Pandemic is 'wake-up call' for Switzerland, says EPFL president

2021-03-25 02:39:19

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(MENAFN- Swissinfo) The Covid-19 crisis has revealed how much Switzerland is lagging behind when it comes to digitalisation in politics and everyday life, according to Martin Vetterli, President of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).

This content was published on March 25, 2021 - 12:33 March 25, 2021 - 12:33 Keystone-SDA/Tages-Anzeiger/jdp

In an interviewExternal link in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, Vetterli argues that the pandemic should be a wake-up call for Switzerland, which in his view was caught off guard. The pandemic revealed 'weaknesses as if under a magnifying glass' – not only socially, politically and medically, but also technologically.

'We have to be honest now, identify the deficits and improve,' said Vetterli who was a professor of Columbia University in New York and the University of California, Berkeley, before becoming the head of EPFL in 2017. He says he went to the US in the 1980s because 'computer science mattered there'.

Money only plays a limited role in fixing the problems, he said. 'Switzerland refuses to accept reality out of convenience. We are rich, traditional and sluggish,' he added. 'If we have an IT problem, we get help, for example from experts abroad. These are bad prerequisites for breaking new ground digitally.'

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