Issue 4 - AUN/SEED-Net

SEED-Net
News
Quarterly Newsletter of the ASEAN University Network/Southeast Asia Engineering Education Development Network
Volume 7 Issue 4: January - March 2012 Review
AUN/SEED-Net Secretariat
Bldg. 2, Room 109-110, Faculty of Engineering,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand 10330
Phone: +66-2218-6419 to 21 | Fax: +66-2218-6418
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Taskforce Meeting on Formulation of the AUN/SEED-Net Project’s Phase III
ME/AE Conference Gets Heaps of Papers
Global Environment Conference Attracts Big Crowd
Biotechnology Research Topics Available On The Web
NUOL To Set Up Chemical Engineering Department
Geological Engineering Conference in Laos
CU Shares Flood Knowledge Through Conference
Upcoming Events
Taskforce Meeting on Formulation of the
AUN/SEED-Net Project’s Phase III
To prepare for continuation of the AUN/SEED-Net Project, the Secretariat
organized the 1st Taskforce Meeting on Formulation of the AUN/SEED-Net
Project’s Phase III in Bangkok on March 19-20, 2012. Twenty taskforce
members comprising representatives from Member Institutions, Member
Countries, and Japanese Supporting Universities gathered and shared
constructive comments on the Phase III plan proposed by the Secretariat
based on recommendations from the JICA Advisory Committee.
The taskforce members polished vision and missions of the AUN/SEED-Net as
well as purpose and expected outputs of Phase III to reflect updated situation
and expectations of the stakeholders in ASEAN and Japan. They also agreed
in principle with the proposed activities, which are collaboration with industry,
addressing to common regional issues, and promotion of engineering human
resource development platform in Asia.
In the next phase, reorganization of fields and implementation structure as well as network expansion are
possible. However, several details and criteria were to be discussed and clarified. Therefore, the Secretariat
plans to visit all Member Countries in April - May 2012 for further discussion with Member Institutions, concerned
ministries, Japanese embassies, and JICA offices.
Volume 7 Issue 4
ME/AE Conference Gets Heaps of Papers
As many as 84 papers were presented in three parallel sessions of the 4th
Regional Conference in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering (ME/AE) in
Ho Chi Minh City on January 10-11, 2012.
Arranged jointly by Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT)
and Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST), the conference
attracted 115 participants including some from non-member institutions.
Keynote presentations were delivered by Assoc. Prof Dr. Shiratori Yusuke
from Kyushu University, Prof. Dr. Kobayashi Yukinori from Hokkaido University,
and Prof. Pham Xuan Mai from HCMUT.
During the conference, the participants discussed other funding sources for
sustainability and collaboration such as funding from some governments
e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. They also expected to see more
of alumni activities and engagements with other universities or countries.
The next conference in this field will be co-arranged by Chulalongkorn
University (CU) and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang
(KMITL) in Bangkok around February 2013.
Global Environment Conference Attracts Big Crowd
Regional Conference in the area of Global Environment jointly
organized by Chulalongkorn University and Kasetsart University in
Bangkok on January 18-19, 2012 could attract a big number of 120
participants with 81 papers presented.
The member institutions extensively discussed a need for database
to pool research interests which would be served by the underconstruction AUN/SEED-Net Database, features of ASEAN
Engineering Journal, and a possibility to merge the conference in
this area with the University of the Philippines (UP) - Tokyo Institute of
Technology (TIT) symposium in Environmental Engineering supported
by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Next conference will be held by Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) in
November 2012 and may be extended to cover the area of disaster.
Biotechnology Research Topics Available
On The Web
Lists of research topics and contact persons in Biotechnology and
Chemical Engineering are now available on AUN/SEED-Net web site.
De La Salle University (DLSU) as the host institution of Chemical Engineering
and the main facilitator of Biotechnology recently gathered updated
information about current and new research topics and contact persons
from all member institutions for future collaboration. The lists are available
at http://www.seed-net.org/research_umbrella.php.
DLSU’s effort was announced at the 4 th Regional Conference on
Biotechnology: Emerging Biotechnology for Green Engineering, jointly
arranged by Burapha University and Chulalongkorn University during
January 26-27, 2012 in Bangkok. The conference was attended by 107
participants, with 47 papers in three parallel sessions. The next conference
in Biotechnology will be in January 2013 at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB),
co-hosted by ITB and Gadjah Mada University (UGM).
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Volume 7 Issue 4
NUOL To Set Up Chemical Engineering
Department
AUN/SEED-Net contributed to the region’s educational progress in the field
of Chemical Engineering; National University of Laos (NUOL) will set up
Chemical Engineering Department in 2013 with technical assistance from
De La Salle University (DLSU).
This good news was announed at the 4th Regional Conference in Chemical
Engineering (RC-ChE) organized by University of Malaya (UM) in Kuala
Lumpur during February 9-10, 2012. Around a hundred participants were
present at the conference, delivering 81 papers and exhibiting16 posters.
The participants also expressed a wish to exchange students among the
member institutions with a comment that research topics should be widely
discussed and determined first.
The next RC-ChE will be co-organized by Burapha University and King
Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang in Pattaya in early 2013.
Geological Engineering Conference in Laos
The last conference of this fiscal year is in Geological Engineering, held by
National University of Laos (NUOL) on March 12-13, 2012. There were 60
participants including keynote speakers from Gadjah Mada University (UGM)
Prof. Dr. Dwikorita Karnawati and from Hokkaido University Prof. Dr. Toshifumi
Igarashi, Prof. Dr. Hiroshi Fukuoka, and Dr. Mayumi Ito. Twenty-six papers were
presented during technical sessions. At the end of presentation sessions, the
Best Presentation Awards for Student and Young Researcher were announced
by Prof. Dr. Koichiro Watanabe from Kyushu University, head of the selection
committee. The awards were given with the aim to encourage and support
students and young researchers to pursue their research interests. And on
the second day, NUOL took the participants to observe the Mekong River
Integrated Management Project in Vientiane.
They confirmed the next conference in Geological Engineering to be held
by University of Malaya tentatively in January 2013, and the conference on
Disaster Mitigation by University of the Philippines-Diliman on September 6-7,
2012.
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Secretariat Office. Before
joining us, he used to work
closely with the AUN/SEEDNet Project at JICA.
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Volume 7 Issue 4
CU Shares Flood Knowledge Through Conference
Natural disasters make losses of human lives and
properties around the world. The recent flood disaster
in Thailand (Flood 2011) caused a lot of damages in the
central part of Thailand which affected 10 provinces,
and 1,658,981 families. This was the no.4 of world record
in term of the most damaged catastrophe.
Prof. Ismail Bin Abustan from Universiti Sains Malaysia
and Dr. Subagyo Pramumijoyo from Gadjah Mada
University. Around 200 people, who were 101 members
of universities, 58 officers from local and national
authorizations, and 31 other people, participated in
this two-day conference.
Distance Learning Foundation (DLF) and Faculty
of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University (CU) with
cooperation from AUN/SEED-Net held the “Flood and
Earthquake Disaster Management and Community
in Central Part of Thailand Conference” on February
14-15, 2012 at Faculty of Engineering, CU for sharing
knowledge and technology of natural disaster
forecasting, warning, and preventive measures
among local authorizations and researchers. Assoc.
Prof. Dr. Boonsom Lerdhirunwong, Dean of Faculty of
Engineering, and Ms. Chantra Pitrachat, representative
from DLF, gave opening speeches. The conference
had 11 invited Thai and international speakers
including two from the AUN/SEED-Net network; namely
The conference ended successfully with shared
experiences and information among Thai and ASEAN
universities on flood and earthquake mitigation and
restoration including community roles. International
Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management
(ICHARM) of National Graduate Institute for Policy
Studies (GRIPS) of Japan, CU, and the AUN/SEEDNet also discussed a plan to implement special
collaborative research on flooding issue.
Upcoming Events
September 6-7, 2012
September 26-27, 2012
October 18-19, 2012
October 25-26, 2012
November 21-22, 2012
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Story by Assoc.Prof. Dr. Sucharit Koontanakulvong and
Dr. Anurak Sriariyawat, Department of Water Resources
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn
University (CU)
Find updated schedule at http://www.seed-net.org/calendar.php
Regional Conference on Disaster Mitigation, Manila, The Philippines
Regional Conference on New/Renewable Energy: “Together Research
Towards Sustainable Energy Resource Tomorrow”, Hanoi, Vietnam
http://ite.hut.edu.vn/rcnre2012/
Regional Conference in Information & Communication Technology, Manila,
The Philippines
Regional Conference in Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering: “Civil and Environmental Engineering for Sustainable Development”,
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Regional Conference on Global Environment: “Towards A Sustainable ASEAN”,
Bandung, Indonesia