Andorra hosts the City Science Summit to celebrate 10 years of collaboration with the MIT Media Lab

Andorra la Vella hosted this Tuesday the inauguration of the City Science Summit, an event that is held every year in Boston, headquarters of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, the institution that hosts the City Science Network, a network where Andorra Research and Innovation (AR+I) has been a member for the last 10 years. Andorra celebrates this event with the participation of almost a hundred researchers from ten laboratories that are also part of this international network, including Taipei, Toronto, Hamburg or Shanghai, among others.

The Summit was inaugurated by the Minister of the Presidency, Economy, Employment and Housing of the Government of Andorra, Conxita Marsol, who highlighted the “important steps that have been made to position Andorra as an environment of innovation, research and development, with the aim of to improve the quality of life of our citizens and to explore new ways of understanding the future”. Minister Marsol, who also chairs AR+I’s Patronage, said that Andorra's association with the City Science Network has “strengthened the country's commitment to technology, education and sustainability, while integrating us into a global community of experts with a vision for the future”.

The director of the MIT City Science Lab, Kent Larson, also spoke at the inauguration and considered that “over these 10 years, Andorra has become a leader in the use of data analysis and simulations to better respond to the challenges that the country faces, such as climate change, tourism or a rapidly evolving economy”. The leader understands that “Andorra is now a key member of the City Science Network, which already has ten laboratories in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and the Middle East”.

Under the theme 'Transformative Communities', the Summit, which will last until Wednesday afternoon, will allow researchers to share knowledge, present new projects and expose the vision of each laboratory to create more livable, equitable and resilient communities. It will hold several workshops on different topics such as the transformation of innovative solutions into social or environmental tools, or the exploration of new ways of collaboration between laboratories.

“In the face of increasingly global challenges, the actions that we should take must also be broader in scope and shall have an impact that goes beyond our immediate context. It is necessary to keep in touch and work with similar environments in other countries, adding different perspectives and a broader knowledge”, said the Executive Director of AR+I, Vanesa Arroyo, who considered that ”events like the City Science Summit that we hold in Andorra today, go beyond showing the progress made by each research group, and help to position Andorra in a prestigious network with many different international actors”.


Find more information at city science network