Under the leadership of Presence Switzerland, a unit of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA, the «House of Switzerland» serves as a communications platform for the host country Switzerland and as a meeting place. Whilst it is a venue of official meetings, the “House of Switzerland” is also an informal meeting place for the Swiss Delegation and its international guests and partners as well as the media.

To provide the locals of Davos with an opportunity to look behind the scenes of House of Switzerland, the venue will be opened to the public on Wednesday evening starting from eight o’clock.

Contact person:
Ambassador Nicolas Bideau, Head of Presence Switzerland, +41 79 667 69 15, prs@eda.admin.ch

The Swiss government has confirmed its intention for net-zero by 2050. Switzerland’s strong financial sector plays a key role in driving this transformation toward long-term sustainable financial markets. Swiss public and private sector work closely together in taking a global lead to expand the Swiss Financial Market for ESG products and to provide structure to the market to further advance responsible investing in the Swiss financial market.

The panel will discuss what “net-zero” means and how the roadmap towards an essentially ESG-oriented financial market structure in line with the net-zero ambition will look. It will address concrete challenges to implement the net-zero approach to product and investment portfolios, incl. the “climate check” sponsored by the Swiss Confederation. Key interfaces between the public and private sector will also be highlighted, incl. self-regulation-based incentives that drive the transformation.

Expected speakers:
Guido Fürer, Group Chief Investment Officer, Swiss Re
Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer
Patrick Odier, Senior Managing Partner, LombardOdier
Daniela Stoffel, State Secretary for International Financial Matters

Moderator:
Mirjam Staub-Bisang, CEO Switzerland, BlackRock

Contact person:
Katharina Fehr Hänggi, Katharina_Fehr@swissre.com

Open innovation can be enabled when different boundary conditions, success factors and work cultures of different actors are taken into account, and by setting the right environment for win-win situations. To create value all relevant actors should be included at an early stage to identify and overlap between feasibility/technology (research partners), viability/business (implementation partners, e.g. funders), and desirability/human (customers, users, e.g. society). Research cooperation is not only important across borders but also across different scientific fields and sectors.

Expected speakers :
Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, Vice President, Europe & Africa, Director IBM Research Zurich
Mauro Ferrari, President, European Research Council ERC
Lene Oddershede, Head of Natural and Technical Science Research and Interdisciplinarity at the Novo Nordisk Foundation
Didier Queloz, Astronomer, Nobel laureate in physics, 2019

Host:         
Matthias Egger, President of the National Research Council

Contact person:
Jean-Luc Barras, +41 79 753 76 62, jean-luc.barras@snf.ch

Discuss Switzerland’s vision in the age of Industry 4.0, demonstrating its practical approach to sustainable, safe and ethical manufacturing in a digital world. Switzerland is a tech location that offers globally active companies a place to develop and validate their digital manufacturing and supply chain processes. Hear about the latest trends and challenges in digital manufacturing from our panel of experts in cyber security, intelligent aerospace, supply chain and digital transformation and find out why Switzerland is leading the way in advanced manufacturing.

Please note that this event can only be attended by invitation.
If you wish to participate, please contact Fabienne Bernet (+41 44 365 55 22, fbernet@s-ge.com) before January 22.

Expected speakers:
Laura Holmes, Executive Director After Market Services Actuation, Collins Aerospace
Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch, State Secretary, State Scretariat for Economic Affairs Switzerland SECO
Robert Itschner, Country Managing Director, ABB Switzerland
Shira Kaplan, CEO & Founder, Cyverse AG
Eric Prevost, Global Vice President, Industry 4.0, Oracle Industries Solutions Group
Simone Wyss Fedele, CEO, Switzerland Global Enterprise

Moderator:
Patrik Wermelinger, Head of Investment Promotion, Switzerland Global Enterprise

Contact person:
Patrik Wermelinger, Head of Investment Promotion, Switzerland Global Enterprise, +41 44 365 53 62, pwermelinger@s-ge.com

Countries from all over the world are showing interest in understanding the Swiss VET system, especially in order to fight youth unemployment. After several years of international activities related to the Swiss model of dual VET, we would like to exchange experiences with international players who have been active in the field in order to find out what the results of their efforts are, what prospects are opening up for them and what role Switzerland will be able to play in this area in the years to come.

Expected speakers:
Laurent Freixe, Executive Vice President and CEO Zone Americas, Nestlé
Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, SERI
Guy Ryder, Director-General, International Labour OrganizationSwiss business representative

Moderator:
Ambassador Mauro Moruzzi, Head of International Relations, SERI

Contact person:
Cecilia Neyroud, +41 58 466 88 32, cecilia.neyroud@sbfi.admin.ch

The Swiss Food and Nutrition Valley is a collaboration initiated by Nestlé, EPFL, Canton Vaud and the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne.

Switzerland is a world reference in sustainable food and nutrition innovation. A unique ecosystem has emerged from Geneva to Zurich, due to Switzerland’s deeply rooted agricultural tradition, an unmatched density of world leading companies and scientific institutions as well as a large number of start-ups in areas such as food, nutrition, life sciences or robotics. As a result of the intensive collaboration among local players, leading innovation platforms have emerged in the Lake Geneva region, including in the areas of sustainable agriculture, nutrition, nutrigenomics, alternative proteins, and packaging science. Meet them in Davos!

Expected speakers:
Paul Bulcke, Chairman, Nestlé S.A
Franck Giovannini, Chef, Hôtel de Ville de Crissier
Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin
Martin Vetterli, President, EPFL 

Moderator:
Ana Maria Montero, CNN Money Switzerland

Contact person:
Fathi Derder, Managing Director, Swiss Food & Nutrition Valley, +41 79 469 61 48

The rapid changes in our environment and the emergence of big data, call for innovative solutions to support the policy frameworks and related actions toward sustainable development. To address these changes, the University of Zurich and the University of Geneva have joined forces with the UNEP/GRID — Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) to unleash the power of Big Data for monitoring the Environment with a new technology: the Swiss Data Cube (SDC).

The SDC represents a new paradigm, revolutionizing the way users can interact with complex data originating from many different sources, in particular from Earth observing instruments, such as satellite imagery.

The Davos SDC event will bring together scientists, policy formulators and the private sector to present and discuss the uniqueness of the SDC approach, its underlying technology as well as its broad relevance, serving a wide range of applications for environmental monitoring. The experts will particularly focus on selected key applications based on the SDC towards monitoring various environmental issues and the Sustainable Development Goals. The discussion will focus primarily on biodiversity and its monitoring from space as it has become a major topic of interest and scrutiny including towards the inception of the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

The final objective is to connect emerging challenges and opportunities to environmental monitoring at the crossroads of science, policy and society to achieve agile governance for all communities.

Websites:
University of Geneva
University of Zürich

Connected economy, energy network availability and the internet are the three most critical infrastructures. The fourth Industrial revolution is bringing more and more digital businesses into the game, which raises questions on their cyber resilience and digital readiness. Sustainable development goals are opening up the energy market to new market players/providers, with green energy, helping countries to reach their CO2 emission goal.

A transition to a more inclusive, sustainable, affordable, and secure global energy system that addresses global challenges while creating value is needed. This must be done without upsetting the balance of the “energy triangle”: security and access; environmental sustainability; and economic development and growth. At the same time, new challenges emerge in power systems across the globe and require dedicated attention from the industry and policy makers regardless of how advanced a system is in its energy transition. Two challenges are particularly relevant:

• the energy transition impact of decentralization, renewables and fossil phase-out on short term stability and long-term system adequacy,
• trends in cyber threats and attacks

Expected speakers:
Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency
Roberto Bocca, Head of Shaping the Future of Energy & Materials, Head of Partner Engagement Europe & N. America, Member of the Exec. Committee, World Economic Forum
Andre Kudelski, Chairman & CEO Kudelski Group / Chairman Innosuisse
M Benoît Revaz, Director, Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE
Prof. Dr. Gabriela Hug, Power Systems Laboratory, ETH Zürich
Mr. Claudio Facchin, CEO, ABB Power Grids 

Moderator:
Georges De Moura, Head of Industry Solutions, Centre for Cybersecurity, World Economic Forum

Contact person:
Christophe Nicolas, kudelski_AM20_cyberenergy@nagra.com