On Wednesday, 16th February, a delegation of the Board of the Friends of The Cyprus Institute (CyI) Association, consisting of its President, Dr Petros Kareklas, its Secretary, Dr Lazaros Savvides, and Member, Mrs. Myria Avraamidou, accompanied by CyI Asst.
Vice President of Strategy and Development, Dr. Konstantinos Kleovoulou, visited the CyBC premises in Aglantzia, where they met with the its leadership. On behalf of CyBC, present at the meeting were the newly appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr Michalis P. Michael, and the Director General, Mr Thanasis Tsokos.
The profile and the mission of the Institute, and an overview of its activities were presented to the CyBC leadership. Dr Kareklas showcased some of the Institute’s recent achievements and highlighted its expertise and its pioneering role to issues of regional urgency and of global significance, such as renewable sources of energy, water management, cultural heritage preservation, computational and data science and artificial intelligence, and climate change.
For the climate change crises in particular, Dr Kareklas described its global scale and impact and detailed the Institutes’ leading regional role and efforts in this area, through various activities such as the scientific coordination of the Cyprus Government Initiative for coordinating Climate Change Actions in the Eastern Mediterranean & Middle East and the organization of the second International Conference on Climate Change, this past October.
The discussion also focused on the instrumental role CyI plays in supporting the government’s efforts in achieving its operational and development goals. Several examples were discussed, such as the recent collaboration with the Dept. of Forests and other stakeholders in the monitoring and prevention of fires and the collaboration with the Dept. of Antiquities and the Cyprus Police in the fight against archeological looting, by using state of the art, CyI-developed drone technology. Reference was also made to the unprecedent performance of CyI in attracting competitive funding and the establishment of unique, state-of-the-art research infrastructures, that serve the needs not only of CyI researchers but of the scientific community of Cyprus and the Region.
Finally, Dr Kareklas stressed the role that media, and particularly a public broadcasting service such as CyBC, should have in cultivating a culture of research, technology and innovation among the general public.
The CyBC leadership praised the work of CyI, and acknowledged the need to disseminate it clearly and consistently to the broader public. Mr. Michael further added that CyBC’s role as the public broadcasting service should be catalytic in that direction. In this spirit, the discussion focused on ways to continue and strengthen the collaboration between the two organizations.
Among the various actions proposed were:
- Schedule a visit by a CyBC delegation to CyI premises (March 2022)
- CyBC can assign reporter(s) to visit CyI and produce reportage(s) on its research activities and infrastructures
- Suggestion by the Chairman of the Board of Directors of CyBC to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to formalize and further expand the joint activities between the two organizations
- CyI to supply CyBC with its upcoming events schedule so that they can better plan their coverage of CyI events
