International Summit Meet the Future Brings Solutions for Science & Technology in EU2020 Agenda

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands, November 17, 2010 - Education experts, business leaders and political leaders from all over
the globe meet up November 19th in The Hague to exchange successful practices
to boost science and technology education. This summit brings the practical
knowledge to the policy drawing board and aims to make successful strategies
in one country applicable to other countries.

For European nations boosting the quality of science education is vital
considering their need to improve their innovation capabilities to fight the
economic crisis. Europe is falling behind rapidly in R&D performance and in
promoting excellence in science. In other words: Europe's brightest talents
are outperformed by their colleagues from the United States and Asia. Also
the numbers of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
students, scientists and researchers should go up dramatically to meet the
demand of the research based economic sectors. More involvement of business
with educational sectors is needed. By the end of 2010 all EU nations agreed
to come with a national actionplan on the 2020 innovation and education
agenda: Innovation Union.

Participants and presenters at the conference are business leaders,
experts, politicians and policymakers: Gerard de Graaf (EU
Commission-Innovation Europe), Eric-Jan Sundgren (Volvo, leading the European
Round Table of Industrialists), Prof.dr. Robbert Dijkgraaf (president of
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), Dirk Bochar (European
Federation of National Engineering Associations), Hans van der Loo (Shell),
Nora Milotay (EU DG Education and Culture), Corien Wortmann (Member of
Europarliament), Jenifer Burden (National Stem Centre, UK), Ioannis Miaoulis
(Boston Science Museum , US), Jenny Graves (The Australian Academy of
Sciences, Australia), Wilmot James (Member of South African Parliament).

There will be a livestream report of on our website on November 19th
2010: www.summit2010.nl/english. A post-conference information package
will be made available through the website and Iphone/Ipad/Blackberry
application.

The summit is hosted by the Dutch National Platform of Science &
Technology, together with The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
and the Dutch Ministry of Education.

The international meeting is organized together with the event 'Meet the
Future' on November 18th. Over four thousand students, teachers, businesses
and politicians will be inspired by talks of living icons Steve Wozniak
(co-founder Apple), Kishore Mahbubani (Dean National University of Singapore)
and Spencer Wells (National Geographic Society).

For more information, please visit www.summit2010.nl/english

For more information, please visit www.summit2010.nl/english, or
contact Leonie Blom (+31610663663)