On 27 and 28 November 2019, State Secretary Martina Hirayama attended the European Space Agency's ESA Ministerial Council meeting in Seville ("Space 19+"). At this meeting, which brought together the ministers in charge of space affairs from the 22 ESA Member States, the Council conferred on ongoing programmes, new initiatives, and agreed on the Agency's budget for the next three years.

On 14 November, Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin, head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER), met Chen Baosheng, the Chinese Minister of Education, in Bern.

The fifth meeting of the Swiss-South African joint committee established under the bilateral agreement on scientific and technological cooperation took place in Bern on Monday, 23 September.

Slovenian President Borut Pahor paid an official visit to Switzerland on Thursday, 19 September. President Ueli Maurer and Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis received the Slovenian delegation at the Lohn country residence.

Ambassador Mauro Moruzzi, SERI's head of international relations, was in Mexico from 18 to 21 June to hold talks with the new Mexican authorities on cooperation between Switzerland and Mexico in the field of vocational education and training, research and innovation.

Switzerland will be making its second appearance at Asia's largest tech and digital expo, the Consumer Electronics Show Asia (CES ASIA) in Shanghai from 11 to 13 June 2019.

From 20 to 22 November, Martina Hirayama, State Secretary for Education, Research and Innovation, will be holding bilateral talks with her counterparts in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Helsinki.

The Joint Committee on Cooperation in Science and Technology met yesterday, for the fourth time, in Brasilia. In this context, a symposium was organised to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation signed with Brazil in 2009.

On 23 September 2019, the head of the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, Ms Martina Hirayama, met with the head of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research, Ms Iris Rauskala, in Bern to share information and perspectives.

Bern, 5 September 2019 - Nicola Spaldin, Professor of Materials Theory at the ETH Zurich, has been awarded the Swiss Science Prize Marcel Benoist for her ground-breaking research into multiferroic materials, with which she has laid the foundations for new ultrafast and energy-efficient data storage technologies.

A high-level delegation of university rectors, led by Hossein Salar Amoli, Deputy Minister for International Scientific Cooperation, will visit Switzerland this week. The delegation will hold formal talks in Bern at the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation and also visit universities and universities of applied sciences in Basel, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich.

320 events held throughout the world with 180 Swiss partner organisations, networking for start-ups, expert discussions on topics such as drones and environmental technologies - all this and much more to promote education, research and innovation in Switzerland.