When Armenian Brightest Minds Gather in Dilijan
For three days in June, the Central Bank’s conference center in the pine-forested hills of Dilijan became something far more than a building. It transformed into a global hub where some of the sharpest Armenian minds on the planet — scientists, engineers, educators, artists, policy makers — came together around one shared conviction: Armenia can and must compete at the highest levels of global excellence.
This was the fifth annual conference of the Armenian Society of Fellows (ASOF), and if any gathering captures what collective Armenian ambition can look like, this is it.
A Network Like No Other
ASOF is only five years old, yet it has already woven itself into the fabric of the Armenian world with remarkable speed. The Society now counts 382 members spanning 35 countries, including three Nobel laureates, and covers every discipline — from computational sciences and engineering to the humanities, health sciences, cultural heritage, and the arts.
The mission, as ASOF Chair Mary Papazian reminded participants at the opening session, is deceptively simple: to help raise Armenia’s educational and research institutions to world-class levels, and to network them globally. What makes ASOF unusual is that it is also deliberately finite — designed to dissolve after 20 years, because the goal is not to build another diaspora organization, but to build capacity within Armenia itself so the country can stand fully on its own.
The Big Announcement: A $14 Million Bet on Armenia’s AI Future
The headline of this year’s conference was the unveiling of ARCS.ai — the Advanced Research in Computational Sciences and Artificial Intelligence center. This is ASOF’s most ambitious project to date: a dedicated robotics and AI center with a $14 million budget over seven years, backed by $8 million in high-performance computing power, and matched one-to-one by the Armenian government.
As one participant noted, the microchips powering the mobile phones we use every day are already being designed in Armenia. ARCS.ai is the infrastructure that will ensure that story grows.
A Full Agenda, A Wide Vision
Beyond ARCS.ai, the three-day program covered an extraordinary range of topics, reflecting the breadth of what ASOF believes nation-building actually requires.
The Seismic Safety Program — involving over 50 engineers working voluntarily across six task forces — presented concrete steps toward making Armenia’s buildings and infrastructure resilient. The shadow of 1988 still looms, and this group is determined it should never be repeated.
The Health Sciences Committee unveiled a strategic plan spanning cancer prevention and screening, electronic healthcare records, medical education, and healthcare governance — with a proposal to the Armenian government planned for 2027.
The Armenian Cultural Heritage (ArCH) initiative presented plans for a first-ever digital inventory of pan-Armenian cultural heritage, alongside a landmark international conference to be held at the Gregoriana University at the Vatican in May 2027 — a deliberate act of soft power, telling Armenia’s story to the world at the highest levels.
Sessions on biodiversity and COP17, AI’s impact on society and the humanities, higher education reform, and diaspora-Armenia relations filled the remaining hours, with participants moving between parallel tracks across all three days.
One People, Two Entities, Endless Potential
Perhaps the most thought-provoking moment of the conference came from Executive Director Vatche Sahakian, who painted a striking picture of the diaspora-Armenia relationship. His argument: diaspora and homeland are not competitors — they are complementary.
Armenia has been quietly building state institutions from the ground up. The diaspora, shaped by the immigrant drive to thrive, excels in setting high expectations and thinking globally. Together, the two sides form a natural partnership — one that ARCS.ai is already beginning to prove is possible.
The numbers behind his case were sobering. Armenians in the US, Canada, and Western Europe generate an estimated $100 billion annually — yet diaspora institutions collectively invest only around 0.3% of that in our shared identity and future. The potential waiting to be unlocked is enormous.
Hovel Chenorhokian reacted to those figures with a clear statement: what the Armenian world needs is a Leadership with an explicit mission to optimize and mobilize the resources of the diaspora — a program he developed further in a dedicated session on the “Leadership Gap of The Armenian World”.
Five Years In, Fifteen to Go
ASOF is only a quarter of the way through its planned lifespan, and already the range and scale of what it has set in motion is striking. Dilijan 2026 was not a celebration — it was a working conference, built around the question of what comes next.
The answer, clearly, is quite a lot. To learn more about ASOF and its work, visit asof.am
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