PRESS RELEASES

The 20th AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting

November 27, 2013

    On 15 November 2013, the 20th AUN/SEED-Net Steering Committee Meeting was held in Vientiane, Lao PDR. Prof. Sayhong Saynasinh, Vice President of National University of Lao PRD and other representatives of 26 Member Institutions, Prof. Dr. Shinnosuke Obi who is representative from 14 Japanese Supporting Universities, Ms. Nobuko Kayashima, 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 sustainable development in the region. Since then, this program has made remarkable achievements, including that approximately 900 academic staff obtained master’s degree and/or Ph.D in order to improve quality of academic staff, that about 700 collaborative researches were undertaken and around 1,000 papers were published so as to improve the quality of research and that network consisted of about 600 ASEAN and Japanese academic staff was established.

    This is the first Steering Committee Meeting since AUN/SEED-Net Phase 3 started in March 2013. In the meeting, the SEED-Net Secretariat explained the annual report of JFY2012 and the progress report of JFY2013 as well as the recent status and efforts on the following three aspects which were decided as targets of Phase 3; the first is to contribute to advancement of industry in the region, the second is to address common global issues in Asia and the last is to strengthen capacity of Member Institutions and academic network in Asia. Participants had lively discussion on how to manage the programs under Phase 3 and how to strengthen the collaboration between university and industry.

    SEED-Net was referred to in the Chairman’s Statement of the 16th Japan-ASEAN Summit held in Brunei Darussalam on 9th October 2013. SEED-Net is expected as one of the leading projects for establishing ASEAN Community Building.