On May 23rd, 2019, Belgrade will be hosting this prestigious symposium, which will gather more than 400 world leaders in innovation, science, technology, economics, arts, medicine… At WORLD.MINDS conference will be presented by three creative ambassadors platform Serbia created: The Teslagram, a technology that is being developed at the Institute of Physics and represents the best system for protection against forgeries documents, The BioSense Institute, the centre for digital solutions in agriculture, and 3Lateral a leading producer of digital human s technology.

Rolf Dobelli for Elevate magazine, https://www.airserbia.com/sr/elevate

Tell us about the relationship between WORLD.MINDS and Serbia, and how has it developed to the stage where WORLD.MINDS Belgrade is happening? How did Belgrade become the only host besides Zurich?

 Serbia and WORLD.MINDS have been working together for many years. Science has a long tradition in Serbia, and we’ve been fascinated by the rich intellectual fabric of the region. President Vucic and Prime Minister Ana Brnabic participated at the WORLD.MINDS Annual Symposia in Zurich during the past couple of years. So, we decided to bring our communities together.

Does Serbia deserve to be recognized as a creative and innovative country for arts, science and technology? What are your impressions?

Absolutely. In terms of applied science, Serbia is world-class. In addition, Serbia has a huge diaspora of extremely successful scientists and entrepreneurs all over the world, Serbs who change the world in many fields.

The beginning of the World Minds was related to business and science, and later it was joined by artists.

Our mission is to understand the world. Science and the Arts are two avenues to accomplish this. The Arts can offer perspectives on the world that are truly enlightening. Having said this, our main focus remains science.

In your opinion, what connects science and art and how the artists react when you invite them to the symposium?

If you want to be world-class as a scientist or as an artist, you have to be incredibly imaginative and creative. This unites scientists and artists. The artists love exchanging views with researchers, so they love being invited.

What are your predictions for the future of science and innovations?

By definition, it is impossible to forecast innovations or breakthrough inventions. If we could forecast them, we would know about them today, and they would already have been invented.

What impact / change do you want to achieve through your work on a global level?

We want to build the necessary bridges between science, business and the arts. Too often, scientists, business leaders and artists live and work in their mental silos. In today’s world, real progress comes mainly from collaboration. So, in a word, you could say that our mission is to be not merely interdisciplinary, but “anti-disciplinary”.

What the audience should expect from WORLD.MINDS Belgrade?

A firework of stunning presentations from truly world-class people from all over the world, fantastic discussions, and a wonderful audience of the leaders in science, business and the arts to mingle with.