 Morning everyone. My name is Meng Cheng. I'm the Executive Vice President at Purdue University and the Johnny Everson Dean of College of Engineering. On behalf of many parts and organizations of this university and the Purdue Research Foundation, we'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of you here in person and those watching online. Now or later, to the first in the series of the Ambassador Distinguished Lectors at Purdue. And we are honored and privileged today to welcome Madam Ambassador Olaf Stater and Dr. Brogdon to be the inaugural speakers in this new series here. In particular, we are absolutely delighted that Purdue University, the state of Indiana, are able to enjoy this growing relationship with many enterprises and universities from Sweden. And to welcome students here, to welcome business here, to welcome technology and economic development along with research collaboration here in the middle of this country. And we are committed to be part of this utterly important and increasingly stronger bond between the Kingdom of Sweden and the United States of America through technology. Madam Ambassador, welcome. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you so much for having us here. It's true delight to leave Washington DC. Haven't done that for a long time now. So good to see you all here. I hope you've been doing okay during this particularly strange times, maybe to be a student with COVID. So it's good to see you all back here. I hope you, I don't know if you studied at home or if you were here all the time, but if you were home all the time, I'm sure you're very happy to be in college. So this is a great honor. And actually, I will give you a small history lesson today. I don't know if you know very much about Sweden. I won't bore you with all our history from the Vikings and onwards, but talk a little bit about the fact, maybe it's strange that a small country you can see us there up north, where we are in the northern corner of the map, why a small country like Sweden establishing fighter jet trainer factory in Lafayette, Indiana? Well, it's a it's a quite long story, actually. It starts in 1814. But I will just tell you that the first Swedes actually arrived in the United States in 1638. We established a colony in Delaware. And if we hadn't been beaten by the Dutch in after 15 years, and they eventually by the Brits, maybe you would all have been speaking Swedish at this time. But that's that's not the case. Anyway, but the Swedish strong defense industry actually goes back to 1814. We then had to import a new king. And because the dynasty that we had was was kind of over, we had to get someone new. And then at the time they thought Napoleon, it would be good to have a French general as a Swedish king. So they imported Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, who became crown prince at the time. So when he eventually inherited the throne in 1814, he realized his goal was to get Norway back from Denmark because we had lost Norway. We had lost Finland. And he did not at all side with Napoleon. He sided with the French to get Norway back. And then he looked at his empire and thought, not so big, fairly big land, but not many people, very poor, because we had been at war for so many, many years. So he decided that the union between Sweden and Norway, we should become neutral. And he himself wanted to have an important role in Europe as a mediator in all the wars, you know, there were constant wars at the time. So he wanted to be a prominent figure in Europe mediating peace between different actors. And so he thought it was good that Sweden then became neutral itself, because that would give him more credibility. And I think in Sweden, at least, Sweden is not a member of NATO. We didn't join after the Second World War. Many think that we are by default bunnyhuggers and peaceniks. That's not the case. So the reason for him to do this was actually to give himself a prominent role, and we were so poor. This poverty that we had actually led to that one fourth of our population, or one third even, left for the United States in between 1850s and onwards. So at the year 1900, Chicago was the second biggest Swedish city after Stockholm. And we have played quite a big role in the development of these country skyscrapers of Chicago, for instance, were started to be built by Swedes, several household companies here in the U.S. are Swedish Walgreens, for instance, Greyhound, Carlson, Waggon Lee, the travel company, and others are Swedish. But anyway, so one fourth of our population left because of poverty, religious persecution, and inequality. And of course that eventually led to the creation of the Swedish welfare state that we know today, because of course the politicians at the time panicked. One fourth of one third of the population left. They had to institute schooling for everyone since the 1860s. And then we had some great innovations, late 1800s, like Ericsson, for instance, telephone company, SKF, ball bearing company, which is also here in Indiana, and many other inventions. So we became a country of engineers. I think due to the fact that so many people left for America, they went, we had mandatory schooling from the 1860s, and then a strong engineering culture. Anyway, then, you know, it's all about location. So we have a very big neighbor to the east. So the neutrality that was then instituted in 1814 carried us through the First World War. We stayed outside of that. Of course, it was tough for Sweden as well at the time. Same went for the Second World War. There we had a very tough balancing act to be neutral. We, for instance, sold iron ore to the Germans during the war. But at the same time, we provided the Brits with ball bearings, as I said before, Swedish invention, air protection, military air protection from the Swedish industry. So we tried to play both sides. So then after the Second World War, NATO came about and the war so packed. So the Cold War was a fact. Sweden decided, given our long history of neutrality, to try to continue to stay neutral. So we did not join NATO. Finland had to, after the war, have a friendship packed with the Soviet Union. So they were kind of left on their own in the corner next to us. So we then decided, as I said, to be neutral or militarily non-aligned. But to make this non-aligned as trustworthy and believable, we got a huge military industry going. As I said, country of engineers. We had an air force already back in the 1920s. But after the war, our military industry really boomed. So since then, we have created our own fighter jet plane. We are usually competing with the US on the international market. I can tell you that the US wins more often, even though we think we have just as good a plane for a decent amount of money. But so we also produce our own submarines. I was just in Washington at the huge Army Fair, a USA, where you could see a lot of Swedish inventions together with the BAE. We have one of the biggest companies when it comes to, what do you call it, how you aim for your weapons to reduce casualties. We have grenade launchers that used by the US Army and so on. So we're huge for being such a small country. And the reason, as I said, why we did this, why we got this big industry is to make our own neutrality credible and believable. So the most of the production during the Cold War were for our own needs. We had a very strong army during the Cold War time. But then when the Soviet Union fell and we all thought peace would come to earth, and we changed our military doctrines and we kind of not disassembled our military, but we really scaled down. We started selling and exporting. And SOB together with the that have created the Gripen fighter jet has been quite successful. And now, as I said, we are opening a huge facility today in Lafayette to produce trainers fighter jets. So it's airplanes, but it's not the real combat ones, but it's the ones you use for training. So huge factory, huge production, and of course, great for innovation. And I know that SOB together with the university in Linköping, where they are located, will have a very strong tie to Purdue University. So that's another strong link. So for those of you who are interested in aeronautics, come and work in Linköping for a while. I think it would be great. And we also have, I think you have an exchange program with our with our university there. So this is a long story of telling you why a small country in the north that is kind of a peaceful, trying to have a peaceful existence in a very tough area has a strong military industry that is actually going to Indiana. Today, we are increasing our defense spending quite a lot. We see Russia as an increasing threat when it comes to military activities. We cannot anymore rule out a military attack from Russia. We see a buildup of the Russian military forces. We see much more activity in the Baltic Sea, which you can see the ocean between the water between Sweden and Finland and Russia. We see much more present activity there of Russian forces. Annexation of Crimea in 2014, of course, shows that Russia does not respect international law and sovereignty of other countries. And we are quite worried about the situation in our vicinity. We are, of course, completely aware of the US focus on China. We share that worry about China. But of course, we don't see a military threat from China in our area, but we do see that from Russia. So very much about my work, everyday work in Washington, is telling the story that I just told you why we need to cooperate very closely with the United States. As I said, we're not a member of NATO, but we cooperate very closely with the United States when it comes to development of our military equipment, when it comes to military exercises. We have been in all NATO, even if we're not a member of NATO, we still have been in all NATO's military operations, taking part in Afghanistan, alongside with American colleagues, and so forth. So for us, it's paramount to our security that the US interest in Europe is still there, and that you show up at the exercises, show the Russians that you, the transatlantic link and the Article 5 in NATO is valid. So that's what I try to preach everyday in Washington. And I can assure you, we have a very good cooperation. But given the shift of focus, which we completely understand towards Asia, and every government and every administration just has one bag of money, and when that has to be divided, when it comes to your security, we just want you to keep your interest in the Baltic Sea and in our region as well. So we can stay safe. Of course, we don't only see military threats, cyber hybrid is very much a reality, and that's maybe where we are even more vulnerable. I'm sure you have taken notice of the ransomware attacks in your country. Washington DC was out of gasoline this summer because the ransomware attack on a pipeline from Texas, we just had an attack on like our safeway. So 800 stores could not sell food for a whole week, quite serious. So that's also things we need to take more seriously. And I think you as students at this fantastical technical university have all the opportunities to also get into those kind of technical issues. How do we protect ourselves from cyber attacks in the future? Because maybe that's even more of a realistic threat to our societies than an actual military threat. So Sweden is not just military superpower, we're also an innovative superpower actually in the last ranking. We were number two, the second most innovative country in the world after Switzerland. We are very proud of that. As I said, we're a country of engineers. We're very innovative when it comes to all the new technologies that I've talked about. Stockholm is second place in the world when it comes to unicorns after Silicon Valley. So now it's my great pleasure to hand over to Maria Brouberis, who is the Innovation Counselor at the Embassy to tell you a little bit more of what we are doing. So thank you so much for your attention. Thank you, Karin. And thank you Purdue University for inviting us. It's a real pleasure to be here. I will broaden the scope from defense and security to sustainability in general and inviting you all to cooperation with Sweden in this area. We have just launched this wording, pioneer the possible to show that it's, I mean, sustainability and technology to advance sustainability is really here. So that's what I want to invite you all to collaboration with Sweden. So let's pioneer the possible together. Yeah, sorry. The Sustainable Development Goals. Goals, 17 goals that are due in 2030 and it's only a bit more than eight years to go. And we are not on track with most of the goals. So we need to really speed up what we are doing. Climate change really needs to be tackled. Sweden has quite ambitious climate targets. And we were really happy when the US announced that you would re-join the Paris Agreement. That's a really, I mean, good, it's a message to the world that when the world's largest economy really commits to this, it's really powerful and it mobilizes efforts from everywhere. And I mean, you could say that these are only, I mean, the dates here, carbon neutrality in 2040 or 2050. It's just, it's targets, it's maybe just words. But I'm here to, I mean, to give some example of what's really happening in Sweden and also in global cooperation because the green transition is really happening. There are a lot of stuff going on. Green batteries, for example. In the end of this year, the Swedish company North Vault will start full-scale production of the world's greenest battery cells in the north part of Sweden. And that's an area which is really booming with new companies in the area of technology. So these batteries, it would be lithium ion batteries using renewable energy and also in a closed-loop process where all the materials will be recycled. So using recycled materials as input and then having this closed-loop. And billions of dollars has been invested in this, in this project. Another example is fossil-free steel. We have now produced the first steel with input of hydrogen from renewable electricity producing steel without carbon emissions. And that has been delivered to the Swedish company Volvo for producing trucks. And this is called the hybrid project. So fossil-free. And also it says here fossil-free from mine to steel. And also the mining industry is making the shift towards pure electricity-driven machines with the help of engineers, of course. Hybrid will have commercial scale production of fossil-free or carbon-free steel from 2026. Now it's only a pilot plant so far. Other new solutions are whatever you can make from wood. For example, you can make, I mean, of course, high rises with wooden structures. The picture in the middle here, clothing. A new factory in Sweden is starting now to produce cellulose and textiles from wood. And of course, airplane fuel can also be made from wood. Maybe Saab will run on that in the future. Yeah, thumbs up over there. Yeah, so a lot of things are really going on. And also when it comes to technical innovations for human well-being, for quality of life, there are also many things going on. And as Karin said, we have a long tradition of engineers in Sweden. And we're really proud of that. For example, the marine propeller is a Swedish invention invented by John Ericsson in 1850. And this propeller was actually used in the Civil War ship monitor, which beat the confederation, what's it called? Yeah, Merrimack. So it proved that it functioned. And Karin also mentioned the ball bearing, which we are proud that SKF, the Swedish company, invented in the early 20th century. And now development of this technology is going on here at Purdue. And actually, I heard that Purdue has produced two and soon to be, we hope, three PhD that is working at SKF with advancing this technology. So great cooperation there. More recent, modern inventions are, for example, Bluetooth, which is a Swedish invention. The pacemaker, Skype, the free internet call service is a Swedish invention, Spotify, online music, streaming, more modern and popular inventions, I guess you have heard of all of them. But this is, I mean, it's not single individuals or single companies that drive this innovation. It's cooperation. Of course, scientists have a huge part in this, making the foundation and breaking new, I mean, pushing the frontier of our knowledge. But there are also business leaders who have the courage to invest and to make these inventions into real innovation and put them on the market and investors that are willing to risk their money in helping the business leaders. In Sweden, we find that politicians have been really important in putting the long term rules of the game in place. In Sweden, politicians were really early out in establishing a carbon tax, perhaps not so popular by everyone at the time. But that has really showed that we want to reduce the use of fossil fuels. It's a carbon tax on the content of fossil fuels in energy. So that has had a crucial role in decreasing carbon dioxide emissions. And you see it at the same time, we have increased GDP quite a lot. So there is not, I mean, the economy did not suffer. And what was crucial here is this long term direction, this is where we are going. That was also the reason why Sweden were one of the, I think we were the first country to have this carbon neutrality goal, to set the direction for businesses to minimize risk. And as Karen said, we're a really small country, up in the north, only 0.13% of the world population. So we have always had to be open. We have, I mean, we're also depending on our exports. So that's sort of in our DNA. But although we're a very small country, we are proud to have 3% of the world's top 100 universities. So, I mean, far more than our sort of chair of the top universities. We have an innovative public sector. We have had this triple helix cooperation between academia, the public sector and business. That is really also something that defines Sweden, which we value a lot. But of course, it's not only Sweden, we cannot meet the sustainability goals ourselves. So it's also a lot about cooperation. And we already mentioned the ball bearings several times. It's just a, I mean, it may seem like a small example. But what the ball bearings have done for the world is actually huge in saving costs and fossil fuels. So those, I mean, give us a handful of those inventions. And I mean, it makes a difference. So I would like to invite you all to connect with us and join us in the co-creation of a more sustainable society and technology to assist on that journey. So just, I mean, you could come to Sweden and study as an international student. There are many different, I mean, we have a lot of different university and you can do a short period of time or you can stay longer. And there are information at studying sweden.se, for example. If you are a more senior researcher, a doctoral student or senior researcher, there are also a lot of opportunities, grants. And we have this foundation, Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education that can guide you, for example, if you're interested. My last invitation, I mean, I invite you all, of course, to cooperate with Sweden. A specific event that we will host is in connection to the World Expo in Dubai. We will host a virtual innovation event for the Sweden Innovation Day, this event to cooperate on co-creating sustainable solutions. And I just picked two before different sessions. So I picked two here, missions to achieve the global goals and co-creation for innovation, which is more about how we innovate, if we can innovate the way we innovate. So you're all very welcome to join us in this journey to pioneer the possible. And I hope I was able to share some of the inspiration. I'm really inspired to be here. I will have a lot of interesting meetings during the rest of the day, really looking forward to that. And thank you so much for listening. And if you have any questions, you are welcome to contact me. I work at the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. as a science and innovation counselor. So please, if you have any questions, you're welcome. Thank you. What do you see as the biggest industry going forward with cooperation on a technological level between the U.S. and Sweden? Thank you. We see a lot of Swedish investments here, a lot of startups coming over to the U.S. Many of them do the mistake of going to New York and Silicon Valley first and realize it's too expensive. But that's a big part. We are creating lots of jobs with SOB here, for instance, technology-wise. Ericsson is putting a huge, Ericsson, you know, it's Swedish, and it's putting up a huge research facilities in the United States, really growing strongly. IKEA is expanding. So there's lots of them actually. But we are also trying to invite as many American companies to come to Sweden as possible. Many of them have been in the U.K., for instance. But now that they have left the EU, we are actually a good spot for American investments given, as I said, our technological level, but also that most of us speaks English. But the U.S. is our fourth largest market. We are the 13th largest investor in the United States and growing. So as Maria said, when it comes to population, we're like number 90 in the world. So being the 13th largest investor here is huge. So this is a very attractive market for Swedes. So in all sectors, I would say. I don't know if you want to add any special sectors in technology? I mean, we are pushing the green transition now. So that's what we are really. I mean, also defense. But I would say that the green transition is really a priority for the Swedish government for cooperation. Also, life sciences. I'm Jay Gore. I'm a professor in School of Mechanical Engineering, also a faculty member in the Maurice J. Zuckrow Laboratories, where the sub-enterprise is growing across the street. One of the large recent projects I received was to help a traditionally coal-burning 1300 megawatt power plant make transition while operating and not losing large number of jobs and the exergy-based efficiency doubling as well as retraining of the workforce in the information technology areas in the, I will simply say the phrase, artificial intelligence area. We have progressed. I have colleagues at Lund University who I interact with in Sweden. But could you comment on information technology and the advent of artificial intelligence and more importantly, pathway to green while not losing jobs? Well, I think one of the things that we are very proud of in Sweden is how we have transformed our society. When it comes to, you know, we have all lost industries over the years. So for instance, Malmö used to be one of the biggest shipbuilding places in Sweden and also in Europe. I don't think they hardly built any ships anymore. So that society was transformed. We have a program that the Employers Association together with the trade, we're very highly unionized country, 80% are unionized. But so the Employers Association together with the trade unions have a program where, for instance, if you work at an industry that is going out of date and not being replaced, they will actually put you in a program where they will ask you, so what is your dream job? And let's say you say florist and there's a need of florist, they will retrain you. So within one year, 80% of the workers are actually in new careers. So I would say for 40, 50 years, we've had this kind of program to shift people's focus. And also, as I said, after the Cold War, we not dismantled, but made our military armed forces much smaller. So we had lots of military regiments, for instance, that had to close down. We have to retrain. So many officers actually became teachers, which they have been very successful. So we have a long tradition of transitioning workers from industries that are not. We don't save industries in Sweden, we save workers. So the government will never go in and, for instance, you remember Saab the car, that had never got any help from the government to survive. But we retrain the workers. So that's how we do it. That's the business has to be sustainable in its own right. But then we will help the people to transition into something else. But when it comes to AI, that's of course a highly important political area where the politicians are now. I just read a paper yesterday trying to figure out how they should be able to coordinate their efforts better to support the development of AI technology in many sectors of both the public sector but also the private sector. I think our politicians have been a bit late, but industry is going forward. And I know the Wallenberg Foundation that was mentioned here are putting a lot of money into research, for instance, at the Swedish universities when it comes to AI. No, okay. So, hi, Jan Andersmansson. Today I'm primarily Sweden, but I'm also professor here at Purdue. I know you have a lot of great program with great university around the world. Now we have a wave here we can ride, we can surf on with Saab coming here. Do you have any good recommendation for how we can get more of these young people in exchange program with Sweden and Swedish universities? I think as students you have to think a little bit out of the box. I think many don't think about Sweden as a country to go to because I guess many would like to go to Germany or France or the UK or Ireland or English speaking countries. But as I said, in Sweden, as Maria said, lots of programs in English. We are, as also been said, we have lots of universities that are world leading in many ways. So I think for you if you decide to come you would have an experience that you wouldn't have anywhere else. Our society is also very different given the welfare system of Sweden. And actually if you decide I don't want to pull you away from Purdue, but you can get an engineering education in Sweden for half the price or one third of the price at a very good quality. So that's also interesting. So if you want to experience something totally different, really do come. It's huge. There are lots to experience, lots of fun young people and good universities, but Maria can add. I also want to add now I'm looking at Miguel Anderson over there that the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce is putting a mobility program in place for student exchange, but also for internship at companies. So it's a two-way mobility program. So you can, I mean, if you do your studies here, you can have your internship in Sweden and vice versa. And I think that's, I mean, that that will be a very strong, create a very strong bond between the US and Sweden. And also you can go to a bar when you're 18. Good morning. Thank you for those comments. I just wanted to add, and you know, Georgia's here, but before the pandemic there were, we had a significant increase in the number of students who were going to Sweden. I mean we have partnerships of course in many universities, but including internships in Skania and, you know, many other universities study abroad. But we also had, interestingly, faculty who led faculty that study abroad programs all the way to Kiruna. So, you know, we read the news, see what's happening. And those of you who don't know about the Kiruna story, it's a pretty amazing story as well. And our faculty pivot and lead students to see what Sweden is doing. So just wanted to add, all that was going on well before the pandemic. No, Kiruna is really exotic. You know, it's over the Arctic Circle. They have actually just moved the whole town because it was sitting on the big mine, Kiruna is a mining town, and they felt that they were worried that the city would actually sink because of the all the hollowness underneath. So they moved the whole city. I know it's a fantastic experience, it's a fantastic town. And there's also the Technical University of Luleå, which is really on the forefront of technology as well. So please do come. I think you would really enjoy it.