ASEAN Foundation Scholarships for ASEAN Nationals to study at AIT

The ASEAN Foundation plans to provide scholarships for postgraduate studies for ASEAN nationals to study at AIT in the broad areas of agriculture, fisheries and animal production; development studies; environment; natural sciences; engineering; and, information and communication technology.
ASEAN Foundation Executive Director Mr. Apichai Sunchindah and Program Coordinator Ms.
Indy Hardono met and discussed this major area of collaboration on 9 May 2007 with AIT
President Said Irandoust along with Prof. Vilas Wuwongse, Vice President for External
Relations; and Prof. Sudip Rakshit, Vice President for Research. The ASEAN Foundation's priority is to support scholarships in problem-oriented and inter-disciplinary fields where there are perceived needs for human resource development in the ASEAN region and they prefer that the scholarships be attached to projects of similar nature with a focus on GMS countries,
particularly Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The Foundation director announced an upcoming review of all projects supported by the
ASEAN Foundation and identified AIT as a major beneficiary of financial support provided by the Foundation in the past 7 years, totaling around US $1million for five projects. Thus, AIT was requested to prepare a summary of the activities of these projects and to highlight their achievements and impact.
The ASEAN Foundation visitors also met with Dr. Lal Samarakoon, Director, Geoinformatics
Center and Dr. Manzul K. Hazarika, Sr. Research and Training Specialist, Remote Sensing &
Geographic Information Systems/School of Engineering and Technology to follow up on the
'Poverty Mapping Project', funding of which approved by the ASEAN Foundation, and also with Dr. Kyoko Kusakabe, Associate Dean, SERD and Dr. Shinya Hanaoka, Coordinator, TRE/SET to discuss details of the project on 'Capacity Building for Gender/Social Impact Assessment of Infrastructure Development' which is now in the process of being approved by the Foundation.
While at AIT, Mr. Apichai Sunchindah and Ms. Indy Hardono also participated in the Workshop on Formulation of Research and Education Projects in the Greater Mekong Subregion, organized by the GMSARN Secretariat on May 8, 2007.