On Friday (5 May 2023), President Alar Karis of Estonia was welcomed to the regional office of NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) in London. DIANA will support the development of dual-use commercial technologies for defence and security challenges.
President Karis was joined by the United Kingdom's Minister for Defence Procurement James Cartlidge. They discussed progress on DIANA with its managing director Professor Deeph Chana. The European Regional Office at Imperial College's White City Campus is hosted by the UK in partnership with Estonia and will be supported by a regional hub in Tallinn. A regional office for North America is due to open in Canada.
President Karis said: "Cooperation between the United Kingdom and Estonia has been good throughout history, and when the UK became the lead nation for the NATO battlegroup in Estonia, this partnership advanced even further. I am pleased that in addition to excellent defence cooperation, our joint undertakings now also include working with academia and industry to benefit the whole Alliance. With such a strong foundation, we can only expect great things to follow."
Imperial's White City Campus has already become a hub for security innovation, co-locating stakeholders from across academia, industry and government. Start-ups and other innovators in DIANA's programmes will have access to its network of accelerator sites and test centres across Europe and North America.
Professor Chana said: "DIANA will be an innovation powerhouse. We are bringing together academia, the private sector, and governments to develop cutting edge dual-use technologies. DIANA will create innovation eco-systems in Allied countries that will help NATO keep its technological edge."
DIANA is complemented by the NATO Innovation Fund, the world's first multi-sovereign venture capital fund, which will invest 1 billion euros in start-ups developing technologies for defence and security.
