The Swiss delegation including Prof. Dr. Lino Guzzella, President of ETH Zurich and Prof. Dr. Gian-Luca Bona, Director of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) visited Japan to join the 14th Annual Meeting of the STS Forum which took place in Kyoto from October 1st to October 3rd. The annual forum is attended by top decision makers in the field of S&T from government, industry and academia. This year, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, and Ministers from France and South Africa were among high-level participants from the government sector.
At the STS forum, Prof. Dr. Guzzella joined Mr. Yoshimasa Hayashi, the Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) as a speaker for the session “The Role of Universities.”
Prior to the forum, a networking event for ETH Zurich Alumni was organized at the Swiss Residence on September 30th. The alumni and guests included the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Hitachi Ltd., Dr. Norihiro Suzuki who was an invited speaker at the STS forum himself. Prof. Dr. Guzzella updated the alumni with recent approaches in education at ETH Zurich. The group also had the opportunity to learn about Prof. Christoph Hölscher’s (ETH Zurich) research on urban and architectural design for healthy living, and get more insight about the Japanese teams who took part in Cybathlon, thanks to Prof. Shuro Nakajima from Wakayama University.
Following the STS forum, on October 3rd, Prof. Dr. Bona (Empa) and Dr. Georges Kotrotsios, Vice President of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) sat down with Japanese CTOs from several major Japanese companies at a luncheon hosted by Ambassador Jean-François Paroz. The invited CTOs were preparing for a visit to Swiss corporations, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) as part of a study tour to seek the secrets behind Switzerland’s innovativeness. The visits were organized with the support of the Science & Technology Office of the Swiss Embassy.
