I have been involved with AUN/SEED-Net since the year 2003 from the participation in the IT Courseware Development Project, a special project of AUN/SEED-Net, to the role of AUN/SEED-Net Coordinator representing the Electrical & Electronics Engineering field at Chulalongkorn University from year 2005-2007 and an advisor of two AUN/SEED-net PhD Sandwich students. From October 2007, I am honored to be appointed as a new Assistant Executive Director of AUN/SEED-Net Secretariat.

I have always been interested in the issue of educational and research development at both national and international levels. I value the importance of collaboration and networking, and believe that these two factors are the crucial steps toward the foundation of academic strengthening and research capacity enhancement for human resource and country development. AUN/SEED-Net is thus a unique kind of engineering network in the world to serve those needs, especially for developing countries.

As we are watching the transition of Phase 1 to Phase 2, certainly we appreciate our joint efforts and contributions to the successfully established engineering network in ASEAN where we have common objectives to strengthen human resource development in engineering, to solve important issues of ASEAN through research capacity enhancement, to build and nurture the network, and to reach the final goal of self-sustainability. For the coming Phase 2, we have so many continuing missions to carry on and yet so many new challenging goals to accomplish. In my capacity, I would contribute at my fullest to make sure the project drive smoothly through several challenges we foresee and those yet to be seen. Through the leadership of our Executive director and with efforts and experiences of our secretariat staffs as well as on-going supports from Japan and member institutions, I strongly believe that our network will grow continuously to be the sustainable ASEAN-Japan partnership in Engineering, Science, and Technology in the future.

Tokai University, as one of the Japanese Supporting Universities, supports and coordinates collaborative activities in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) field of the AUN/SEED-Net Project. I am a field coordinator and it is my great pleasure to join this Project. Here I would like to introduce my activity to solve a problem which I have noticed in this project implementation. It might be on ICT field but I believe that the solution could give some suggestions to all collaborators in the Project.

The AUN/SEED-Net Project aims to produce high quality master’s or doctoral thesis research under Japanese co-investigator’s or co-advisor’s support. In this regard, AUN/SEED-Net doctoral sandwich students are provided with the Short-term Study Program in Japan that gives them the opportunities to take advice from Japanese co-advisors directly. Unfortunately, however, master’s students have a few of such opportunities. This seems to be a slightly serious problem. If master’s students could establish good relations with Japanese co-investigators, it would be easier for them to continue the research in doctoral courses and to get doctoral degrees within three years.

To solve the problem, TV conference system is used in my laboratory to set a meeting with AUN/SEED-Net master’s students in the host institution (HI), i.e. King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, every two months. The resolution is relatively same as VGA, which is not so high but enough for meeting. No ISDN or special network is required, but just usual internet. And when the image is projected to a large screen, the environment looks like a real classroom. This is a good way to track the research progress and to discuss the research in details among students, advisors in HI and co-investigators in Japan. It also provides a good opportunity for Japanese students to present and discuss their research in English and to foster friendship among ASEAN and Japan in younger generation.