Lakeland Currents, your public affairs program for North Central Minnesota, produced by Lakeland PBS with host Ray Gildow. Production funding for Lakeland Currents is made possible by Bemidji Regional Airport, serving the region with daily flights to Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, for information available at BemidjiAirport.org. Closed captioning for Lakeland Currents is sponsored by Niswa Tax Service, tax preparation for businesses and individuals, online at NiswaTax.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Lakeland Currents. Some interesting statistics to share with you tonight. The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women killed during that same time period by ex-male partners was 11,766. Nearly double the amount of casualties lost during that war. 18,000 women have been killed by men in domestic violence since 2003, and one in four, the number of women who will be victims of severe violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. I don't mean to suggest it's just women who are suffering domestic violence. It can be same-sex partners. It can be men. It can be children. But the number of women who have been killed in this country is staggering. And tonight we're gonna visit with three women who are doing something about it. We're trying to help the situation. The women are from the Mid-Minnesota Women's Center here in Brainerd, and to my right, I would like to introduce these ladies who are sitting here wondering what I'm gonna ask them. Shannon Wussall is the executive director, and next to her is Vicki Floer, who is the shelter, I'm sorry, Linnea. Linnea Ames, who is the child safety center manager. And then next to her is Vicki Floer, who is the shelter manager. Let's just start out talking a little bit about your backgrounds and how you got into this particular line of work. I went to school for criminal justice. It's always just been a personal interest of mine. And prior to starting as the executive director at Mid-Minnesota Women's Center almost two years ago, I was working as a probation officer, supervising the medium and high-risk domestic violence caseload. So it kind of seemed like a natural progression. So you've been on your position now for about two years? Yes. Yeah. And how about you, Linnea? Well, I've always had a passion for working with people. Every career I've ever been in has been working with people at some capacity. So I worked at the shelter for a few years, and I was a correctional officer for a few years, and so always working with people in some form. So you have seen a little bit of a law background yourself. And how about you, Vicki? So I went to school for business management the first time. The second time I went to school, I went to school to work with disabled people. And then I decided that I became a mom, and then I decided that I needed to be more in our community. And after learning of more things that were going on in our community, it disturbed me. And so I got involved with the Women's Shelter as an advocate in 2010. And so I've been there since then. So where are you located? We're in Brainerd at 1414 Maple Street. Our shelter is. And the way, are there, is there more than one building, more than one facility? Our program, we operate two programs. We have the Alex and Brandon Child Safety Center, which is at 2602 Oak Street. And then what Vicki was talking about is the 24-hour domestic violence shelter, which is at 1414 Maple Street. So you do have two different facilities. And how big of a service area do you consider yourself serving? We have served families all the way from the Canada border, all the way up to Kansas. No, you mean down to Kansas. Down to Kansas, yeah. Sorry about that. Really? Yes. So is this unique in Minnesota or are there other centers? I would guess that in the metro area, there's centers. There are other centers. Unfortunately, due to cuts in money and stuff, a lot of them places are closing. So we get, like, ache and close theirs. And so now we're picking up the load from that center that people would have been going there. And what's your capacity? Well, we have three rooms inside the safety center where we can supervise visits. And then we also have three playgrounds outside. So at any given point, we can have three operating at once. Three different individuals? Three different families. Three different families, okay. And what happens if you've got more demand than you can meet? What do you do? Well, that often happens. And what our focus is at the safety center is what's in the best interest of the children. So we do our best as far as scheduling and availability to make sure that whatever is best for the kids that are coming for the visits or exchanges, that we can facilitate that. So do you have people who usually come for a period of time, get the help and then they're able to go off on their own or do you get people who have to keep coming back? We have both. The goal is that they come to us and then they see a reduction in services where then they would have to maybe come for exchanges only and then they don't need our services anymore. That's our hope. So give us kind of a typical example of how a client would come to you. What are the circumstances? Kind of an average. I know they're all different, but just how does it work? Some of our families come through the courts. Their court ordered, the children have been removed. They've been placed in foster care. And so the court has ordered that they have visits and so they come to us through a referral through the counties. Right now we currently are working with like seven different counties in CHIPS cases, kids that have been removed from the families. They come through family court. You might be going through a divorce and then the divorce, it's ordered that until the divorce's final visitation will take place at our center. Might be voluntary. You don't get along. There's always confrontation. And one of the parents have decided that our center would be the best place to come so that they don't have to see each other and communicate. I know domestic violence is one of the most dangerous environments for police officers. Is it typical that if they get called to a home and there's domestic violence that they would remove the woman from that environment and bring them to you? Or do they remove them and take them to another step first? So occasionally they do contact the shelter to remove a woman who might need safety. And so while the officers on the scene, they contact the shelter. If the woman is choosing to come to the shelter then we take her. So you work closely with police officers? We do. We have a really good working relationship with the local law enforcement in the area. And when you say local here, how big an area? Are you talking Aiken County and Morrison County or just Crow Wing County? Well, we receive funding for Region Five Plus which is Stearns, or I'm sorry, Crow Wing, Cass, Morrison, Todd, Wadena counties and then the plus is Aiken. So we work closely with them but primarily we have most of our referrals come within Crow Wing County. So it's the law enforcement agencies within the county that we work the closest with and most often with. And are most of these situations with children or is it a mixture of everything? I would say most of them are with children but that's not a requirement to receive services from us to have children. It's just always amazed me and I've visited with lawyers in my career when I'm out on the lakes guiding and I've had lawyers from California in different places and I've had them who are specialists with this kind of in-violence in families and I always ask them, why do the women always go back to these guys? What's your experience has been about that? I mean, I know I'm being pretty general here. Oh, no, yeah. We get that question all the time, right? That's not a, oh my, what's that? What do we say? You know, a lot of women return for different reasons. It may be that I think personally the largest one is that as humans, we have hope, we have hope that people are going to change and that this time is going to be the time that their partner is going to make that change when they realize the damage that has been done. Unfortunately, we know that that's not realistic. Sometimes people return home because financially the husband or the partner is the breadwinner and so they don't even know, they don't have skills to get a job. They might not have an education to get a job. They might not know how to go about doing the financial piece of it because he was the one in charge of all of the money. Sometimes it's transportation. He's in charge of the vehicle so they don't have a way to get out. Sometimes they think that they need to stay for the children. They want their children to have that happy family, not realizing that it's more damaging to stay in an unhealthy relationship and your children are teaching and learning from what they're seeing, which is abusive situations. So there's a lot of different reasons that people don't leave. It's not just as easy as saying, you should just get up and go. And there is a large number of them who don't know how to survive outside of that relationship because they know that when the cupboard doors get slammed, they know what's coming next. So the fear of leaving is very real for a lot of them because once they leave, they don't know how he's going to respond. And so that fear of the unknown is very driving of keeping people right where they shouldn't be because of that. I think it's important to note too that in those situations, there's that imbalance of power and control in the relationship.  So oftentimes there are things that have been set into place long before somebody attempts to leave. So there's been years or months worth of isolation, controlling self-esteem issues, those sort of things that are put into place. So if someone's been told something or whatever the case may be over an extended period of time, it's easy to fall into believing that or questioning if you do have the resources available or the ability to leave or if there's going to be support out there once you do leave. And I think too, Shannon, totally because one of the other examples would be people using their children saying, well, no, you have a mental health issue and they're going to say you're crazy. I'm going to say you're crazy. So they're going to keep the kids from you because you're not fit to be a mom because you're crazy. You have a mental health breakdown and they're not going to let you have your kids back or I'm going to make sure that they don't let you have the kids back or even drugs. She may not be a drug user, but he may force her to carry a backpack that has the drugs in it or drive a vehicle that has drugs in it so that if they get pulled over, she's technically the one who's going to be violated or she's the one that's going to be charged with a drug because it's on her possession. So I mean, there's just so many different ways that people don't even, I think that a lot of people are instant to judge instead of thinking like, okay, maybe there is a lot of different reasons why people can't get out or don't necessarily leave when we say, no, you need to leave there. They're the experts on their life and they know kind of the ins and outs and what's going to keep them alive. Right. In your situation, do you see much domestic violence towards men? We see approximately 25% of the clients that come to us for services are males. Which is kind of what the national statistics show. Yeah, and last quarter at our shelter, we provided services to 1,013 individuals. Wow, last quarter? Last quarter. Isn't that a sad thing? It is. It's a very sad thing. And unfortunately that's rising every quarter as well. So the quarter before, we provided services to approximately 900 individuals. How about same sex partnerships? Do you see that too? Absolutely. The domestic violence issues and relationships, it's a relationship issue. It is not gender specific or... Financial.  I think it's important too to bring up that there's elder abuse too. We've got children beating their own parents or I mean, we've done visits for ordered by the court for a mother so that she wasn't persuaded to sign documents by her kids. In a nursing home? Yeah. And that she wasn't being... In the nursing home itself. Yeah, wasn't being abused by any of the family members or her husband, so. Taking advantage of. Yeah. And our oldest individual that we have sheltered, she was 87. Yeah, wow. And our youngest individual, I was brand new. They came home from the hospital, they were with us.  So 24 hours later, the baby was right back with us. And so, and our oldest male was 87 as well. It's just hard to imagine that people can be as violent as they can. I think a couple of days ago on the national news, a babysitter took a little infant's hands and put them in boiling water. Yep. And you wonder, what are people thinking? How can this be so... Well, I think the important thing for us to do as a community is to take a step back and then ask ourselves not why is that happening but what happened to you? That you think that that behavior is okay because these are learned behaviors.  So that's where it's important that we're out there meeting with people like you, having these conversations, raising awareness, educating the community and doing what we can to be proactive instead of reactive. And making sure that our community, the people who are choosing to make the wrong choices are held accountable for their behaviors. Well, they're held accountable and receive programming to try to change that behavior in the future as well. Yeah. And even as us, that we hold each other accountable, that we're not anyone that we're making sure that we hold each other accountable for our group of friends if they're making fun of somebody, that we're saying, hey, or if we're hanging out and or you're hanging out with a bunch of guys and you guys start talking about something that's not appropriate that you stand up and say, hey, you guys, let's change the subject. Like there's no need for us to be talking about this. It's super important that we all stand up and do that amongst our own circles in order to kind of keep going at it. How many employees do you have in your organization? We have 25 employees between the two programs, six full-time and 19 part-time. So are some of those counselors or counselor types? No, we do not have a licensed therapist on staff but we do work with community members who come and provide those services on a pro bono basis and work with the residents at the shelter.  What, so how do you help her? How do you start out with her? What's the kind of the steps that you go through? So the very first thing we do is let her know we're grateful that she's there. We recognize and acknowledge that that took a lot for her to even walk through our front door because it's embarrassing. It's, you know, it's- It's scary. It's the unknown, you know, it's really hard. It's difficult.  And so we really just try to make them feel comfortable and kind of get them settled in to start with and then start working on what goals it is that she wants. And sometimes those goals are to return home and we're not there to tell them- You're not there to judge. Right, we are not. We're not there to tell them what they can or can't do but if, you know, that individual came to us and that was what they wanted to do was return, we're going to have the conversation of, you know, what's your safety plan? We need to make sure that she has a safety plan so that when it happens again, cause we know what's gonna happen again, that she knows who her outreach is, who is her support team, you know, who can she call, when can she call, what documents should she have with her to make sure that she takes when she leaves. So we'll work on a safety plan if returning home is something that she wants to do. If finding her own housing is what she wants, then we work on, you know, what kind of background housing do you have? You know, do you have any eviction? Do you have a felony? Do you have those kinds of things and see which housing is most appropriate to try and apply for? It gets difficult with housing because our area is the lack of safe, affordable housing right now. And so sometimes we can have people that are with us for six months. Even though we're a 30 day crisis facility, we don't kick them out and say, oh, where your 30 days are up, you gotta get out, right? We don't do that. And so it's really just a matter of what the client, I guess, is the resident, is what do they want to work on? And so sometimes that's going back to school, sometimes that is getting daycare for the kids, sometimes it's getting a job, doing a resume, getting court clothes, just those different, it's literally whatever they want to work on is what we try and work on. Sometimes it's getting into treatment. Sometimes it's us connecting with Linnea to try and get visits set up so that her children can still be seen. They're seeing their dad or vice versa, whoever it is that we're working with at the time. What if you get a knock on your door and it's a person that's been battered? Then we take them in. Are you obligated to report that to the police then? No, we're not. You're not? But we do take them in. We take them in immediately, even if our, so we have six bedrooms, we have 26 beds. And even if all of our beds are full, if someone came to our door and they were in immediate need, we will find a cot, a couch, we will put them so that they're safe until the next day when we can find somewhere else for them to go that is a safe place for them to be. So we don't ever say no, sorry, you can't come. I don't want you to give away secrets that you might not want to share, but how do you provide the safety? Do you have security? How do you do that? Well, one way is because we want to make sure that everybody knows where we are. The more eyes that we have on the building, the safer it is for everybody. Law enforcement will routinely drive past our buildings to check on us and make sure that we're doing all right. And we've got security systems at both of the buildings and that sort of thing too. Okay. Yeah. And I think again, the biggest thing is making sure that everybody does know where we are. And we do have such a great relationship with our local law enforcement that we're never, I don't ever feel that even if something does go disray at the shelter that I'm ever in a place where law enforcement isn't going to come immediately. So I don't fear for my own safety because I know that law enforcement's gonna be there and do what they need to do to make sure that staff and the residents are safe. And so I don't ever fear, I don't have that fear. Yeah, we are very lucky because they respond very quickly to our calls. Yeah. And they check on us. Drive by, like Shannon said. Do you feel like you're making progress? I mean, that's a larger question than in the Women's Center. I don't suggest that this is your problem. I think you feel like you're making progress, but then the numbers grow and you're like, am I making progress? You know what I mean? Or do you know what you mean? Well, I think overall, I think deep down we all feel like we're making progress, otherwise we wouldn't be able to keep coming to work every day. So we do. I mean, whether that progress is one person, you know, that's still progress. If that one person is safe, that one person receives the services that they need, that's progress to us and that's important. Yes, you see the numbers increase, but that could also be because there's a rise in the awareness of it as well. So even though there's an increase in the number of people that are coming to us for services, we're happy to know that more people are aware of where we are and what we do and that there's a place to go when they do need that help. So it's interesting. You mentioned that they don't always come to you because they've been beaten, but maybe they've just been harassed in other ways. And I would guess that you try to help them cope with that and learn, do they learn some coping skills with this? If, especially if they're deciding that we're gonna go back in that environment. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's more rather than coping skills, it's more safety skills. How do I stay alive is really kind of more of the things that we help them with because their safety is number one. Well, we offer the support group. Yeah, we do a Tuesday night support group from six to eight every Tuesday. And then we also go into the jail every Friday from one to three. Into the Corwin County jail. Into the Corwin County jail. Yeah, we go and see some of the residents that are in the jail because they're there. So the same thing, we do a support group, talk with the women who have been abused. They're probably, sometimes they're in there for exactly what I was talking about earlier. They got caught carrying the drugs or they had went and stole something because he had forced her to those kind of things. And sometimes women do choose to self-medicate. And so they become addicts of alcohol or drugs because they don't know any other coping skills to deal with their life of what's going on. And so they self-medicate. Or they decided to fight back and that, the partner called them in that time and now they're sitting there for domestic abuse charges. So are there usually women that you see in the jail or do you see both? I think, well, when we're referring to women or her or him, we do that because 75% of our clients are females, not because only females can be victims. So just to make sure that that's out there. Just because of the racial that you're dealing with for the most part. Wow. How about the kids? I mean, you said you see kids from a couple of days old to I would guess teenagers. That is probably how you can maybe make the changes, isn't it, if you can get these kids to realize life doesn't have to be that way. We have a lot of volunteers that come in and try and spend some time with. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah, so try and spend some time with our little people so that they can see that there is kind people out there. People don't call you nasty names every time you turn around or you spill a glass of milk. Somebody's not going to scream and throw a fit because that happened. We're just going to simply say, oh, accidents happened. Let's get a rag and clean it up. And it's not made out to be like it's a bad, shame on you, accidents happen. Or that we have some, a grandma who comes in and she reads to the kids and that alone is amazing at how many kids and it doesn't matter what age. They want to be sitting by somebody and just hearing the book being read or somebody just wanting to talk to them and hang out with them and say kind things and not be mean or say, oh, you're dumb. No, you're smart, this is great. And really do those positive communications. You get many former clients that come back as volunteers? We do. We do. We really try to encourage them not to come in and volunteer until they're about two years out of the shelter just because we really want to make sure that their sound on their feet and they're doing well, that kind of thing. So that they've focused on themselves first and that they've gotten themselves to a place where they're healthy and they can do that because it can be very triggering if you come back to the shelter and there's something that you would hear, see, witness if it happened to you. And we don't want to put somebody in a situation where that would cause more harm than good for them. I know I've seen employees come to work pretty swollen and I think it's very difficult for some people to say they got a problem. If it's a person just who has never experienced working with someone like you folks, how do they break the ice? Who do they talk to when they call your organization? If they're really reluctant to come forward but they make that first step. I think the first thing that that person should do is talk to that co-worker that they just saw and let them know that they do recognize it and that they're there for support if they need it. The second thing would be to let them know what the resource is in the community doc and where they are and who's available to be able to have. The professionals in the area that can provide the best service as possible for that person they might not know that something even exists. How about the person that's being abused? Who's reluctant to come forward? But do they make the call? They do. Is that how they start? Do they call? Yeah, they can call and the other benefit to it is that it's confidential. So anything that we say we don't turn around and tell anybody else. And they can also call and be not, they don't have to give their name. So they don't have to tell us who they are in order to talk to someone and say, this is my frustration, like this is what's going on. Or sometimes they call and just say, can you just listen? And then can you tell me am I being abused? Because they don't even know what that looks like or what that means. And so they don't have to tell us their name. So they do call, law enforcement brings them, the emergency rooms have contacted us. So there's lots of different ways, different organizations in the community have called us and have just referred people to us. Shannon, what's your website? I'm running out of time. Oh, sure. www.womencenter.org. It's unfortunate that we need organizations like yours, but it's fortunate that we have you. Thank you. Thank you for being on the show. We really appreciate your jumping on board with us. Well, thanks for having us. You've been watching Lakeland Currents. Well, we're talking about what you're talking about. I'm Ray Gildhouse, so long until next time.


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