Prime Minister visits FIRST Global Challenge robotics event for students at SEF

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the FIRST Global Challenge on Saturday, an international student robotics competition held for the first time in Greece.

The event, which features national teams from 193 countries, is taking place at the Peace and Friendship Stadium (SEF) and runs from September 26th to 29th.

Welcoming the teams and Dean Kamen, founder of competition organizer FIRST Global, Greek Prime Minister referred to his recent trip to New York for the UN General Assembly meetings and said that the students attending “convey a message to us as to how to collaborate to resolve the issues of the future.” Greece, he said, is where democracy and the Olympic Games were born, adding that “a large part of the science related to building these robots was invented for the first time in this country.” He expressed confidence in the younger generation and in helping to resolve complex issues.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was accompanied by Digital Governance Deputy Minister Konstantinos Kyranakis, was briefed by Kamen on the annual event that aims to “empower the globe’s two billion young people to cooperatively solve the world’s challenges through STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), as the First Global site mentions. The PM and minister also had the opportunity to speak with students and see the robots they had constructed.

The Greek team includes 100 students from all over Greece, and the premier expressed pleasure at having a large team and at participating in collaborative efforts with other countries on the challenges of climate change and artificial intelligence.