Meeting with Queen Máxima

On Wednesday, September 7, our team had the honor of meeting Queen Máxima. We had a very nice conversation with her in which she asked how we planned to commercialize Zem, what were our biggest obstacles in developing Zem and what we want our student team to achieve in the coming years. Our team felt extremely honored and was very excited that we got the chance to tell more about our innovative Zem. After this very nice talk, we got the chance to have our picture taken with our entire team as well as the queen!

We met the queen at the beautiful Stanford University, where part of the trade mission took place. After the meeting and brief conversation with the queen, there was a seminar on artificial intelligence where we, the queen, ministers and several CEOs attended. It was super interesting to hear about the vision on the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare from Ernst Kuipers, Minister of Public Health, Welfare and Sport. We also heard from Vivianne Heijnen, Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management about the use of artificial intelligence in environmentally friendly solutions. After this seminar, we had the opportunity to meet Robbert Dijkgraaf, minister of education, culture and science.

If we ask team member Iwan Bloksma, the conversation with Minister Vivianne Heijnen is the most memorable. "I found it super fun to notice how interested she was in our story and how she constantly kept asking about the development of ZEM. It felt like a very genuine conversation and I would be super cool to further brainstorm with her about sustainable solutions in the mobility sector."