PRESS RELEASES

The 22st AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting

4 December 2015

On 27 November 2015, the 22st AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand. Representatives of 26 ASEAN Member Institutions, Prof. Dr. Shinnosuke Obi who is a representative from 14 Japanese Supporting Universities, Prof. Dr. UEDA Tamon, Chief Advisor for AUN/SEED-Net, Dr. TODA Takao, Director General of Human Development Department of JICA, Mr. Taku Kawahara, First Secretary of Mission of Japan to ASEAN as well as other representatives and officials of the ASEAN Secretariat, AUN Secretariat and SEED-Net Secretariat attended the meeting.

AUN/SEED-Net was established in 2001 as one of JICA projects. It is aimed at creating a human resource development platform in engineering and promoting the capacity development of Member Institutions in ASEAN to contribute to sustainable development in the region. Since then, this program has made remarkable achievements, including the following:
1. Approximately 1,100 academic staff obtained master’s degree and/or Ph.D in view of improving quality of academic staff
2. About 700 collaborative researches were undertaken and around 1,000 papers were published so as to improve the quality of research
3. Network consisted of about 2,500 ASEAN and Japanese academic staff was established.

In the meeting, the SEED-Net Secretariat explained the annual report of JFY2014 and the progress report of JFY2015 as well as the major issues including strengthening linkages between regional conference and ASEAN Engineering Journal, strengthening of research program and achievement of university-industry collaboration. Participants had lively discussion on current situation of and solution to each issue. They also exchanged views on the Future Plan beyond Phase 3(JFY2013-2017).

SEED-Net is expected to contribute to the strengthening of people-to-people connectivity in ASEAN as one of the leading projects for establishing ASEAN Community and further deepening its integration.