On Tuesday, January 26th ISET hosted a delegation of His Excellency Lukas Beglinger, Ambassador of Switzerland to Georgia, and Olivier Bürki, Counselor, Embassy of Switzerland, Regional Director South Caucasus to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC and State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. The purpose of the visit was to get to know the new Ambassador and the new Director of SDC and SECO and discuss the strengthening and continuation of the collaboration. After the brief introduction to the history and development of ISET and ISET Policy Institute combined with a building tour, guests had a round table discussion with Eric Livny, president of ISET, and other members of ISET and ISET-PI.

Olivier Bürki gave a brief overview of the strategies which SDC and SECO are going to follow within the restructured action plan for 2017 to 2020 and confirmed his interest in continuing the collaboration in the field of 'inclusive growth' prioritizing agriculture development and other cross-border research activities. The Ambassador is looking forward to welcoming the Study Group from the University of Lausanne for the Mechanism Design Research workshop held by ISET’s visiting professor Motty Perry from February 2016. His Excellency and Olivier Bürki expressed their positive impression of what they have learned and seen and emphasized their appreciation of the high quality of ISET's education and research activities.