 I'd like to say a few words about high as perhaps we will alternate between the two languages. And since Ambassador Chunis mentioned small villages, I also grew up in a small village and also my parents didn't finish high school or anything like that. And what I remember from the small villages actually was that at the end of the year about this time we always had to stand up in front of the parents and then say And usually the person who was the best student will say the longest poem. I have no longer the memory to say any long poem and I will even read this small one which is from my favorite poet and it says And I think this is the poem of Elitis and with all due respect to Elitis I would like to disagree. I'd like to say that if you take Greece apart you will also find science, you will find philosophy, you will find math and you will find technique and you will find technology which is important for Greece and I think if you put all these things together then we have a chance to rebuild Greece and of course building Greece it's something which is an ongoing process so that's something that we will have work to do in the future. And starting this also allow me before becoming too emotional to say thanks to the National Tech University of Athens which is the alma mater for many of us for hosting this event. I'd like to thank the Lattice Foundation, also I'd like to thank the Evgenidis Foundation for hosting us and please allow me to say a big thanks to the person who has helped in every aspect of this effort completely on a voluntary basis. We can call him at night, we can call him at any time and right now he's taking pictures I think so please join me in giving a big round of applause to John Zigunakis. So what is highest and why highest? So as the ambassador said and as all of us know we realize that today there's a lot of challenges and there's a lot of challenges for the world, in climate, in energy and war and there is also the same challenges perhaps with special features for Greece on what we thought some of us at some point we thought that these challenges can be addressed and I think it's the time that science can have a contribution to all of the above that I mentioned. So as scientists we felt that it was not only our privilege but as to quote Thucydides we believe that we had a singular merit and we were in a position where we could contribute to helping to solve some of these problems. So we realized that there's a strong desire by the Hellenic diaspora to contribute to Greece. We believe that there is an environment among our colleagues that encourage such contributions and actually there was a good thing in the pandemic that we could get in all these zooms and we communicate with so many people around the world so technology facilitates all these long distance interactions so the pandemic there was perhaps one good thing of the pandemic. So the Hellenic diaspora, I think the scientists of the Hellenic diaspora in particular are containing or they have access to certain type of resources in the STEM and they are world experts in science and engineering. They have been and they are advisors to national, international and industrial organizations. Many have been educated in Greece, many are members of national academies in the US and other institutions and just to give you an example each year Greek scientists in the European Union secure about 30 million euros and I'm talking about Greek scientists that are outside Greece and I think they conduct their research in European institutions and I think it would be a wonderful opportunity that some of these people and these funds could find their way back to Greece. We also felt that in order to build the highest we have to base it on scientific excellence and synergy we think that these are national resources and we also wanted to draw on the strengths of the entire Greek scientific community without any regard to political or religious affiliations and in that sense we see ourselves as an independent and inclusive scientific organization. We are trying to build collaborations, international collaborations and exchanges between Greek American and the Greek diaspora all over the world of scientists, academics, business leaders and policymakers in areas of science and technology including particular energy, security, health and sustainability and we also want to foster and promote scientific and academic changes in particular for the younger generation. So I'd like to tell you some of the things that we have achieved over the last year and a half that we have been in existence. There have been about 11 people meeting almost every weekend for about one or two hours and brainstorming and doing different things. So what we have achieved? So at some point I realized and I was witness to a wonderful collaboration of about 10 scientists in particular in the area of artificial intelligence and robotics that they were in different universities around the world. People from the US, people from Switzerland and people from Greece that they got together and they put their minds together to discuss an area which is of particular importance and that is the area of robotics. Out of this collaboration came out a report which I think many of you can access and actually ended up in a publication and I think this place the seed for creating one of the new institutes in Greece which is the Heron and I think we have some of the people who are leading here here on today so we are very proud that we contributed that such an institute is built in Greece. We have also advocated to do things like maker spaces. I think Greece is very strong in theory. We have wonderful minds that are doing all sorts of theoretical work. I think it's important that we also give access to people that they can do things with their hands. I think these maker spaces would be something that can engage the younger generation and we also live in the time of the fourth industrial revolution which is artificial intelligence and computing and we hope that there will be bridges between Heron for example and another institute via Archimedes. We believe that there is an ecosystem that is beginning in Greece in AI and robotics and we are very happy that we have contributed to that. We have also been in touch with people who have money of course and one of the people who have money is the Bodosakis Foundation and they have been very kind to support many people perhaps many of us over the years with fellowships and we have created a joint program with the Bodosakis Foundation where for certain fellowships they contribute half of the funding and then the highest members they are contributing the other half. We have also had the pleasure to establish a group of about 150 people some of the most distinguished scientists of the Greek diaspora in US, Germany, Switzerland and other places of the world and we have been the recipients of their input. I value very much all the different ideas that we received and if there is one idea that I collected from all the feedback that we have solicited in particular the registration the key idea was to have a sustained presence of the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Study in Greece. So the future for us is indeed to create a physical home for hires we want to have a physical presence and we want to have a space that will say this is the Hellenic Institute of Advanced Study. We hope that people from around the world they will have the freedom and the desire to come to this place to exchange with their colleagues on the basis of fundamental science and also that the public and all the different organizations of Greece will have access to the minds and to the knowledge of the Hellenic diaspora by being open and inclusive in this entity. We would like to see that we have engagement by our members so we very much welcome activities and initiatives and all of us in the board and I guess the people we know and support us we would very much like to give everything we have in order to see more activities. You will see today four panels that these are the activities we focused on at the beginning but of course more is welcome. So I'd like to close also again with a poem and I'll say first the poem of T.S. Eliot which is one of my first poems of all times which sometimes reminds me of what it is to come back to Greece and what T.S. Eliot says is we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time and if I may translate this poem in a different way and in terms of the Greek culture there's two big journeys in the Greek culture. This is the journey for discovery and to understand where science and the world ends. And this is what makes H.I.A.S. make a journey between these two journeys. The journey of Odysseus and the journey of the Great Alexander. Thank you very much.