The recent Science and Technology Convergence Conference (STCC), co-organized by Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems and SmartGateVC and supported by the European Unions' SMEDA project, that took place in Yerevan centered on analyzing the future of fundamental and applied research in Armenia. PMI Science, EU TUMO Convergence Center, as well as Armenian startups RenderForest, ZERO and Fronty were the conference partners.

This two day conference brought together researchers and engineers of different disciplines from both industry and academia that work on advanced technologies.

The main objective was to build a link between the academy and the Tech industry and create space for distinguished professors, Ph.D. students from top universities, engineers, scientists, and tech industry representatives to discuss the challenges of industry-academia collaborations and science funding models in leading universities in the US and Europe that can be applied in Armenia.

Finland's Tampere University of Technology Professor Karen Egiazarian noted that the Scandinavian way of building collaborations between universities, scientific researchers and industry can be easily adapted and applied in Armenia.

A Business Finland fund exists in Finland that offers funding for university research groups to collaborate with different teams from the industry.

Business support is designed to keep IP at universities, so researchers and students feel motivated to continue their work in their tech industry fields.

Egiazarian also thinks that to build bases for future collaborations it is important to encourage those scientists and professors coming from abroad to be merged in the research community and launch cooperative  programs with institutions by building virtual labs for remote work.

Aram Adourian, Partner at Flagship Pioneering, works with early-stage startups on strategies around scientific and computational approaches to leverage some of the exciting work that is happening in data sciences for their purposes.

“Part of what I like to do here, is to bring my background from industry and particularly from biotechnology and talk to people in date science and introduce some ideas or places where they can apply some tools they haven't thought of previously,” says Adourian.

The invited speakers noted that their pօckets were full of business cards and contact information for future collaborations.

In the scope of the conference two major initiatives were announced.

Pegor Papazian, head of development at the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies announced that with the support of the European Union they are going to launch an EU TUMO Convergence Center for engineering and applied science in 2023.

It will seek to bridge academia and industry by creating an environment with TUMO labs, a university campus, a conference center, offices for startups, cafes, gyms, a daycare center.

Karin Markides, President of the American University in Armenia announced the establishment of  an open national center for artificial intelligence research which aims at enhancing the research environment in Armenia and fostering connections with university faculties worldwide.