Hello there and welcome. Good morning first of all to all of you. Welcome to our hybrid

CKI conference, a joint event by Siemens and the FAU Erlangen Nürnberg. A warm virtual

welcome from the new Solhof, a new venue that hasn't officially opened yet. That will happen

later this afternoon. We are the first to present an event here, a digital hybrid event.

My name is Monica Jones, I'm a business anchor at German broadcaster DW. Why am I emphasizing

this? Because we're living in times of an annoying but dangerous pandemic and this is why we adhere

to very important rules. There are very few people here in the room with me. They all stick

to social distancing and I don't know if you can see the entire stage, but we have four chairs here

for our speakers and they are also very, very far apart. So we're doing our best to stay healthy

and you at home hopefully do the same and sit alone at your PC or your tablet or your smartphone

and follow us. Talking of which, technical issues. We already had a little kickoff session yesterday

and that was good. In content it was a brilliant session I have to say, but it also showed us a few

little hiccups that can happen when we don't know certain things, which is why I would like to share

those with you. First of all, you're watching a live stream, yes, but this live stream is also

being recorded. So everyone who's coming up on stage later, just be aware that this is not a one-off,

this is recorded. Not bad to know. Secondly, in order to hear me, you have to actively on the site

where you watch us, press unmute and for those who haven't done that yet, this. You have to press this

and you hear. Okay, I hope we got that sorted because I know yesterday we had a few who couldn't

hear us and that's a pity. Then of course, even though you're watching us on your screen somewhere

out there in your office, at home, in the car, wherever, you can participate in this digital event

by submitting your questions, which whenever time allows, we would like to include and pass on to

our speakers. In order to submit a question, all you have to do is scroll down the site where you're

watching us. At the bottom you will find a little bar in white where it says write in your question,

type in your question and then scroll down a little bit further to the left. You see a turquoise,

I call it a Siemens turquoise button. You have to press that too and you send the question and

we'll receive it and we can play with that. So I think that should make it all clear. I mean,

I'm talking to two really tech savvy people here. I feel a bit stupid telling you all that, but

last night showed you can't explain too much. So having said that, in case you haven't watched

last night's kickoff, let me just briefly fill you in why we're here. Now this is of course the CKI,

the Center of Knowledge Interchange Conference, which is a strategic partnership between Siemens

and the FAU to promote and intensify cooperation with each other with regards to research

cooperation and talent management. We'll hear a lot about talent today. We'll see a lot of talent

as well. Now this year's CKI conference, the representatives of the FAU and Siemens, they

wanted to focus on digital disruption, impact on knowledge interchange and for that we will meet

researchers, PhDs, startups, managers, and they will all share their insights, their knowledge,

their ideas with us. We will welcome Professor Joachim Honegger from the FAU. We will welcome

Dr. Roulade Bush from Siemens, Dr. Vivian Dollinger from Object Box Limited and Professor Dr. Björn

Eskovier from the FAU and many, many more. For our future talk, those people will join us later on

stage. That's certainly something not to be missed. It's a busy day ahead and let's start by meeting

the man of the house. I mentioned already we're at the Zollhof, a brand new venue and he's the

person who can tell us a little bit more about it. His name is Benjamin Bauer, Chief Executive

Officer of Zollhof, tech incubator. Zollhof is the home for tech startups, digital innovators in

Nuremberg and by the way Siemens and the FAU. They're both founding partners of Zollhof,

which is of course why we're here. So Benjamin, please over to you.