PRESS RELEASES

The 21st AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting

25 November 2014

    On 17 November 2013, the 21st AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Prof. Fauzi Ramlan, Vice Chancellor of Universiti Putra Malaysia and other representatives of 25 Member Institutions, Prof. Dr. Shinnosuke Obi who is representative from 14 Japanese Supporting Universities, Ms. Keiko Sano, Deputy Director General of Human Development Department of JICA, Mr. Koji Aribayashi, First Secretary of Mission of Japan to ASEAN as well as other representatives and officials of ASEAN Secretariat, AUN Secretariat and SEED-Net Secretariat attended the meeting.

    AUN/SEED-Net was established in 2001 as one of JICA projects in order to promote the capacity development of Member Institutions in ASEAN for human resource development platform in engineering to contribute to sustainable development in the region. Since then, this program has made remarkable achievements, including the following:
1. Approximately 900 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 600 ASEAN and Japanese academic staff was established.

    In the meeting, the SEED-Net Secretariat explained the annual report of JFY2013 and the progress report of JFY2014 as well as the major issues including strengthening linkages between regional conference and ASEAN Engineering Journal, capacity building for academic staff, 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.

    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.