Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations 2020

Over the past 4 days, I got the opportunity to attend the HPAIR 2020 conference at Harvard University as a delegate. HPAIR is an internationally recognized student organization at Harvard College, offering a forum of exchange to facilitate discussion of some of the most important economic, political and social issues relevant to the Asia-Pacific region. Over the years, HPAIR's international conferences have emerged as Harvard College's largest student-run conferences having a wide variety of keynote speakers and leaders.

I have been grateful to have gotten the chance to be a part of the HPAIR's mission for this year i.e Striking a balance. I participated in the Science and Technology track and I would love to highlight my experience in this article.

Over the span of the conference, there were multiple keynotes and panels having speakers including Hari Nair (ex Global marketing director for Kimberly Clark's GIC), Richard Towle (Deputy director for the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees), Bill Gutentag (a double Oscar-winning dramatic and documentary film writer and producer) and Corinne M. Le Gof (Senior VP & General Manager, U.S. General Medicine).

As a part of my track, I attended the space race panel and the automation revolution with A.I Technology panel. I found the A.I panel really interesting since it threw light on some of the challenging questions we are trying to answer today with regards to the future of artificial intelligence and its impacts on various industries. It was a pleasure to meet and hear from the panel consisting Zeerak Ahmed from Amazon, Rahul Arora from the University of Oxford and Rosa Wang from Alibaba Cloud.

As a part of the conference, I also got the chance to meet people from different countries and experience the diverse cultures at the iNight event hosted by the HPAIR organizing committee. From seeing people wear their traditional outfits to learning new words in different languages, it was a great experience to be a part of everyone's personal journey to the HPAIR conference. Delegates and staff had also put up performances which gave us a flavour of China, India, Australia, Philippines and also Harvard.

Nearing the end of the conference, we participated in various Impact Challenges proposed to us. My challenge was the Luminopia startup challenge which taught me about vertical unbundling in startups. It was great to work in a diverse team coming from Australia, Vietnam and India.

I am extremely grateful to the whole organizing team of HPAIR and all the delegates & speakers I met over the past four days. I have certainly learnt a lot from everyone who has been a part of this conference. It always reminds me that students can genuinely make a difference in the world and HPAIR is a great platform to visualize these impacts.