Cyber Valley Days: Building a better future

In the following interview, Noora Zech, Chief of Staff for Cyber Valley GmbH, shares her perspective on this three-day event.

What was your biggest surprise during Cyber Valley Days? 

It was not the number of visitors but the quality, as well as the international, diverse, and clearly thriving community, which I found impressive and inspiring.

What did you learn about the Cyber Valley Community?

I was amazed at how big our community is. It is one thing to talk about what we are and what we do on an abstract level but seeing it in real life made me realize how much we have achieved and how we’ve grown. Our community spans the excellent research from the Max-Planck Institutes, and the Universities of Stuttgart and Tübingen; post-docs and students establishing start-ups; partners from industry enabling transfer; worldwide collaborations with institutions and companies such as Silo AI, Seoul AI Hub, AIIS, and the University of Tokyo who are expanding and maximizing our potential. All these ultimately benefit society. 

I love it when people come together to create something for the better! 

What was your personal highlight from Cyber Valley Days and what were your key takeaways?

I had the chance to listen to Sepp Hochreiter’s interview, which was both exciting and funny. To see the person who invented LSTM (long short-term memory) felt a bit surreal. 

Even though there were many high-ranking scientists present, it was reassuring how smart yet normal they were, and I felt I could relate to them.

On the other hand, they also pointed out what we still lack and what we need to work on in the future to achieve our vision of using AI for the greater good of the world. As an example, we need more pragmatic and realistic regulations to enable innovative research and spin-offs. We should encourage scientists to stay in research and support them with the resources they need.  We must rethink and recreate the current system if we want innovation and solutions.

Read further interviews with Angelina Jukic (Program Manager), Alina Benze (Business Development Manager, Corporates), Rebecca Beiter (Director of Communication & Society), Janell Lia-Breitmeyer (Scientific Coordinator), and Paul-David Bittner (Business Development Manager, Start-ups) to discover their perspectives on Cyber Valley Days.