When browsing through the information about CIUS one word came to me, namely convergence. My opening address will therefor circle around the notion of convergence.

Convergence is when several different factors – subjects, methods or ideas – that have different points of departure approach each other and form something, that might be new understanding of something, new important products and solutions to something, or some kind of understanding of a broad picture.

Convergence leads to the creation of new forms in how we conduct our work.

Convergence creates new fields of research appearing between, in and around established fields.

Convergence creates new ideas and gives rise to new issues that nurture academic disciplines and develop these further.

History has shown that deep knowledge in scientific disciplines is crucial for interdisciplinary development.

Convergence and interdisciplinary approaches are needed to solve challenges articulated in many domains, industries and public sector.

Convergence also mirrors a dynamic cross-sector mindset and is becoming increasingly more important in modern knowledge development.

The understanding of convergence is probably the most important aspect of modern research and education. At least this is my opinion!

By looking at CIUS documentation preparing for this opening address its quite clear to me that convergence has been and is one important perspective within CIUS - Centre for Innovative Ultrasound Solutions for health care, maritime, and oil & gas – a centre bringing academia and industry together to address needs and challenges across three important sectors, particularly important in Norway.

The same methods and algorithms are used to solve problems in different application areas.

Solutions in one sector are quickly transferred in order to provide new solutions in another sector. In the case of CIUS this is happening between the health care sector, maritime sector and the oil & gas sector.

As mentioned earlier, convergence creates collaboration across institutions. Challenges that need convergence between domains also require collaboration across institutions. The increasing complexity of the challenges at hand, in particular those addressed by industry, requires competence from many people and many domains, hence collaboration across institutions has becomes more and more important. CIUS is a good example where collaboration across institutions has created new and important results for further product development in industry.

The ultrasound adventure in Norway started at NTNU i Trondheim and I will use the opportunity to thank our academic partners NTNU and USN, in particular NTNU for inviting us into this centre for research-driven innovation.

As far as I understand the collaboration has been very fruitful, also by bringing industrial partners from all academic sides into the CIUS centre project portfolio.

A short glance at the program also show me that CIUS is and will be an important contributor in the realm of machine learning, data science and artificial intelligence in the years to come.

Thank you very much for asking me to give this opening address here at the CIUS Spring Seminar 2019. Good luck with the seminar and thank you very much for your attention.