs, second are training opportunities and then lastly some networks and partnerships that the CNSC is engaged in or leads. So first here I'll start with just very brief overview. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or CNSC as many of you likely know is the federal agency responsible for regulating the use of nuclear energy and materials throughout Canada. Our mandate is threefold. First to protect health, safety, security and the environment by regulating the use of nuclear energy materials. Second to implement Canada's international commitments on the piece pieces of nuclear energy and lastly to disseminate objective scientific technical and regulatory information to the public. In terms of the scope of our regulatory program we're responsible for overseeing all nuclear activities in Canada throughout all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle and in terms of my current rule as Miranda mentioned I'm focused on import and export controls but in my time as a technical co-op student I've also had the opportunity to work in a number of different areas of the organization which I'll touch on more in a couple slides. Next I'll take a few minutes to speak to some of our student programs at the CNSC. So starting at a high level first we have five main categories of student opportunities. This includes four programs which are targeted more towards current college and university level students which are our summer student program, our co-op and technical co-op programs and then also a federal student work experience program but in addition to those four we also have a new grad program which is targeted towards individuals who have recently graduated from a post-secondary institution and overall these programs cater to a variety of educational backgrounds. They draw from those different areas of education based on organizational needs whether it's STEM or otherwise and the duration of those programs can range from both short-term part-time opportunities such as the summer student program to longer-term work placements such as the technical co-op program. Personally I joined the CNSC through the technical co-op program which again I'm going to speak to in a moment but I think one of the great strengths of having a variety of programs such as this is that these student placements are made so much more accessible to a greater device diversity of candidates and audiences. This of course has the benefit to those students as they have greater career development opportunities for post both post-secondary and new grad students but it's also greatly beneficial to the CNSC as an organization as it helps us to supplement different areas of our workforce and it also plays a really important role in investing in the education and the careers of those young regulators and public servants who may then be returning to us as I did through the student programs. So as I mentioned the technical co-op program is near and dear to my heart as it's how I first joined the CNSC and I like to see that there's this theme of those student programs being so special and crucial in the path that our career takes. The program here the technical co-op program is targeted more towards university students studying engineering health physics and radiation sciences. It's also one of the longer term placements so it takes place over 12 to 16 months and during that time students can rotate through three to four different divisions within the CNSC. While I was a student in this program I had the chance to work with teams in the area of regulatory research and evaluation, international safeguards, licensing of new major facilities as well as probabilistic safety assessment and reliability so I got a good flavor of a lot of the work across the organization. Gave me the chance to get involved in activities from reviewing regulatory documents to research submissions, supporting Canadian safeguards and nuclear material accountancy, to authoring a research paper on the regulatory basis for exclusion zone sizing in Canada and on that research paper the CNSC also supported and funded my travel to present that work at a Canadian Nuclear Association student conference which was one of my very first opportunities to present research work I had conducted in a conference setting such as that. What I personally found to be really excellent about this program is that those placements within different teams give first enough time to learn about the work those groups conduct but also enough time to get meaningfully engaged in those core day-to-day work activities and understand for yourself what it's going to be like working in a professional setting such as that. But at the same time I found that rotating through the different divisions within the CNSC also gave me a much bigger picture look at how the different areas of the organization work together what type of work they perform and even more broadly what type of work is encompassed by the nuclear industry at large. I think it's such a great experience to have especially as a student that's you know soon to be leaving university because it helped open to my eyes to how many different paths and options there were for my career to progress and it also gave me some firsthand experience as well as to what it was going to be like working in those different environments. All right next I'll speak on some of the training opportunities and programs that we have at the CNSC. One of the things I really appreciate about the CNSC as an organization is that continuous learning is identified as one of the key areas of our organizational culture which is needed to ensure that the CNSC is building a competent and flexible workforce. One of the ways this culture of learning is supported is through an independent learning plan program and this is a program whereby all CNSC employees create personalized written training plans for how they aim to develop and maintain their technical knowledge and behavioral competencies. These learning plans are updated on an annual basis and they're also endorsed by two levels of management to ensure that employees are supported in reaching their career goals and learning objectives. The plans themselves are used both to support building competencies related to your current area of work but they can also be used to identify areas of training you're interested in to progress your long-term career development goals in other areas as well. In terms of actual training there's also a wide variety of programs and courses that are delivered internally to the CNSC. Just to highlight a few notable ones here that I've had the opportunity to experience myself. First I have the CNSC Inspector Training Qualification Program which is a combination of both general and service line specific in-class training combined with an on-the-job training period that's supported by a mentor designated to each inspector in training. Another program I'd highlight is the CANDU Training Series which is a technical course we have on the system structures and principles of CANDU Reactor Design. One really great aspect to this series is that it's offered at different levels of complexity technical complexity which helps to make it more accessible to all staff who are interested in developing their technical knowledge in that area regardless of what their educational background may be whether they came to us from STEM or political science or otherwise. One last course I'll mention here is the Effective Knowledge Transfer in-class training course that we have which discusses strategies and practices for sharing both tacit and explicit knowledge in various settings. I had the opportunity to take this course recently and I found it to be really beneficial both from the perspective of someone who is now recently begun training new staff who are joining onto our team to understand how I can do a better job of sharing my knowledge with them but also to take the time and reflect for myself on the ways that I learned and how I can be mindful in how I receive knowledge from more experienced staff in a way that's effective for me. Continuing here on that same theme of knowledge transfer and on-the-job experiences I think some of the most valuable training and knowledge transfer experiences I've had in my career so far have been those instances where I've been working alongside and learning directly from more experienced colleagues from the CNSC or even other government departments or other areas of the public service. Just to share a few of my experiences here because pictures are fun. On the left myself and two co-workers took an on-site visit to the Tridium Removal Facility at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station where we had the opportunity to learn about some of the nuclear-related equipment we licensed as part of our CNSC Import and Export Licensing Program. The center picture is myself and my director traveling to London, England to hold bilateral discussions with some of our regulatory counterparts. They did not take place at Westminster Abbey but we had a very nice time visiting it as well. And then in the right most picture is myself as part of the Canadian Delegation to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference which took place in the UN in New York at the UN headquarters in New York where the opportunity to learn how someone like myself with a more technical background can support colleagues who are working in more of a diplomatic setting. There's one last side on trading. I also wanted to highlight that there's such a wide variety of external training opportunities that can be leveraged both domestically and internationally. On the domestic front in Canada the CNSC leverages relationships with academia to provide staff with technical training opportunities. One example that I've taken is a technical training course on SMR technologies that's offered by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology which is also where I studied from our Bachelor of Engineering. And then looking internationally at technical training offered by regulatory counterparts, international organizations are also ways that the CNSC leverages those different sources of technical experience and expertise through sponsoring employee participation in those courses or even interchange opportunities at some of those agencies. All right finally here I want to touch on a couple of networks and partnerships that the CNSC leads or engages with and there are a variety of employee networks and partnerships that the CNSC has but these are just a couple examples I've chosen to highlight here that are meaningful for me. So the first example I have here is the CNSC Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics or WISSTEM initiative. This one was a relatively new initiative which was launched in 2019 under our previous president Ms. Ramina Velsche. Overall the purpose of this WISSTEM initiative is to promote greater diversity, innovation and equity in the STEM workforce by contributing to the empowerment, development and visibility of women in STEM careers. A couple of pictures I have on the slide here just to highlight some recent activities. On the left is a picture of myself at the CNSC's first annual WISSTEM day in September of last year where I had the opportunity to present on my work or my work and the work that others conduct as well in the non-proliferation and export controls division. And it was also an opportunity for me to connect with and share with other women working in STEM fields across the organization as well as external to the CNSC. And then the right I have a picture from the International Mentoring Workshop for Indigenous Girls which was an event jointly hosted by the Nuclear Energy Agency and the CNSC in May of last year. It was an event that the WISSTEM team at the CNSC helped organize and it brought together women in STEM fields from around the globe to help mentor and inspire young Indigenous girls to explore career opportunities and the application of knowledge in STEM fields. Then one last point I'll highlight here which I find very exciting is the very recent launch of the WISSTEM mentoring program which is now aimed at connecting women within the organization to set up mentor and mentee relationships for them. All right, finally I want to highlight some of the work the CNSC is doing to support research and education at Canadian universities through networks and partnerships. One example I have here is through the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering or UNINI which is a network of Canadian and international universities industry and federal government working together to develop and support the next generation of highly qualified professionals in the nuclear field. Within this partnership the CNSC provides support in a number of ways in terms of participating on various committees giving input on strategic direction as well as providing funding and grants. And then in terms of grants the CNSC has also recently partnered with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to launch an SMR research grants initiative which will fund academic research related to SMRs. The current phase of this initiative taking place right now is currently contributed $9.4 million towards 29 research projects taking place over the next three years and a second call for proposals is expected to be launched in the next coming fiscal year. So just to wrap up here I want to say thank you again to the university colleagues for the opportunity to come speak here on this panel. I'm very much looking forward to hearing from my other panelists and I hope this gave you some interesting insights into the various ways that the CNSC is reaching out to students whether they're in post-secondary institutions, university colleges or younger girls for example through workshops hosted by the CNSC as well as some of the training opportunities and knowledge transfer practices that are incorporated for those young professionals who are now entering their or beginning their careers as public servants with the CNSC. Thank you so much. Our next presenter is Alexandra. Alexandra chose a career in the nuclear field primarily because when she was little she often heard family discussions about nuclear power in the field. Her curiosity led her to think about what it would be like to work in this field. She also wanted to be a part of a dynamic and ever-changing industry that promotes the use of clean and sustainable energy sources and I will now hand it over to Alexandra to present. Thank you so much. Hello everyone. I'm very grateful to be part of this panel session so my presentation today will be about the process of recruiting and retaining the next generation for CHENECAN. So this is my outline. I will speak a little bit in the introduction about general things about CHENECAN just to give you an overview about our mission and the need to maintain and attract the new generation within the institution. Then I will go over to the recruitment process within the institution, educational opportunities, professional development, mentorship program and some conclusion. So in accordance with our nuclear law CHENECAN is the national competent authority responsible for the regulation, licensing and controlling the nuclear field for all the nuclear activities and installation on the Romanian territory. I put it here our nuclear country profile so as you can see we have many nuclear and radiological facilities so we need to attract and keep the next generation of young talent within the institution. As you can see on the map before we have a nuclear power plant with two counter-unit in operation. Also we have a trigger research reactor and other major facilities like facilities for uranium ore mining, milling and processing, fuel production plant, radioactive waste management facilities and so on. I put it here on this slide our future project not especially for the technical part of them just to highlight the need and the fact that it is very important to us to recruit and maintain the next generation for both current and future projects. This is our organizational chart. I will go quickly through them. So we have five divisions, three of them our technical division. I'm working under the nuclear fuel cycle division and the last slide about Cinecon so our main responsibilities is issuing licensing, provide the regulatory framework and perform regulatory oversight on nuclear safety, radiological protection, quality management system and so on. Regarding our organizational needs and workforce requirements in accordance with our nuclear law and the nuclear safety directive adequate resources both human and financial have to be available in order for Cinecon to fulfill its mandate. From the current organizational structure approximately 140 position must be occupied with technical qualified personnel. The technical expertise of Cinecon staff has to cover a wide range of different science and technology curricula. So I will give you some example in the following slides. This slide presents an overview of knowledge, skills and attitude for for example for nuclear installation safety. So we expect young graduates to have the basic science and technology knowledge from the university and regarding the applied science and specialized science and technology to be learned during postgraduate studies and or on job training. This is the same approach another example for the radiation facilities and activities. We have, we expect some basic science and technology knowledge and the other one to be learned during postgraduate and on job study training. So now I will speak about the requirement process. So the work phase attraction program was carried out in particular through campaign to recruit graduates directly from the job fair interviews with people who send letter of intent to us, maintaining contact with the participant in the initiation courses in nuclear activities and conducting annual practice program and master's program in partnership with higher education institution. We communicate with the university polytechnica in Bucharest which is a technical university especially with the faculty of power engineering about the available position within the institution and they publish our announcement on their faculty's website and to always keep the students informed about employment opportunities within Chenekan. So as I said Chenekan engaged with universities, technical colleagues and professional organizations to raise awareness about career opportunities in nuclear industry. As we all know in today digital age an online president is essential for reaching a broader pool of candidates. So Chenekan leveraged digital platforms to advertise job opening and engage with potential applicants. Also the university annually host a job fair called Poly Energy Fest in which Chenekan plans to participate in order to encourage the next generation of nuclear safety and security talent and to attract even more young people to join our institution. Regarding the educational opportunities so recognizing the importance of practical experience in shaping future leaders Chenekan offers internship to students and recent graduates. So every year we have groups of students from the university polytechnica of Bucharest who attend the internship program within Chenekan and by immersing themselves in the day-to-day operation of Chenekan inters gained invaluable insight into regulatory process, technical assessment and international standard, preparing them for careers in nuclear industry. Regarding the professional development so Chenekan prioritized the professional development of its employees by offering training workshops, seminars supported by IAEA, another international organization. Also organized training workshops, seminars and conference to provide ongoing professional development opportunities for its employees and stakeholders. Also in collaboration with Chernavoda NPP and the research institutes Chenekan frequently enrolls its employee to training courses within the training center and by investing in the development of its workforce Chenekan ensured that its employment employees remain at the forefront of regulatory practices and technologies. And some words about the mentorship program so through mentorship program workshops and networking events Chenekan foster a culture of continuous learning and growth empowering employees to reach their full potential. The training program with the mentor takes about six months during which the mentee showed the procedures, learns about our nuclear law, the regulations, the licensing and control process and also goes on inspection with the mentor to see the installation and understand the better the control process. And in conclusion, currently Chenekan is ready to ignite its organizational chart in order to fulfill the roles and responsibilities set by the law with its most recent amendments and to safety accommodate the new activities in nuclear field. The technical position within Chenekan are rapidly gaining recognition among the nuclear industry so Chenekan colleagues are coming from the universities or are engineered from other industries waiting to join nuclear industry. Also Chenekan is making continuous effort to provide state of art tools and equipment for its staff and increase the salary level in order to be more attractive for the university graduates or fellow specialized. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation Alexandra. Our next presenter is Mira. Mira chose to work as an inspector in Fanner because she wanted to satisfy her technical passion while making sure that passion would serve her country and the people of the UAE. She felt that the inspector position was dynamic and inspiring. Years later she is thankful for the choice that she has made because it would be boring to work in any other position. I will now hand it over to Mira to present. Thank you Miranda. Hello everyone and thank you so much for everyone all the mentors all the great friends who have made time to come and be present while we discuss our journey. My name is Mira and today I'm going to shed the light on my journey. How did I transfer from a kid in the 90s to the first Emirati female nuclear safety inspector and how Fanner and the UAE as a whole had helped me to become the person I am today. So it all started in 1992. Two things that I clearly remember from my childhood was that I loved goats. My first pet was a goat and I used to spend every day in the afternoon going to the farm and playing with the goats and the second memorable thing about my childhood was my sense of fashion. I learned from my mother and my aunties how to dress very colorfully and I think I still have that sense of fashion and I always admire I remember when I saw Andrea on the first day second day and today I was like girl you have the colors I love them and then I moved to the school and what I remember about school days were two things. My growing passion to volunteering giving back working in different community activities and then the second thing was doing well in school trying to learn trying to commit to grow every day and I remember when I was in school I wanted to be so many things. I wanted to be a politician at one point then a diplomat then a teacher then a psychologist and the list kept growing and it was only then when I reached the high school I figured that I actually want to be an engineer. I felt that I have so many so much passion towards science towards mathematics and the only profession that would help me grow that passion was engineering so I decided to pursue a bachelor degree in mechanical and nuclear engineering and I remember that that choice as Miranda said was mainly to fulfill my passion towards STEM and in the same time be part of this revolution in a new sector in the UAE and help to serve my country in that field and in the university as well I wanted to do so many things so I wasn't only doing my bachelor degree but I was doing research in the biomedical field. I did a lot of material having fun in the material lab creating stuff and products then I decided that we want a club for cars and adventures and let's do volunteering here and then so it was a very engaging life full of different activities and I wanted to get to know to the different personalities that I have within that actually love to try so many new things and the same curiosity the same desire of learning and getting to know things in different fields continued during my professional life in 2015 I started my job in Fanner the UAE regulator and become the first Emirati female to serve as a nuclear safety inspector it was an amazing journey because it really suited my personality I didn't want something boring I wanted something challenging something that I aspire to grow in something I need to learn every day and something that is dynamic and I felt like as I as Miranda mentioned that being an inspector is really the right fit for me and in 2015 I started and now in Fanner we have more than 38 percent of our workforce who work in these technical fields ladies who are inspiring ladies who I work with every day ladies who teach me and we always have engaging conversation not only on the local level but also the international arena a year after I was selected by the government to work as an advisor to the UAE government with regards to youth policies and strategies as you know and as did you krister mentioned previously that we are a very young nation the youth population is around 60 percent of the UAE and such a young nation need to be listened to we need to understand continuously what are the desires of our youth what do they need what do they aspire to what are the challenges that they're facing so that they grow beautifully and contribute to the peacefulness and the prosperity of our country so it started over there and then years later I reflected on myself and I thought what else can I do is my engineering background enough to help me do my work in Fanner and as well my advisory roles within the government the answer was no it's not enough so I decided to pursue a degree in King's College London I was mainly studying international affairs but remaining loyal to the nuclear field I specialized in nuclear intelligence and security and that opened a lot a lot of doors I would say because it gave me a different perspective on how the three S's integrate the safety security and safeguard within the nuclear sector but also gave me a broader understanding of how and why international affairs are very important especially in the nuclear field within that year as well I received the government again recognition and support and I was selected to be part of the delegation to the world economic forum just being there and representing youth all the ministers were having back-to-back meetings and doing a lot of hard work and I was just there enjoying my time and and learning from our ministers and it felt extremely good to know that our leaders really support youth and support women and they action that it's not just propaganda or just words they're actually really actioning that from a higher level and strategic level up to the working level a year later another resemblance of such support I was selected as one of the very young board member in the UAE government serving in one of the government entities which is the supreme council for motherhood and childhood it was a very nice opportunity and I got questioned you're a nuclear engineer and you're not even a mother how could you serve on that board but again I think the diversity of different knowledge and different skills that are brought and that are appreciated by our government from the nuclear sector is what made me sit on that board in 2021 another resemblance of our leaders appreciation and support and also Fanner's engagement in my personal journey so I was selected to be part of the UAE expert program serving on the policy making field and in that it was my opportunity to inform the policy making sector with regards to how we do it in the nuclear and years after I saw multiple solutions that were created and were inspired actually from the nuclear sector in 2022 I had the privilege to graduate from the senior reactor operator management certificate then have been seconded for training in France learning about material and fuel and then met a lot of great people from around the globe who are my mentors my friends and a great network of what I called sisters and today in the usnrc rick it's my first rick very memorable beautifully done beautifully executed and it's the best place to network and get to meet old friends all of what I did I couldn't do it by myself it started from the UAE strategic direction of engaging youth empowering youth across all sectors and then it was effectively implemented by Fanner through systematic training and capacity building program so in Fanner me and my young colleagues we have different options to learn and grow every day we get or we start our journey by training being trained on regulatory framework understanding the regulatory philosophy the legal basis then we get to understand what is our job as a regulator what are the processes that govern our work then we get qualified as inspectors then we do a lot of on job trainings whether we are situated in the site in Baraka for a couple of months and become resident inspectors whether we go and shadow our expertise who come from all over the world and then we have multiple other modules where we have extensive training on the systems structures and components we get to learn about emergency research and I had the privilege to work with Halden and developed that mindset of research and how it actually get integrated in the nuclear sector then a lot of softer skills it's not only how you conduct your job as a regulator but how also you communicate as a public servant with the public and making sure that your job is actually making them safe and you can communicate that so I believe that I wouldn't be here without the support from my leaders from the government not only to me but to all the youth of the UAE and also the systematic approach that father has developed and put in place to support the younger generation and if there would be one advice that I can give as a new kid in the block it would be to be aware of opportunities there will always be opportunities within your organization outside your organization and you might also create those opportunities so be aware of them and once you kind of feel that these are the opportunities for you go and snatch them utilize them use them enjoy them and once and then later you would realize how important these opportunities were to shape and shaping your personality and you becoming the person that you are thank you so much thank you for the presentation Mira our final presenter is Soratos Soratos has always believed that public service is a meaningful job he wanted to work in engineering since he was young and upon his graduation from engineering school the office of Adams for Peace had a scholarship program where he completed his phd working as a nuclear regulator is not usually a hands-on operation or research but involves continuously learning scrutinizing and inspection of the technology and innovations of for the nuclear industry which has always entertained him I will now hand it over to Soratos to present thank you very much Miranda good morning it is my honor to be among the panelists and to be the only man on the stage and so and thank you very much for the opportunity to present the some of some of the activities in Thailand on building the talents in nuclear safety and security so I would like to just go directly to the introduction of who is who in in Thailand in the nuclear industry so first on the top left we have the OAP as the the nuclear regulator we also have some capabilities on those symmetries and environmental monitoring and OAP also supports the non-perforation regime of of Thailand and then on the right side we have the Thai Institute of Nuclear Technology who is our research reactor operator and also the waste management facility and then both of the organization belongs to the ministry of higher education and science and then on the bottom right we have the the utilities who is the the ECAD the electrical generation authority of Thailand who is the prospective operator of the nuclear power plant and we have thousands of radiation isotopes licensees in Thailand then to talk about building talents in the nuclear industry I thought it might be useful to look at the current perception of Thai people on the nuclear power plant so there is a big data study of the social media comments Facebook comments from the year 2009 to 2023 on the subject of perception of Thai people on nuclear power plants and which reveals that the majority of Thai people about 80% still believe still have the neutral sentiment on nuclear power plants so although there are several incidents during the past decades that challenges the the public acceptance of nuclear technology the majority of Thai people still consider nuclear power plant to be one of the potential energy solution and therefore at this time I still believe that we still have the opportunities to convince people to receive a better nuclear perception and attract them to get involved in the industry and it is also found that those who support nuclear power plants focuses their discussion on innovative nuclear technology so now looking inside the regulatory body the OAP so at the current moment the workforce of the OAP we are all civil servants and approximately 50% of the staff are technical personnel however there is a challenge since the freeze period of nuclear power plant project in 2012 there were internal job rotations and reorganization also some technical staff moved to other government or governmental units or other provinces and since the industry was not expanding and with limited number of personnel technical staff might not be able to focus only on one expertise it is often that one person might be assigned to take on two or three duties and as I mentioned that approximately half of the staff are technical personnel most of them receive their degrees from national university in science engineering or radiological technology but also in order for OAP to obtain personnel with specific expertise OAP can request the Thai government for a scholarship program for for our staff to further their education in the field of nuclear or international universities and then come back to work at the OAP after obtaining their degrees nevertheless all the OAP regularly recruits university graduates there are a few cases where the recruits especially those who have master or PhD degrees later prefer to move to work in academics or research instead to pursue their personal interests so therefore OAP tries to deliver more communication on the roles and functions of nuclear regulatory body to the public to help the graduates to have clearer expectations of the nature of the work before making their decision to to work in the regulatory sector or any technical support organizations now to ensure that our staff have the necessary competency to carry out their work OAP mainly uses on the job training within each division but in addition OAP has recently set up knowledge management working group to help analyze the the gap in the training and also prioritize the topic of the training and during the past few years they the working group has organized knowledge management program in the style of brothers and sister training so which aims not only to promote knowledge transfer transfer but also helps promote a more friendly and relaxing working environment so we also encourage corporations and technical exchanges between OAP and the university since OAP and all the public universities are already under the same ministry and our technical staff are required to write technical papers as a part of the job promotion and encourage to publish articles on any nuclear related topics and there are nuclear activities in Thailand from both from the OAP and from the organization in the industry that help promote a public perception towards the use of nuclear technology OAP regularly organized visits to schools and universities to communicate about nuclear and radiation safety and we also use social media as one of the public communication methods and we welcome visitors from academics and other governmental units to observe some of our laboratories and to learn about regulatory activities and on the nuclear application side there is the Tokamak project by the Thai Institute of Nuclear Technology which receive great attention from the public and also there is the nuclear society of Thailand who is currently very active on the topic of SMR technology and on the topic of promoting education in nuclear OAP do encourages our staff and people from their relevant organizations to participate in international program to promote the opportunity for our personnel to expose to international best practice and to develop and maintain the necessary competence there are bilateral corporations on nuclear safety and security between Thai government and the USNRC and the USDOE also there is the cooperation among ASEAN countries where activities such as the ASEAN Tom and the technical cooperation of research reactor operation between Thailand and the Philippines and also activities such as the joint border exercise between Malaysia and Thailand so lastly so there the takeaways of some topics that that OAP should focus in fostering the current and next generation workforce for nuclear regulation and for nuclear safety and security industry that is we need to be efficient at managing expertise and always think ahead about the future program and then OAP needs to focus on specifying updating a clear description of each each job each task in the our regulatory roles and the skill sets that are necessary and the third one is too many people especially the younger generation in Thailand nuclear technology is still considered a stimulating subject and it is important for the regulator and the industry to communicate and to help ensure the confidence in technology and make nuclear subjects open and accessible and finally uses of international practice and corporations will help ensure the safety and at the same time ensure the sustainable growth of nuclear application in Thailand so again thank you very much and it is my great pleasure to be here thank you thank you all the panelists for those great and informative presentations it was really great to hear about what your organizations are doing so at this time we're going to transition to the Q&A portion of the session and we have a lot of questions so thank you to the audience for being so active it's really great to see i'm going to start out with a question that i'm going to direct to Mira but then i'll open it up for anyone else especially the other women on the panel what can i do to excite my daughter to pursue a career in nuclear and what excited you i love this question so i'm really excited to hear what you have to say thank you for the question so i think the first thing to do as a good parent is to always support your kids whether they want to pursue a career in the nuclear field or other field i think that support in itself and that freedom that a parent can encourage their kids is very important so first of all support them regardless of whatever field that they want to pursue and then if you kind of want them really badly to join the nuclear field it's very important to show to showcase why nuclear is important it's contributing towards environmental causes cleaner energy and all the good things that the nuclear sector brought bring but also focus on the human aspect if you are in the nuclear field i'm sure you have so many great stories to share so try to share these stories and if they decided to pursue a job in the nuclear then then that's great if not then always support them and the nuclear field not only engineers are needed but a vast variety of expertise and and skills are needed so encourage them and i wish them all the best in whatever choice that they make does anyone else want to add anything or great answer mirah i think what i would add to that is and what we've heard previously throughout this this conference at the gender equity panel is the idea of role models and mentorship and having women in stem fields who you can look up to and i think that's important but further from that i think it's also important to have those mentors and those role models that are closer to home in a way that you have a more direct connection with right older girls who are in let's say high school age and are pursuing stem careers and finding those connections within your community right spending time with those people who you can connect with on a more personal level and understand and see that oh they're doing this type of work this is something i can do as well i think even for myself now although i'm not a young girl anymore in my current role within non-proliferation export controls i'm i'm so fortunate to have a lot of women within this group my director senior advisors who are so competent and passionate and they are role models and they are people that i have direct interaction with and that i have direct connections with and it's it's a different type of mentor that i think is really valuable to have i can also add that i know how is it because i have in my family a woman working in this nuclear field so she support me and she learned me what is the nuclear energy and she told me that it's a great field and you have to work to to see the benefit in this field well that is a great segue into the next question which is many of you touched on mentoring programs at your agencies can you share a story of how your mentor has inspired you or how you have inspired your mentor and i'll actually start with this one because one of my mentors is here in the audience so i'll give her a little shout out tammy bloomer has been a career mentor for me and i can definitely say that she's inspired me by just seeing a woman in a leadership position and seeing her move throughout the agency so i know that that has been a really great thing for me to see and have those conversations about the challenges that she went through to get to those so i'll open it up to anyone else i can also repeat it again if you want it again i can add to the mentorship program i believe that in fact we already have a well-established mentorship program where you actually follow the lead of multiple experts i can just walk in the hall and one of my mentors would stop me and just give me a technical question and i have to answer it and if i don't then i have to go back and study and then give the answer then we have you know when we go to inspection missions or we do on job training then we are shadowing our expertise who come from all over the world and they always share with us the stories that they had in the nuclear field and how can we avoid that so every time i go to the power plant i make sure i wear my PPEs because my friend told me that one like a person that was walking next to him he would have lost his eyes if he didn't wear the safety glasses that was like really or you know they're always joking around telling yo mira we cannot really hear because we used to walk in the plant without earring buds so that's a kind of mentorship that happens occasionally but also systematically and then i also have to give credit to the inspirational women that i've encountered into my journey and one of them is madame velci who really inspired not only me but a generation generations of girls to pursue kareel in the nuclear and also here as i'm interacting with a lot of leaders one of who i really admired was commissioner right and his attitudes towards people so every day we encounter an opportunity to be to learn not only from people in higher position but also younger people people who we work with on a daily manner so i think we need to be open to see those those opportunities of learning okay so uh yes uh as i mentioned in my slide that we have a training or mentorship in the style of brothers and sisters and i would like to say that it helps not only the teaching at the transfer of knowledge but it had kind of building trust between our supervisor and the younger staff and so it's kind of a relaxing conversation which helps promote the exchange not only you know the top down transfer of knowledge but also the bottom up that the feedback to the to the higher level as well i'd just like to add to that i think that's a really good point sortos on that level of trust that comes from establishing good mentorships where you are working together with those people who are your role models or are the people that are transferring their knowledge to you or acting as your mentors but also breaking down those barriers of formality sometimes right and connecting on more of a personal people to people level right and and how having that type of relationship and opportunities to work together where you are receiving knowledge but also right breaking down those barriers again and connecting on a more personal level are so crucial to having good mentorship experiences all right thank you so i'm going to start um this question with soratos and then we'll open it up for anyone else who wants to add from your experience what have you done or what has your agency done to help you feel connected and integrated into the regulatory world okay so um firstly when i joined the the office uh it is a part of the civil civil servant the regime and we have the the training program as for every civil servant which kind of gives some introduction and principles for us to what to do and and how the system work and what is the the objective of our work that's for the general aspect of being a civil servant and then on the OAP for the OAP we have so the the management they always have the clear description of the roles and responsibility of each of the department and each of the the personnel so that is kind of helped me understand the roles and responsibility and and helps me kind of know what to learn and what to improve myself in on which of the expertise that i need to to to build yeah thank you does anyone else want to add to that um i think also adding to soratos and also agreeing with that point is that we learn how we are relevant to the regulatory philosophy or regulatory world through training systematic training but then it takes an extra uh an extra um action from leaders to kind of tell us why we're learning what we're learning and how we can use those learnings within our job not only on the technical level but also from a strategic level so for example digi krister he always walk around the offices and ask us what are you doing how can we elevate that within final not only within your own divisions our directors they always come to us and tell us we have these issues how can we work on these issues and finding those uh connection between what we learn and our fairly new expertise to with regards to nuclear and then looking into how things can elevate to work on the strategic level and having the more of the bottom up connection with our leaders is kind of making us feel connected to the world and making us understand that even the small things that we do on a daily basis that we think they are routine they're not routine and they're actually very important because they are eventually contributing to the bigger picture and the bigger goal of the organization thank you so on a similar um theme what excites you about your future as regulators and for this one i'm going to ask you all to give an answer so i'll start and then we'll just go down the line um for me the nrc's mission is something that over my last year and a half i've really grown to feel more passionate towards i started at the nrc not really knowing what the nrc was um and really understanding how we affect the nuclear power plants and materials in the us is something that has really um grown my excitement about working here and i think it'll continue to grow thanks marinda when i think about the future of my career as a regulator and where i am now and what really excites me it's and i again i think a theme that's come up often throughout this conference these past couple days is that we are really entering a new time a new landscape for the nuclear industry right there are going to be big changes and there are going to be a lot of challenges that come along with that but it also calls for i think a lot of creativity and a lot of questioning in terms of how our existing framework and our existing policies are going to apply in this new landscape and the idea of solving those problems and facing those problems maybe sometimes daunting also very much excites me so i think it's about the impact because within the institution we contribute to the fundamental safety objective so more specifically specifically the way in which we contribute to ensuring safety and security of nuclear facilities which is vital for public health and environmental protection uh so for me uh i remember that every time i attend a training course uh our experts would tell us imagine if something bad happened in the nuclear power plant how would you go back to your family and friends knowing that you have contributed to this and this question keeps resonating and keeps motivating me to look at my job not as a nine to five job but something that we really need to guard with responsibility with commitment because we are responsible for the safety and the security of the nuclear power plant and i feel like this should be really the motivation and the reason why we wake up and we decide to go and work as a regulator so yes so i would like to second what Mira said in her presentation that it's a nuclear regulator is a very dynamic job and and very international and so for me and i work in thailand but it's not only the the industry that in thailand that inspired me but also i see what other countries are doing and i see the potential that this technology can be used in thailand or we can learn so much from from other countries so that is the yeah the continuous learning for me is one of the the motivation that i i enjoy this job so it seems like there is a pretty similar theme there which is really great to see along that this one's going to be for nicole are there any changes in our regulatory culture needed to attract or attain young professionals that you can think of and say i'm not sure if i'd say the culture itself but if i put myself back in my shoes as a university student finishing my third year looking at a co-op or internship at maybe one of the the power plants is what i imagined for myself and but where i ended up is actually the nuclear regulator the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission what really spoke to me and i think we could improve on in some ways is improving what what is sometimes maybe a lack of awareness or a lack of understanding in terms of the scope of work that a nuclear regulator performs right it's not there i feel like there are in some cases maybe a preconceived notion of what working for the regulator means or what it can't or can't encompass but what really struck me as i joined the cnc and i rotated through various divisions during my internship is that it is such a broad swath of research of technical work of where i am now policy work combined with that technical knowledge right there there is something for everyone i think and i think a big part of attracting and retaining youth or or new new staff going forward will be to to improve what is a lack of awareness in terms of what this work encompasses thank you yeah i i completely agree i think that we need to in all areas really show that there's more to just desk work when it comes to being a regulator so that's great to hear for this one i'll leave it up to anyone who wants to jump in in your experiences what are the best ways to facilitate knowledge transfer from older more experienced employees okay i'll i'll start then and uh so for me um one of the best things that i found was really just sitting down with more experienced folks and just talking to them so many people have a ton of stories about either plants that they were at when something happened or a material site and if you can just sit down and just get them to talk you will learn a lot and then um what i like to do is i take what i learn and we have an internal wikipedia site for the nrc and i put that into that site so that way everyone has access to this knowledge because if i'm the only one getting it it's not helping anyone so we need to really get it and then cement it somewhere i agree with you fully i mean i think there's there's such a challenge when it comes to knowledge transfer when we're talking about the knowledge that's in people's heads that working level understanding of how we do stuff and the historical knowledge that comes along with experience right and it's very difficult to formalize that or capture that in in certain ways right and i think one as you pointed out one great way to do that is to sit down with those colleagues and and sit and listen to their stories and listen to their experiences um another way which i touched on a bit in my presentation is i i really love working alongside those colleagues who have no knowledge that i hope they do transfer to me because i think it's in those settings where a lot of the the idea of you know you don't know what you know comes out right it knowledge and information that these people have that they they don't even realize that they have right it's become so ingrained in part of their knowledge base that they they might not even think in you know just in one setting to sit down and explain this but as you're going through the work together and it comes up they go oh yes i should probably explain that right yes so i think through the mentorship program it's very important you have to to learn and to get familiar with your mentor and also i think that the teamwork is very important and also in our case we perform for the inspection for example we perform a mixed group from different sections so you can learn and get more experience from from this i'd like also to add for the knowledge transfer i think it needs the two sides to be committed to that experts who are willing to teach and also new joiners who are willing to learn for it to be successful okay um so for me my i believe that to be to become an experts we need to to constantly working on something like to to to really spend time with it and to have a coach to you know to to help us but the most important thing for knowledge transfer from a senior officer to to younger i think it's the it's the inspiration that they they can provide because by being the role model or being yeah the telling their stories that that could inspire the younger generation to to pursue more knowledge and so on the note of knowledge management transfer i'm not sure how many of you have remote work options but if you do do you feel that it has been impacted with how you're able to transfer that knowledge management yes certainly although i mean for good and bad in some ways of course right i mean there's that element of you know there's a lot of knowledge transfer that just happens naturally when you're in the same place and you're talking to each other whether it's during work or you know over your lunch break you're in the same place and you're chatting about things right i mean one of the the positives of remote work in this hybrid environment that we now live in is that it does make you know even events like this so much more accessible to let's say young regulators who want to listen on this panel but they don't have the resources within their organizations or their countries to send them all here of course right but now we have the opportunity to share this more widespread virtually i mean even thinking within my team more specifically there have been processes that we've incorporated now in our day-to-day or our routine work right on a on a weekly basis now we designated a one-hour period where we all get together all of the licensing staff come together and we talk about cases we're working on or challenges we have questions we have that we're hoping our colleagues can help us answer or even just you know explaining difficult cases that i you know i figured this out last week and this is how i did it right so i think there they're pros and cons to an environment like this and it's about finding those opportunities to take advantage of what pros there are okay great i think we have time for one more question so i'm going to open this one up to everyone because i really think it's a great question if you could give your 17 to 18 year old self one piece of professional advice what would it be sure okay so for me if if someone wants to work in the as an accelerator i would say that to have questioning attitude and to be able to uh ask quest the right question direct question but in a friendly manner and that will help uh promote conversations discussions and i think we can get a lot of benefit from exchanging ideas um yeah and to be able to learn from experience or mistakes from your mistakes or other people mistakes to help improve you know lesson to learn and safety yeah anyone who wants to jump in on this one i think i would tell my younger self relax everything everything will be okay eventually i think we stress a lot to maybe trying to find out what is our passion what are we good at and are we making the right decisions or not and i think what we really need to focus on exploring things that make us happy whether it's a class a major a profession if you think that this is something you want to explore go ahead and explore it if you failed at it that's okay you have so many other things to try so be open enjoy the journey and everything will be okay at the end right well at this point we're at the end of our session so i just want to thank our presenters and for your presentations and the really insightful conversation that we were able to have today i know that i took a lot out of it and i'm sure everyone else did too so thank you and i would like to remind the audience that your feedback is really important to us so please use that feedback tab it'll help make next year's rick even better so at this point i will now close the session thank you