After five days of immersive sessions at Geneva’s international institutions, the cohort became part of GESDA’s ‘extended family’ of anticipatory science diplomats and the growing number of initiatives it has created around the world.
Thirty-six leaders took part in the fourth edition of GESDA’s immersive learning and networking program, more than ever before due to the overwhelming number of highly skilled and well-qualified applicants. It’s an indication of the strong demand for the pioneering initiative, launched with support from Wellcome, to create a new paradigm for leadership training in anticipatory science diplomacy, helping decision-makers navigate the complexities of a world transformed by rapid leaps in science and technology.
Photos by Marc Bader/GESDA
Day 1
Inside the UN’s Palais des Nations, Daria Robinson, GESDA’s Executive Director Solution Accelerator, greeted the new cohort and explained how Swiss and Geneva authorities created GESDA as a foundation in 2019 to launch anticipatory science diplomacy initiatives based in the city that serves as a global hub of multilateralism. Marga Gual Soler, Head of Science Diplomacy Capacity Building for GESDA, who oversees the week-long program, noted that US and UK scientists first promulgated a modern definition of science diplomacy in 2010 and updated it this year since it keeps evolving. “GESDA is here to contribute what we think should be the next phase of science diplomacy,” she said.
Participants learned from a session on “bridging mindsets” about the importance of considering both their individual and collective roles. Multilateralism is under pressure from recent global budget cuts and geopolitical tensions in the past several years, however, leading to more bilateral and regional agreements and power shifting from governments to global technology companies and other ‘non-state actors’ in science, technology and innovation, and in research and development. After a tour of the UN’s European headquarters, Martin Müller, Executive Director Science Anticipation, introduced the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar® that underpins GESDA’s work. Enrico Letta, the Chair of GESDA’s Diplomacy Forum, told the cohort remotely from Italy they can help spread a collective sense of agency through anticipation. “You have been selected for this program because you can drive effects on the ground and take back this anticipatory mindset and develop strategies and planning for your organizations and your countries,” he said.
At an evening cocktail reception, GESDA’s new Director General, Professor Marilyne Andersen, welcomed the participants, telling them that despite the world’s rapid transformations, GESDA remains convinced that anticipatory, science diplomacy and multilateralism “can cultivate a renewed sense of shared purpose and agency.” Ambassadors to the UN from Kenya and Chile and officials from other international organizations called for better, fairer cooperation and power-sharing at a panel discussion on how to bring about a more fit-for-purpose multilateral system. “Science is not a luxury anymore,” Chile’s UN Ambassador Claudia Fuentes Julio said. “We should be looking at it as a shared language for cooperation. We see here in Geneva that many decisions are shaped by science and technology.”
Day 2
A wood-paneled meeting room inside a newly renovated Geneva church provided the cohort with an unusual setting to learn about the concept that everyone has a right to benefit from scientific progress. The foundation for the human right to science is embedded in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and several other treaties. “It’s an anticipatory right,” said GESDA Senior Advisor Gérard Escher. “You have to build initiatives or actions today ensuring that future generations will be able to benefit from science.”
The Neurotechnology Diplomacy game created an experiential learning simulation about navigating the fallout from a major ransomware attack on brain implants. GESDA’s simulation games are designed to bridge mindsets, connecting scientists, diplomats, business leaders, and citizens through experiential learning. “Participants stepped into roles far beyond their daily realities, embodying stakeholders with divergent values, motivations, and even world views,” Gual Soler said after watching the cohort play the game. “Many were surprised by how deeply they connected with their characters, from negotiating trade-offs in high-stakes governance to experiencing the frustration of being unheard, even as a fictional conspiracy theorist. The game unlocked creative expression, challenged assumptions, and provided a safe space to test policy ideas, build empathy, and rehearse the future.”
After four diplomats from Chile, Greece, Singapore and Switzerland spoke about a resolution on neurotechnologies recently adopted by consensus at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, GESDA introduced the Anticipation Observatory, a work in progress. GESDA is working with global partners on delivering by 2026 an expert-curated, AI-augmented intelligence tool on expected scientific trends and their implications for diplomacy, business and society for all topics in the GESDA Radar. A session on computational diplomacy featured two associate professors, Roland Bouffanais and Didier Wernli, and senior researcher Stéphan Davidshofer at the University of Geneva, or UNIGE, and its Lab for Science in Diplomacy (SiDLab). They discussed how a systematic method of inquiry based on computational science can bolster science diplomacy by quantitatively analyzing, studying, and understanding critical mechanisms underpinning foreign policy and international relations.
Day 3
Spending the day with the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, participants focused on strategic anticipation as an action-oriented skillset. Emily Munro, Head of Strategic Anticipation and Senior Advisor, Research & Policy Advice at GCSP, said the idea is to move away from situations “where reaction is the norm” and more toward the ability to harness insights from foresight for decision-making today. The cohort broke into small groups to practice for a science diplomacy exercise with several future scenarios of global governance. It involved applying foresight to future-oriented discussion and present action, showing how trends and weak signals must be differentiated.
Christina Orisich, Managing Director of the European Centre for Executive Development and GCSP Associate Fellow, introduced the concept of polarity thinking, which involves the ability to hold two or more opposing ideas in mind and see all of their values or benefits. She said it is a more conducive method for problem-solving than simply weighing risks against opportunities, because it encourages a mindset that sets aside the “either/or” mentality in favor of a “both/and” lens. Not all challenges are “either/or” problems to be solved that are time-limited, have an end point, and seem to have a “right” answer; some are “both/and” polarities to be leveraged that are ongoing, interdependent and have no end point.
Jean-Marc Rickli, Head of Global and Emerging Risks for GCSP and Director of the Polymath Initiative, and Tobias Knappe, a GCSP research and project officer, conducted a group exercise around the world’s efforts to create global governance for lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Participants were divided into two working groups: policy makers role playing as scientists, and scientists role playing as policy makers. Rickli, who also leads the GCSP delegation at the UN Governmental Group of Experts (GGE) on Emerging Technologies in the Area of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, gave a chilling overview of the exponential growth of emerging AI-assisted technologies and their security implications and applications, such as killer robots, deepfake videos and the potential for new bioattacks. Rickli emphasized the security implications of technologies with exponential growth, which implies a potential for the associated risks to grow in a similar fashion. “The world’s pace of change is exponential,” he said. “And that is a major challenge for the type of discussion we’re having today.”
Day 4
The visit to CERN, the French acronym for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, began with an overview of the history and operations of the treaty-based intergovernmental organization, which dates to 1954. CERN was a forerunner of modern science diplomacy, serving as a haven for British and German scientists to collaborate for the first time in the wake of the Second World War. During seven decades of scientific cooperation, CERN’s discoveries about the fundamental building blocks of matter and the universe – including the Higgs boson particle in 2012, almost a half-century after it was first proposed – have also led to key inventions such as the World Wide Web, computer chips, and touch screens. The organization’s fundamental science isn’t driven by market needs, however, “so the idea is not to commercialize,” said Giovanni Anelli, CERN’s Head of Knowledge Transfer Group. “What we are here for is to do the science.”
Charlotte Lindberg Warakaulle, CERN’s Director for International Relations, showed a slide depicting dark space that Fabiola Gianotti, the Director-General of CERN, often uses in her presentations to illustrate concepts related to particle physics and cosmology, particularly when discussing the search for dark matter and dark energy. “This is a beautiful image that’s been brought back by the James Webb Space Telescope,” she said. “Some of the most effective science diplomacy happens in the dark.” CERN tries to tailor its programs to support the advancement of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, and has identified seven with which it believes it can be of particular help: five for health, education, gender, energy, and innovation, and two for international cooperation. Archana Sharma, CERN’s Senior Advisor for Relations with International Organizations, shared her reflections as a mentor. She described the work that CERN does inspiring young students and serving as a bridge between science and diplomacy.
On a tour of the facilities around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which runs for 27 kilometers some 100 meters beneath the Swiss-French border near Geneva, the cohort learned about the accelerators, detectors and computers needed to study the collisions of particles accelerated close to the speed of light. CERN also works closely with GESDA to support the Open Quantum Institute (OQI), GESDA’s most advanced initiative. The day included the interactive role playing Quantum Diplomacy Game, based on a future scenario, that serves as an introduction to the OQI, launched at CERN in 2024 with the support of UBS. The game illustrates opportunities for quantum diplomacy and provides an immersive experience in anticipating pathways for solutions. “We are cross-pollinating the work we do at GESDA and the work we do at the OQI,” said Marianne Schörling, a Senior Program Manager for GESDA who has been working on the OQI since its incubation and launch. “Ultimately, we are building a community of anticipatory leadership champions.”
Day 5
On the way to their ‘kizuki’ moment about how to achieve the mutual benefits and opportunities of global cooperation, participants navigated the nuances of a simulation card game designed to illustrate the tensions and competing interests that must be negotiated to achieve the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 – and that encapsulates everything they learned during the weeklong immersion program. Breaking into teams, they traded projects that could benefit communities and nations but also have world-changing consequences for the economy, environment, and society. The SDGs were largely achieved, though some parts of the world were left behind and needed another decade of help. The game’s facilitator, Alice Richard, a professional trainer and coach with Co-CREATE ImpACT, said everyone reached their own “kizuki” or aha moment differently, realizing how the pursuit of individual goals affects the world and creative collaboration is needed to strike a balance.
Reflecting on the latest geopolitical fragmentation and setbacks to multilateralism felt in Geneva, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Chief Scientist of the World Health Organization and a former GESDA Board member, offered a closing keynote talk that was by turns solemn and personal but ultimately emotional and uplifting. He encouraged participants to speak up and use their ability to make their voices heard, and to “stay optimistic” despite the trends against international cooperation, including global aid cuts. Even as he spoke, several members of the cohort were receiving concerning news about the topic on their smartphones. He pointed out that GESDA is working to ensure that science, technology and innovation will provide the maximum benefits that it can for the greatest possible number of people this century. A lot has happened over the past year, he began, and there has recently been an increase in questions about what sort of future we want, which is needed to overcome complacency. The upheaval will affect millions of lives. “Whatever the UN agencies and WHO are going to go through over the next six to nine months and then beyond, pales in comparison to the impacts within many countries around the world of this dramatic and sudden withdrawal of funding,” he said.
“But you have to believe that at times like that, and this will be for you to take the leadership – you have to accept that you cannot be passive,” he continued. “Because the world is asking fundamental questions about how it wants to be organized at the moment, and you cannot stand on the sidelines and say, ‘Somebody else will solve that.’ Because all of you in this room have some degree of agency and power.” He pointed to the newly drafted global pandemic treaty as an example of multilateralism still functioning. “If you want to leave this room today with some degree of hope that multilateralism is not yet dead and shouldn’t be, then surely the coming together on that to address a really difficult issue gives you some degree of optimism that actually this current shadow or dark period we’re going through doesn’t have to be the way.” Later, he emphasized the need to “trust yourself. You are where you are because of who you are. Don’t try to be somebody else. Be yourself. And trust yourself.” He received a warm standing ovation at the end of his talk and question-and-answer session.
During a debriefing on the past week and a discussion of the next steps for building a community of anticipatory leaders, Gual Soler began with a meditation. “Close your eyes, think about where you were when you first heard about anticipatory science diplomacy, about GESDA, and where you are today,” she instructed. The room fell silent. After they opened their eyes, participants described some of the realizations they had during the past week, such as a need to gain a certain level of competency at something to contribute to a solution; a sense of gratitude for new opportunities the GESDA program created; and an impetus to take action and transform the group work into new initiatives. All of the graduates “are now part of a family here, an extended family, and that includes the growing number of initiatives that GESDA has created,” Schörling said. Gual Soler called the cohort’s members newly minted force multipliers and purveyors of anticipatory science diplomacy. “You are all multipliers and hopefully you are all now convinced that we can pass this on through some organization or initiative as a force multiplier. We hope to mainstream this all around the world.”
Story by John Heilprin
Photos By Michael Chiribau/UNITAR
