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Stanford University and the MDBs - are you collaborating with them?
WUR is an internationally well-known and acknowledged research institute, as I noticed during a high-level meeting at Stanford University, early February. WUR was invited to join a meeting with all Development Banks, the so called MDBs (Multilateral Development Banks) and FAO.
The main topic on the agenda was ‘how to deliver an urgent and effective response at scale, to rising food insecurity that threatens lives and livelihoods’. Digitalisation is seen as one of the enablers for tackling this major challenge. I totally support this. As such, I travelled to Stanford, not only to represent WUR as a top institute on food security and agrifood system transformation, but mainly to position WUR as a top institute investing in digitalisation. From digital twins to extended reality, from Agri Dataspace to AgrifoodTEF.
The main result was that food security and the opportunities of digitalisation will be on the agenda of the next COP, the G7 and G20. This will definitely help WUR to create more impact in the long term, as long as we keep connected to these high-level platforms. A role one of our general directors should act on.
However, in addition to this high-level result, I had the opportunity to align with Stanford, the individual MDBs, FAO and Microsoft (the black swan in the room) on digitalisation and AI. If you're already teaming up with one of these parties on digitalisation, I would like to get in contact with you to strengthen this important relationship.