The Emilia-Romagna mission in San Francisco was led by Stefano Bonaccini, Emilia-Romagna Regional President, together with Alessio Mammi, Regional Minister for Agri-food, Hinting and Fishing.
On 9th November, Innovit hosted the very first institutional meeting welcoming Ambassador Eleni Kounalakis, Deputy Governor of California, and President Bonaccini who discussed several areas of common interest like energy transition, health system, mobility, and agriculture.
Innovit also hosted promotional and technical events like the food promo night focused on many regional specialties and the final startup pitch and networking event with a Silicon Valley investor audience, organized within the broader Mindset Program. The Mindset Program, now in its eighth edition, was born from the collaboration between the Emilia-Romagna Region and ART-ER, which is the regional antenna in Silicon Valley since 2015. The unit was created to support startups and innovative companies in their approach to the most important innovation ecosystem in the world and to facilitate their internationalization activities towards North America as well to make the regional ecosystem known to potential American investors.
During their visit in Silicon Valley the delegation met with several local players, like universities and institutions (UC Davis, Agricultural Research Institute, Culinary Institute of America) as well as corporations such as Claud, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Nvidia Corporation that planted the seeds for future collaborations for the launch of the European Supercomputer “Leonardo” on November 24th, 2022.