The second World Forum on Science and Technology Development, with the theme of “Trust, Cooperation and Development” was successfully held between 8 and 9 November 2020, in Beijing, which has attracted an online audience of more than 26 million viewers.
This forum was organized by WFEO national member the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and was sponsored by WFEO, UNESCO, the International Science Council (ISC) and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
Prof. GONG Ke, president of WFEO, addressed at the opening ceremony, stressing the importance of “Trust, Cooperation and Development” in the context of the pandemic and the unstable international situation and saying “WFEO would very much like to work with all to build and strengthen trust among the world’s scientific and technological community, to promote cooperation to meet the global challenges to the whole mankind, and to leverage science and technology to accelerate the actions of delivering sustainable development goals.”
The recording of Prof. GONG Ke’address is available by clicking on the below image.
Mr. WAN Gang, President of CAST, Ms. Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, Assistant Director General for the Natural Sciences, UNESCO, Prof. Daya Reddy, President of the International Science Council, also addressed at the opening ceremony.
Prof. GONG then moderated the plenary session. Experts from academia, government and industry made speeches on the topics of “sci-tech revolution and human civilization evolution”, “regional innovation and policy environment for innovation” and “digital economy and inclusive growth”.
Prof. GONG Ke moderating the plenary session.
Some of the experts attending online.
Some of the experts attending physically.
At the High-level Dialogue “Ethics and Culture of Science and Technology”, supported by the Big Data and AI Working Group, WFEO-CEIT, Prof. GONG Ke together with Ms. QIAO Jie (obstetrician, reproductive physician and biologist, President of Peking University Third Hospital), Prof. XUE Lan (expert in STI policy, Dean of Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University), Eric Horvitz (Chief Scientific Officer, Microsoft), Prof. Muming POO (neuroscientist, CAS) and Peter-Paul Verbeek (Professor of technology philosophy, Twente University and chairman of COMEST, UNESCO) talked about ethical challenges brought by AI, gene editing, robots etc. All the experts agreed that global cooperation is necessary to tackle these challenges.
Harry SHUM, the moderator, also showed the results of “Survey on The Most Concerned Issues in Ethics of Science and Technology in Chinese Academia”. It shows that the most concerned issues include genetic technologies, robot, Euthanasia, human enhancement and AI.
The onsite video recording of the high-level dialogue:
The Zoom video recording of the high-level dialogue:
Most Concerned Issues in Ethics of Science and Technology.
Most Accepted Concepts in Ethics of Science and Technology.
This survey was jointly conducted by Research Center for Science, Technology and Society, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Big Data and AI Working Group, WFEO Committee on Engineering for Innovative Technologies (WFEO-CEIT) in October, 2020.
The closing ceremony focused on the topic “Open Science and Responsibilities and Missions of the Scientific Community”. Mr. Jorgen Randers, Dr. Shamila Nair-Bedouelle, Dr. Daya Reddy, and Prof. SHI Yigong made keynote speeches around this topic.
Top 10 Scientific Issues of Human Sustainable Development 2020 were released, covering public health, security and resource management-were released by scientists at a forum in Beijing on Monday.
More details in this page.
Five parallel sessions were conducted:
- World Digital Economy Forum,
- Small and Medium-sized High-tech Enterprises Innovation Forum,
- Innovation and Cooperation Forum of Open Science and Open Source,
- Women in Science,
- Technology Services and Trade Forum were also held during the forum.
Dr. Marlene Kanga, WFEO Past president 2017-2109, addressed at the Women in Science session.
For more information:
Programme of the Second World Science and Technology Forum
World Forum on Science and Technology Development website
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2020