This month of February, Stefanie Oestlund (FSTM Megatrends project officer) and I had the opportunity to visit key universities and research centers in Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand as part of a delegation led by Vice-Rector Marie-Hélène Jobin. We received invaluable support from our Embassy in Thailand, including Ambassador Patrick Hemmer and Deputy Head of Mission Cassandre Renevier, as well as representation in Laos by Thomas Lammar.
The visit aimed to achieve several goals:
We extended our existing collaboration in Law with the National University of Laos, expanding it to include the field of computer science and high-performance computing (HPC), thanks to the funding from our Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, Defence, Development Cooperation, and Foreign Trade.
We reinforced our collaboration with Hanoi University of Science and Technology and established new relations with Vietnam National University.
In Thailand, we began our visit at Burapha University, a key institution within the Eastern Economic Corridor on the Silk Roads.
We then strengthened and developed our existing partnership with Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s top-ranked university, extending our collaboration from accounting to entrepreneurship.
Our next visit was to Mahidol University, where we planned joint opportunities in AI, engineering, medicine, and nursing sciences.
We also confirmed strong support from the Thai Ministry of Research and Higher Education during a meeting on the following day.
We concluded our journey by signing a new Memorandum of Understanding with NECTEC, the Thai ICT Research Institute.
The concrete outcomes of this journey include attracting new talents for Master and PhD studies in Luxembourg, exchanging staff and students through Erasmus+, creating new joint projects (seven of which were initiated with NECTEC), seeking joint funding opportunities (Horizon/Digital Europe, Erasmus, governmental funding), and PhDs’ co-supervisions. Additionally, benefiting from local partners’ assessments of the collaborations’ and the participating-students’ quality is of tremendous value for our University.