News2WOWUAUGUST–OCTOBER 2014 A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FOR UNIVERSITIES BY QS ASIA

World’s first accurate technique of age/sex estimation by bone developed

President Pranab Mukherjee of India received a personal briefing on the progress of Indian universities when he accepted the first copy of the QS University Rankings: Asia.

Read more on page 64

www.qswownews.com • MCI (P) 074/07/2014

Historic day for Malaysia, Obama pays a visit

Malaysia was all abuzz in April 2014, when news broke that President Barack Obama will conduct a 3-day visit to Kuala Lumpur...

Read more on page 3

ISSUE NO

14

Taiwanese researchers invent anti-cancer drug, US FDA-approvedPage 10

Lebanese AUBMC doctors conduct first Google Glass surgery in Middle EastPage 47

Hearing loss to be a thing of the past soon

The scientific, business and general community were excited about a University of New South Wales Australia (UNSW) study suggesting people with hearing loss might one day have a bionic ear implanted that not only improves their hearing, but would actually regrow

their auditory nerve.

Read more on page 29

 

Singapore’s NTU launches $30 million 3D printing research center

Forensic anthropologist Dr Kyra Stull has developed a reliable tool that the police, forensic pathologists and anthropologists can use...

Read more on page 54

President of India first to see QS University Rankings: Asia 2014

 

British PM announces ambition to double the number of Chinese learners in UK Page 60

 

Brunei Darussalam

Organizing partner

October 14–16, 2014 • The Empire Hotel & Country Club, Bruneiwww.qsinconversation.com

NTU’s new additive manufacturing center, which is supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board, aims to keep Singapore at the forefront of 3D printing technologies. Read more on page 2

Brunei Tourism Copyright 2005Photography by David Kirkland

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News2WOWU

WOW News | 2 Asia & Oceania

Singapore’s NTU launches $30 million 3D printing research center New Australian wheat

worth $50 million more

A new wheat quality discovery by a Murdoch University researcher has the potential to add 1% or $50 million to the $5 billion wheat market in Australia.

Murdoch’s newly-appointed Professor in Grain Protein Chemistry Wujun Ma, has worked with wheat grains on a genetic level to produce new lines of Australian wheat which are richer in protein and better for bread-making.

Wheat proteins control quality traits such as color, texture and taste, as well as attributes such as disease resistance and climate adaptability.

“It will make our wheat more competitive with grain in the Chinese market where Australian wheat is often viewed negatively,” said Professor Rudi Appels, chair of the Australia-China Centre for Wheat Improvement.

“Our environment of long, hot summers affects protein levels in wheat grains, which in turn impacts bread quality. Professor Ma’s new wheat lines have significantly increased the functional protein component in wheat grain, making the baking quality of low protein Australian wheat comparable with the high protein American wheat.

“This is a significant gain and will open up new international markets for an industry which exports 80% of what it produces.”

In future, knee and bone implants customized to fit individual patients could be easily made using 3D printers.

Medical devices and tissue printing are among the key research areas that Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is ramping up on with the launch of its new $30 million 3D printing center.

The NTU Additive Manufacturing Centre (NAMC) was officially launched by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry and National Development.

At the launch, NTU also signed a $5 million joint laboratory agreement with SLM Solutions, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of 3D printers.

Named SLM Solutions@NAMC, the lab aims to develop next-generation 3D printers which can print much larger parts than today’s printers and new types of materials. It will also develop platforms that can print multiple materials in one single build.

NTU President Professor Bertil Andersson said “Additive manufacturing is a revolutionary technology that is changing the face of innovation and that NTU is well placed to excel in the fast growing field.

“Although we are a young university, NTU is already leading with two decades of research and development in this field.

“Our new additive manufacturing center not only aims to collaborate with industry to develop innovative, practical solutions but also brings together the best talents in the field. The new center is outfitted with the latest 3D printing machines, such as

laser-aided machines for printing metal parts for industry and bio-printers which are able to print real human tissue.”

NTU’s new additive manufacturing center, which is supported by the Singapore Economic Development Board, aims to keep Singapore at the forefront of 3D printing technologies.

“As more low-cost printers come onto the market, 3D printing is now more accessible to the public and this enables people to see their ideas and design become reality, something they can see with their eyes and hold with their hands. This is what true engineering is about—creative and practical innovations that will benefit society,” said Professor Chua Chee Kai, the center director and chair of NTU’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

MOS Lee Yi Shyan receiving his momento from NTU – a 3D printed figuring of himself with a metal model of MBS

5 | WOW News

Hanyang University (HYU) and Hyundai Motor Group have partnered to establish the Research Center for Future Automobiles (tentative name) at HYU’s Seoul Campus in a bid to boost its goal of becoming the guaranteed school for best expertise on future automobiles.

The Research Center for Future Automobiles aims to nurture new generations and keep pace with the development of future vehicles. It will span an area of approximately 13,200 square meters, comprising five floors and a basement. The research center will be host to research, experiments and classes, as well as special rooms for international conferences.

“We are looking forward to prospective engineers with sheer passion and talents to lead the world with Hyundai-Kia Motors and we believe the research center deserves to be world-famous,” said Woong-chul Yang, vice president of research and development (R&D) of Hyundai-Kia Motors. Hyundai Motor Group has been the driving force behind the automobile paradigm in Korea. It has held the Contest for Autonomous Vehicle several times since 1995 to encourage creative ideas for new automobile technologies, expanding it for the sake of future vehicles.

HYU has been dubbed the birthplace of engineering experts in various industry mainstreams in and out of South Korea. It set up the Department of Automotive Engineering in 2011, in accordance with its foremost goal—practical education. With a quota of 40 students, the department awards full scholarships to all its students and offers combined curriculum of electricity, electronics, and mechanical engineering majors—a Hanyang-exclusive program to help foster multiple-role players, also known as utility engineers.

Hanyang-Hyundai research center to drive futuristic automobile industry

Asia & Oceania

Groundbreaking Ceremony to celebrate the start of construction held on Hanyang University’s Seoul Campus

Malaysia was all abuzz in April 2014, when news broke that President Barack Obama would conduct a 3-day visit to Kuala Lumpur between his stops in Japan and South Korea and ahead of a visit to the Philippines. His visit was significant as part of Washington’s bid to fortify alliances in the region and to emphasize its relations with economically successful, moderate-Muslim Malaysia.

This is the second time that a president of the United States of America visits Malaysia; President Lyndon B Johnson set foot in Malaysia in 1966. April 27, 2014 will forever be etched in the memory of all University of Malaya (UM) citizens as President Barack Obama chose their campus as the venue for his well-known “Town Hall” meeting with young leaders selected from 10 ASEAN nations.

It was mentioned in the media that the highlight of his visit was this Town Hall session at the Dewan Tunku Canselor, UM. He met with 400 young people answering questions not only from the youth in attendance, but also from young people who asked questions online and through social media.

“These trips are usually all business for me,” said the President, “but every once in a while I want to have some fun, so I try to hold an event like this where I get to hear directly from young people like you—because I firmly believe that you will shape the future of your countries and the future of this region.

“The Asia-Pacific, with its rich cultures and beautiful traditions and vibrant societies—that’s all part of who I am—has helped shape how I see the world; and it’s also helped to shape my approach as president.”

The President was instantly connected with his audience when he touched on diversity. When Obama made references to his life in Indonesia and to his sister’s father-in-law living in Sabah, Malaysia, there was an even closer link as the crowd felt he was part of the region (The Star, May 4, 2014).

University of Malaya, which was recently awarded the 5 Star Rating by QS, is not new to welcoming distinguished world figures. Among those who had visited and given public lectures at the Dewan Tunku Canselor UM before this are Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2011, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan in 2008, and Indonesia’s Deputy President Jusuf Kalla in 2007.

It is worth noting that UM will be hosting the inaugural QS Summer School Summit from December 3–4, 2014.

Historic day for Malaysia, Obama pays a visit

US President Barack Obama giving a speech at UM

From left to right: Mr Yusoff Musa (UM registrar), Prof Dato’ Dr Mohd Amin Jalaludin (UM vice chancellor), Mr Barack Obama (US president), and Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Utama Arsyad Ayub (UM Board of Management chairman)

WOW News | 6

A team of six students from Universiti Brunei Darussalam have built a battery-powered car—a creation under the Incubation Project, one of the four programs in UBD’s GenNEXT Discovery Year—that deserves worthy praise for bringing the team to the 10th position in their category against two dozen contestants in the Shell Eco-Marathon 2014.

The car was named “Mutiara” as a tribute to Brunei Darussalam’s legendary rooster. The Shell Eco-Marathon is an initiative towards pushing the boundaries of fuel efficiency through providing opportunities for students to design, build and test ultra energy-efficient vehicles. It aims to inspire young engineers to come up with ways to fill the insatiable gaps for energy.

As with many other universities across the globe, Universiti Brunei Darussalam is no stranger to the importance of tapping into the talents of the Bruneian population. In the wake of this particular endeavor, significant investments have been poured into an education system that produces future leaders.

Being part of an international community with dozens of networks spanning seven continents and beyond, UBD has made it its mission to utilize this advantageous leverage for the benefit of its students. Over the past few years, many of its young population have ventured beyond the Sultanate’s borders and immersed themselves among international peers, many of whom have provided UBD students with the opportunity to discover their own potential set against global standards.

From the six, the four young men and two young women found themselves

working in cohesion with the task to bring the UBD name honor by participating in this prestigious event that attracts the brightest from across the globe annually.

Hailing from different faculties, including the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Integrated Technologies and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, the team found themselves spending endless engineering hours in close quarters, with each given different responsibilities that best suited their skills.

Among the many surprises is the participation of women in what is mostly a male-dominated industry. As part of the requirements of this event, the team was tasked to elect a driver to operate their custom-made vehicle. Chosen was one of the two female students, whose size and weight proved to be an important component in the car’s design and function.

Being a higher education institution that carries the same national principles where educational rights are for all regardless of gender, creed or race, UBD has always stood strong to ensure that its students are treated equally. Also, the university will be co-hosting QS in conversation this year, from October 14–16 at the Empire Hotel, Brunei.

First international university-industry collaboration in Korea – Ewha-Solvay Research and Innovation Center

South Korea’s first university-industry collaboration with a global corporation has given birth to the Ewha-Solvay Research and Innovation Center. This was announced at the opening ceremony in front of the University-Industry Cooperation Building on June 3, 2014.

“Ewha-Solvay collaboration is the first case of a foreign multinational corporation establishing its global research and innovation center at a Korean university, which is considered to be a successful example of industry-academic cooperation,” said President Kim Sun-Uk at her congratulatory address.

President Kim also asked the audience to pray for the growth and development of Ewha and Solvay, which are working together to achieve the ultimate goal of sustainable development as the symbol of a successful university-industry collaboration in Korea.

Mr Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, CEO of Solvay, said “Ewha is an elite school that equips the highest level of professors and students in the field of chemistry. I feel grateful to open this center with Ewha today.”

A tour of the cutting edge research facility following the opening ceremony allowed attendees to experience the center and its experiment equipment. Ewha and Solvay have begun university-industry collaboration efforts at the center and are committed to expanding and developing their partnership in the future.

Bruneian electric car crows like the legend

Asia & Oceania

 

Battery-powered car “Mutiara”, a product of UBD’s Incubation Programme

 The team members with various backgrounds ranging from the sciences, arts and engineering.

Long-established International Academy of Business (IAB) has been awarded university status—now known as Almaty Management University (ALMU). The change is beyond the name, as substantial structural developments within the university have been planned in order to meet new regional as well as global goals.

ALMU president, Assylbek Kozhakhmetov, said “Our new and current aim is to become a leader among universities of the Eurasian Economic Union in seven areas. We intend to become a world-class entrepreneurial university for emerging markets. We know that all currently existing entrepreneurship-centric universities are situated in developed economies. This will be harder for us to achieve because we will be pioneers, but it will be a very interesting process for us.

“Secondly, we plan to create, implement and disseminate a knowledge management system. Concentration on innovative management will also help the university become the principal engine driving growth in the Eurasian Economic Union (treaty between Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia). Innovative management will be based on the operations of a new business incubator and a venture capital fund.

“We develop business management, non-profit sector management, public sector management and research management. These are our four key competences. But we feel that we should give greater impetus to public sector management, make it better connected with the civil

society. So we need to strengthen civil society institutions.”

The remaining focus areas include building a more socially responsible university, ensuring advanced IT and distance-learning education, finding most impactful ways to improve Almaty’s economy, and providing top business research and management consultancy in the Eurasian Economic Union.

During 2014/15 the university plans to open the following schools: School of Public Policy (BSc, MA, PhD); Business School (MBA, DBA); School of Accounting, Finance and Management (BSc, MA, PhD); Law School (LLB, LLM, JD); School of Humanities and Social Sciences (BSc, MA, PhD); and School of Education (MA, PhD).

The second phase of development will be rolled out from 2015–2019 with the establishment of School of Computer Sciences and Electrical Technology (BSc, MS, PhD) and School of Art and Media Management (BSc, MA, PhD).

By adding the word “Almaty” ALMU wants to foster a close link with the city where the university was established in 1988. With this new name the university appreciates its provenance and pays tribute to the city where it was created.

On another note, earlier in May this year, 22 Kazakh universities sent their representatives on a visiting workshop to Singapore and Hong Kong. The university delegates were accompanied by a representative from the Ministry of Higher Education.

Long-established business school now a new university

Hong Kong’s Lingnan University initiates $1.3 million scholarship scheme, up to $74,000 per year

9 | WOW News

Kazakh delegation at a workshop conducted by Singapore Management University (SMU) and QS Asia

Lingnan University has initiated the AR Charitable Foundation Scholarship Scheme for risk and insurance management (RIM) students after receiving a US$1.3 million donation.

Outstanding undergraduates may receive over US$16,000 during their second to fourth academic year at the university, and more than US$58,000 to pursue a Master of Science in insurance and risk management at CASS Business School, City University of London.

This amounts to US$74,000 worth of undergraduate and postgraduate RIM studies. A total of 15 scholarship—12 for undergraduate studies at Lingnan and 3 for postgraduate studies at CASS—are offered annually. The scheme, aimed at developing young talent for the insurance industry, will span a period of eight academic years starting from 2013/14.

Asia & Oceania

The Kazakh delegation led by then IAB and current ALMU president, Assylbek Kozhakhmetov, completed an Asian educational training workshop, visited flagship universities in Singapore and Hong Kong, and shared experience with education stakeholders whose approaches are at the cutting edge of global learning.

The workshop was organized by IAB’s School of Public Policy as part of Kazakhstan’s government strategy outlined by the Kazakh President in his latest State-of-the-Nation Address to re-visit higher education paradigms and enable universities to transition to greater academic and management autonomy.

From left to right: Mr Mason Wu and Mr Edwin Chan, respectively director and founder of AR Charitable Foundation Limited; student awardees; and Professor Leonard Cheng, president of Lingnan University.

A major breakthrough in drug development has been made by Taiwan. A joint Taipei Medical University (TMU) and National Taiwan University (NTU) research team has developed a targeted anti-cancer therapy drug that has been recently approved for clinical trials by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The drug, MPT0E028, inhibits histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity, effectively killing cancer cells, and causes fewer side effects while doing so, according to the research so far. This spring the drug was approved for Phase 1 clinical trials; the drug is expected to complete trials and enter clinical use within 5-7 years, providing a new treatment option for cancer patients worldwide.

MPT0E028 currently holds patents in Taiwan and has patents pending in 19 countries and territories, including the European Union, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. It is Taiwan’s first university-developed drug approved by the US FDA for clinical trials. Significant achievements related to the development of this drug include cultivating biotechnology talent and industry expertise.

The project was supported by funding from the Ministry of Science and Technology and Formosa Laboratories Inc., under the National Research Program for Biopharmaceuticals, with 95% of the research conducted domestically.

The research team included the lab of Professor Jing-Ping Liou, associate

Taiwanese researchers invent anti-cancer drug, US FDA-approved

dean of TMU’s College of Pharmacy; the lab of Associate Professor Shiow-Lin Pan of TMU’s College of Medical Science and Technology; and the lab of Professor Che-Ming Teng of NTU.

The research team’s leader, Professor Jing-Ping Liou, said that while HDAC is present in normal human cells, HDAC activity is abnormally increased in cancer patients, lowering the activity of the tumor suppressor gene in vivo. Animal experiments found that MPT0E028 inhibits HDAC activity, promoting apoptosis in cancer cells, thus achieving the remission or treatment of cancer.

According to market surveys, the global spending on cancer drugs exceeds US$100 billion per year and is increasing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.4%. By 2014, this spending is projected to reach US$124.6 billion. Generally, after a targeted cancer therapy drug completes preclinical studies, the technology transfer fee is US$1 million to US$10 million; after Phase 1 clinical trials, this fee increases substantially as well.

Professor Liou says that the research group is also preparing to submit MPT0E028 to Taiwan’s Food and Drug Administration for review. Results were published in leading journals, Clinical Cancer Research and Cell Death and Disease, in late 2013 and early 2014. If approved, MPT0E028 will enter Phase 1 clinical trials later this year with the ultimate goal of clinical use.

 

Professor Jing-Ping Liou (in the middle) at TMU with his novel anti-cancer drug

WOW News | 10

On May 26, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod – National Research University (UNN) launched Supercomputer Lobachevsky, a state-of-the-art computational cluster with peak performance of 570 Tflops.

The whole country has been eagerly waiting for such a powerful helper. Lobachevsky will be used as a high-performance computing tool, which will be available to other Russian and international research and educational centers as well as to companies. The supercomputer is located at UNN Research Institute of Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics.

According to UNN IT team, the supercomputer can be used to perform large-scale and very complex calculations, such as those used in nonlinear physics, because nothing can be solved directly in this field of science. However, this 580-teraflop computer will primarily be used to solve tasks for biomedicine, biology, as well as for modeling various technical devices.

Dean of the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of UNN, Viktor Gergel, mentioned that Lobachevsky is one the most powerful supercomputers in the world. It will take almost 100,000 years for the entire population of the Earth to manually do the amount of calculations that Lobachevsky can do in a second. Its computational capabilities can be applied for many tasks and can help many researchers in various fields of science.

100,000 years of calculation by Earth’s entire population made in one second

Asia & Oceania

 

Supercomputer Lobachevsky before launch

SHHTMUH WFH

13 | WOW News

Award-winning New Zealand writer Eleanor Catton, whose novel The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize in 2014, received an honorary degree of Doctor of Literature from Victoria University of Wellington at its recent graduation celebrations.

The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. The prize is the world’s most important literary award, with the power to transform the fortunes of authors and publishers.

In accepting her honorary doctorate, conferred by the Victoria University Council, Ms Catton talked of the role universities play in fostering creativity, and urged Victoria graduates to continue to ask the question “what if”?

“I would like to focus my remarks upon one word only—in fact the most

important word I have ever learned. To utter this word requires great courage; to use it properly requires great discipline; and to protect and uphold it is the task and responsibility of every university and government around the world. Without it, I believe we would all be lost. The word is ‘if’,” said Eleanor Catton, who is an alumna of the university herself.

She continued “To begin with an ‘If’ is not to quarrel about what is, but to propose what could be—and this, the free exercise of the imagination, is not a weapon at all. ‘If’ is a form of conjuration; it calls a new world into being, at first an unformed world of shapes and shadows, that over time will thicken and evolve, becoming law, and art, and science. ‘If’ is a herald of peace and virtue; it helps us to a better conversation, a better world. Every discovery or advancement in human knowledge began, in the first instance, with an ‘If’.”

Victoria University alumna on top of the

fiction world

Asia & Oceania

Eleanor Catton (right) and Grant Guilford

 

Bond Professor Craig Langston, Faculty of Society and Design, has taken out one of five Premier Awards at the prestigious Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) annual International Innovation and Research Awards.

The CIOB is the world’s largest and most influential professional body for construction management and leadership with over 80,000 members worldwide.

“What if the Earth wasn’t the center of the solar system? What if Newton’s conception of gravity was only approximate? What if a poem didn’t have to rhyme? What if a computer could be made small enough to fit in a single room?”

“Questions of this kind rarely have simple answers; instead, and much more excitingly, they give rise to more questions. If so, then what? If so, how come? If so, then what about me?

“The purpose of a university is not to replicate, but to enlarge; not to simplify, but to understand; not to reflect or serve the world in which we live, but to enrich it through the creation and exploration of an infinity of possible other worlds, some corrective, some cautionary, some preservative, some prophetic, some subversive, some strange, and all conjured from that fearless, formidable Big Bang of a word, If.”

Bond University professor wins prestigious international innovation and research award

From many hundreds of nominations covering journal papers published in either 2012 or 2013, Professor Langston won the major research award for his paper entitled “Validation of the adaptive reuse potential (ARP) model using iconCUR.”

The adaptive reuse of existing buildings that have become obsolete is an important strategy for sustainable development and a pertinent response to excessive resource usage, resulting from typical destruction and redevelopment.

“Most of my colleagues from around the world would have submitted a paper to this competition, so to be chosen for the Premier Award from such a field is most unexpected, but very gratifying,” said Professor Langston.

In addition to authoring over 100 papers, five books and three software programs, Professor Langston has been awarded four Australian Research Council (ARC) grants totalling about $1 million, won the Emerald Literati Network Outstanding Paper Award (Facilities) in 2013 and took out the Bond University Vice Chancellor’s Quality Award for Research Excellence in 2010.

“Bond University has been very supportive of my research, including numerous internal seeding grants, and provides incentive for research-intensive academics like me to perform at their best,” he said.

Bond was the first university in Australia to have its construction degree accredited by the CIOB.

The award winner, Professor Craig Langston

Winter Abroad at Yonsei

15 | WOW News

“It was the first time I felt truly proud of the things I had done,” reflects Billy Wu, a computing student at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), on a trip he took with 11 fellow students to Rwanda in the summer of 2013. For the first time in his life, Billy not only spoke with foreigners in English on a daily basis, he even taught groups of adults in English.

His teammate Natalie Chak echoes similar sentiment. “I may not be the smartest person but I found my own values during this journey,” says Natalie, a student from the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, who used to feel lost. Teaching and caring for the needy have enabled Natalie to get a much-needed boost to her self-confidence.

While self-discovery and self-affirmation may not have been in the students’ minds when they signed up for the Rwanda project, that is the exact objective of the university’s service learning initiative—putting students out of their comfort zone to

PolyU the first in Hong Kong to implement credit-bearing service learning

serve the underprivileged, and hoping that the experience will bring positive changes to the students, eventually leading to positive changes to the world.

Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has been running community service learning programs since 2004 and is the first university in Hong Kong to require all undergraduates to complete a credit-bearing service learning subject when the country’s higher education sector changed to a four-year system in 2012.

“We want our students to be more than just successful professionals,” explains Professor Timothy W. Tong, PolyU president. “We want them to be concerned about the society and about the issues that people around the world are facing.”

Over the past decade, more than

8,000 PolyU students and staff have provided services to some 570,000 underprivileged in Hong Kong as well as mainland China and overseas, including Cambodia, Rwanda, Indonesia and Vietnam.

On a recent service learning trip to Cambodia, Professor Tong joined some 80 students to provide a wide range of original services to the local community—setting up e-learning labs for primary schools, training staff at guesthouse run by social enterprise, and providing eye-screening services to HIV+ orphans and children living in slum areas.

Professor Tong is particularly pleased to see that a group of participants of previous Cambodia projects have taken the initiative to form their own team this year and go back to continue their services to the Cambodians. The fact that these students were willing to pay for the bulk of the expenses themselves in order to make the trip is a clear sign that the initiative has succeeded in sowing the seeds of social responsibility.

Asia & Oceania

17 | WOW News

Physics professor develops groundbreaking graphene technology

and a strategic plan to produce professional researchers has been laid out to provide research grants for new researchers and facilitate the establishment of research units and the centers of excellence. Currently, CU has 95 research units and 30 centers of excellence accredited to national and university standards.

Founded in 1917, CU was Thailand’s first higher education institution; it comprises 20 faculties that offer over 500 programs, 80 of which are international, in almost every field of study. The number of current students and faculty is 39,750 and 8,000 respectively, with over 600 academic cooperative agreements with academic institutes and partner universities in 44 countries across the globe.

Chulalongkorn researchers make Thailand proud

Graphene was once a material only known in scientists’ dreams, but now it is a reality. It carries electricity over 100 times more efficiently than copper and boosts electron mobility 100 times greater than silicon (the base material for semiconductors). Graphene is also 200 times stronger than steel and conducts heat twice more efficiently compared to diamond, the previous conductor of choice. The material is highly elastic and transparent, and in 2010, graphene research received the Nobel Prize in physics. If the 20th century was the century of oil, the 21st century will most probably be the era of graphene.

Physics Professor Seunghyeon Chun of Sejong University and Material Engineering Professor Euijun Yun of Seoul National University have developed a technology to cumulate graphene on light emitting diodes (LED) based on plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD). This achievement has entered the media spotlight.

“To use graphene as we want, it needs to be separated without destroying its innate qualities and cumulated in another places as necessary. Thus far, we’ve only been able to do this by using

metal catalysts such as copper. However, such catalysts are limited in availability and disturb electricity flow, posing an impediment to graphene commercialization. Our new development is the first step in moving away from metal catalysts,” explains Professor Chun.

He adds “Plasma chemical vapor deposition is also different from the copper growth technique. The copper growth method involves application of methane onto a copper plate heated up to almost 1000 °C. This removes unnecessary hydrogen, leaving only the target carbon.

“To use an analogy, when goods are delivered from the air with parachutes, it is necessary to separate the goods from the parachutes. However, at very high temperatures, this process can damage the graphene (the goods) itself. The CVD technique is operable at just 600°C, minimizing damage.

“We are now closer to commercialization as it has become easier to move graphene around. It may one day be used in everyday electronics such as displays and computers while also improving performance and affordability.

“Using plasma CVD, I lowered the transfer temperature to 600°C, but the quality of graphene separated in this method is not as high. My primary goal is to rectify this issue. I’d also like to further lower the temperature so that the technique can be used more widely. After graphene, I want to study topological insulators.”

Professor Chun’s research was published in the global journal ACS Nano: Vol 8, Issue 3 (online publication date: February 8, 2014).

Professor Seunghyeon Chun of Sejong University

Asia & Oceania

Chulalongkorn University (CU) researchers have won five gold medals at the 42nd International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland—sponsored by the Swiss government to showcase more than 1,000 cutting-edge inventions from over 790 international researchers, businesses and inventors, representing 45 nations.

The researchers were awarded 5 gold, 4 silver, and 3 bronze medals for their outstanding innovations.

The inventions that achieved gold medals were Cappra®: Herbal medicine for the treatment of mild or mild to moderate erectile dysfunction; Chitora Fragrance: Natural nano-polymer for fragrance and flavor encapsulation; an innovative process to develop pearl plates color from waste green-mussel shells for art activities; innovative prototypes for the development of the production of jewelry and handicrafts from “CHULA Clay”; and innovative prototypes for development and knowledge transfer in the production of jewelry and handicrafts from “CHULA Clay”.

The immense success of CU researchers at the 42nd International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva has brought world renown and great pride for the country. It is the result of extensive and continuous support from CU whose goal is to become a world-class national research university.

As part of this mission, CU has spearheaded the research and development area through the establishment of a special unit dedicated to supporting research activities as well as establishing research and innovation funds to finance the university’s research development projects.

In addition, the CU Intellectual Property Institute was established in 1995 and since then it has provided efficient management of all CU intellectual properties;

student population consisting of working adults.

The study focused on effective work placement of university students within six months of graduation and only the results of the top 15 universities in 2013 were released. Latest results have affirmed UCSI’s strong track record of graduate employability and industrial relevance.

UCSI has been entrusted by the Malaysian government to revamp the nation’s tourism and hospitality sector through education under the Economic Transformation Programme, which seeks to elevate the country to high-income status, with the goal of equipping at least 50% of the sector’s workforce with diploma or degree level qualifications to ensure the provision of quality service.

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Malaysia’s UCSI University ranks among top for graduate employability

Tianjin University’s Micro Hand S, the future of robotic surgery

The Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) robot system—Micro Hand S—invented by Tianjin University (TJU) has been instrumental in surgery on three Changsha patients on March 26, March 31, and April 2, 2014, at the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. The operations consisted of gastric perforation repairs and an appendectomy.

The success of these surgeries has officially opened the next stage of clinical trials for the robot, with hopes for mass production within the next three years. This was announced at a press conference held by the Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University on April 4, 2014. Wang Shuxin, project director and dean of TJU School of Mechanical Engineering, was invited to attend.

Robot technology in MIS improves vision, accuracy and precision for a surgeon and allows control of a robotic hand through an operation desk. It can also be remotely operated—a major advantage to the development of MIS. According to Wang, the application of robotics in MIS surgical procedures is still a blank slate in China.

The Da Vinci robotic surgery system

developed by the US is the first surgical robot in the world to be applied in general and cardiac surgery, urology, gynecology and obstetrics, monopolizing the industry. Importing such equipment would cost RMB 20 million, requiring an excessive amount of resources. This domestically developed system is significantly less expensive. Additionally, the development of the robot system carries extensive technological significance.

Wang says there are three ways this robot is superior to other foreign surgical robots. First, it has a slip-resistant independent cable transmission that can be easily repaired, giving it better precision and a longer lifespan.

Secondly, position and sensitivity of the robot is adjustable from the operation board according to the surgeon’s requirements. Thirdly, a different form of isomorphic control modeling technology has been used to enable more accurate hand-eye-instrument motion consistency in a three-dimensional (3D) visual environment.

Micro Hand S has a mechanical arm that can rotate 360 degrees, a camera lens that is up to ten times sharper

The sector is expected to grow threefold by 2020 and 50,000 personnel have to be trained annually in order to keep up with that growth. To meet this need, UCSI is partnering some of Malaysia’s leading hotel schools, universities and industry players to implement a unique work-based learning curriculum in each state through the creation of education clusters.

On a side note, the university has recently committed itself to the EduCity Seri Iskandar Initiative—a MYR 2 billion (≈ US$630 million) project aimed at developing the state of Perak into an education hub. Under this initiative, UCSI will set up its fifth campus and construct quality residential homes, as well as leisure and entertainment facilities.

than the naked eye, and advanced 3D imaging technology that accurately displays the surgery location, all of which enable operations with the Micro Hand S more detailed and precise than before. Through virtual haptic feedback sensitivity technology, doctors are able to adjust the robotic scheme to meet their needs and perform surgeries remotely without much assistance.

Robotic surgery has several advantages over first-generation open stomach and chest surgery, and second-generation laparoscope MIS. Intuitive 3D imaging systems improve field and scope of vision, and wrist-simulation instruments with seven degrees of freedom improve operation precision and accuracy. Also, operators will be able to perform longer, more complex surgeries in a sitting position.

According to a tracer study by the Malaysian Ministry of Education, UCSI University has been ranked one of the top universities in Malaysia for graduate employability with a score of 81.4%, above many leading institutions and foreign branch campuses in the country. Open distance-learning universities performed better in this regard, thanks to the bulk of their

Asia & Oceania

Last year, the University of the Philippines (UP) opened the doors of its DNA Sequencing Core Facility at its Philippine Genome Center to the general public for next-generation sequencing and genotyping services.

Last April, the center launched its Core Facility for Bioinformatics (CFB) to provide researchers in the academe, government institutions, and private organizations with adequate resources and services for genome-scale data analysis.

The bioinformatics facility provides specialized computing services for researchers who integrate genomic technologies into their research, as well as genomic data storage and analytics.

Hard disk space in a secure enterprise-classed computing infrastructure will be available for data storage along with value-added services like online user interfaces for easy data access, back-end databases designed for genomic data storage in various formats, as well as software and technical support for genomic data handling.

Analytics customized to suit specific requirements of researchers involve a system setup that includes software, user interface, and potential (PGC-developed) databases that will facilitate interpreting genomic data.

The CFB will be regarded as a catalyst in the advancement of bioinformatics and computational genomics research and development in the country. It will offer educational workshops and training sessions to fill in the talent gap in genomics and biotechnology in the Philippines, and address the lack of local experts in bioinformatics/computational biology.

Dr Carmencita D. Padilla, executive director of the Philippine Genome Center, said “The Philippine Genome Center will always be grateful to the Department of Science and Technology and the University of the Philippines for their unified support.

“The Core Facility for Bioinformatics, a part of the research project ‘capability building in R&D genomics’ is now open to local researchers through the grant from the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (PCIEERD). Credit also goes to the management of IBM for the IBM Blue Gene/P super computer which amplifies the data-storage capacity of CFB.”

The Philippine Genome Center has been supporting and promoting UP’s goal in becoming a research-intensive university since it opened in 2009. It enjoys mutual partnerships through research collaborations with different councils from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) by supporting its national research and development agenda.

A multidisciplinary institution, The Philippine Genome Center combines basic and applied research for the development of health diagnostics, therapeutics, DNA forensics and preventive products, improved crop, aquaculture, and animal varieties. The center is temporarily based on the 2nd floor of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (NIMBB) building inside the National Science Complex, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.

University of the Philippines takes biotechnology to the next level with new center

Vietnam’s Hoa Sen University hosts fashion show with top French art institution

Hoa Sen University hosted a graduation fashion show on its main campus on June 28. The fashion show was an evaluation of the student collections in the Fashion Design Program. It was also a chance for these soon-to-be designers to test their creativity as well as bring life to their very first designs.

The event also set a milestone in the progress of the program focusing on applied design, a collaboration between the university and Mod’Art International Institute in Paris.

Parallel with the fashion show, the university held a European-Vietnamese documentary film festival from June 21–29, co-organized by the European Union National Institute for Culture (EUNIC) and Hoa Sen University.

Nine Vietnamese and eight European documentaries were shown along with a range of selected films by a new generation of directors from Southeast Asia. The screening of these documentaries sparked an interesting dialogue and introduced new methods of making films on topics reflecting the society’s different angles. Those documentaries have been welcomed around the world and have been considered as “cinematographic works of reality”.

Hoa Sen University is rapidly improving, especially in the field of graduate employability—71% have found jobs prior to their graduation (an increase of 13% compared to last year).

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From left to right: DOST secretary, Mario G. Montejo, performing a “Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST)” run which marks the official launch of the PGC’s (CFB); DOST undersecretary for research and development, Dr Amelia P. Guevara; PCIEERD executive director, Dr Ma. Rowena Cristina L. Guevara; PCHRD executive director, Dr Jaime C. Montoya; IBM Philippines executive, Dr Delfin Jay Sabido; PGC executive director, Dr Carmencita D. Padilla; and CFB director, Dr Arturo O. Lluisma.

Asia & Oceania

SUMMER SCHOOL

A SPECIAL QS NEWS-2-WOW-U SUPPLEMENT

In the depth of northern hemisphere winter, Kuala Lumpur will be shining light and radiating warmth on the world’s summer school planners. For Singapore-based QS Asia expands its exciting program of carefully targeted international education professional meetings with the launch of the QS Summer School Summit in the comfort of downtown JW Marriott Hotel.

In this preview, we take a look at why this innovative program is a “do not miss” for summer school practitioners, we examine a little of the fabric of organizing summer schools, and finally present two brief regional summer program case studies.

A new and timely concept“University of Malaya is delighted to be partnering QS Asia for the first QS Summer School Summit which will be staged in our home city, Kuala Lumpur, in December 2014,” says Prof Datin Dr Norhanom Abdul Wahab, dean of UM’s Institute of Graduate Studies and a leader of the university’s internationalization.

“Summer schools have long been an important element in western universities’ international outreach. Asian universities are now organizing them with greater frequency as part of their own move to both internationalize and optimize use of their academic resources. UM has therefore actively backed this QS initiative to assert the growing importance of summer schools in the Asian context and looks forward to a stimulating and ground-breaking meeting of summer school minds.”

The one and a half day meeting contains three key components:• Workshops: Sharing Expertise• Networking and Social• The Elevator Pitch: Your School in 90 Seconds.

Six workshop sessions will feature a total of eight speakers who will deliver interactive presentations on a diverse range topics. Five of the workshops will also have an expert respondent who will enrich the workshops by sharing their views on the topic and presentation, and who will stimulate and moderate the discussions.

Workshop topics are:• Summer Schools in the Context of Universities’ Internationalization Strategy• Maintaining Academic Standards with a Flexible Summer Curriculum• Leading with Science: Building a Summer School to Highlight Excellence• Watch the Bottom Line: Funding and Financing a Summer School• Spreading the Message: Global Marketing and Student Recruitment• Learning Together: Making the Multicultural Classroom Work• Summer Schools and Partnership Development• It’s About Great Ideas: Creative Summer School Workshop

Says Mandy Mok, CEO of QS Asia: “As we have learnt from organizing QS-APPLE and QS-MAPLE conferences over the last ten years, our delegates are at the forefront of university internationalization and are hungry to draw on the professional and proven experiences of their global counterparts.

“They also want to contribute intellectually to the development processes. We have therefore designed the program to be as lively and interactive as possible, and our excellent speakers will have a wealth of first-hand knowledge of summer schools to impart. All this will be presented in QS Asia’s uniquely friendly conference atmosphere.”

Indeed, all meals and breaks are arranged to facilitate mingling and establishing new contacts, so there will be plenty of opportunities for participants to network. A list of all delegates is available online so that they can schedule meetings and start discussing ideas before they arrive. The official program wraps up after noon on Thursday, leaving time for informal meetings at the conference venue or elsewhere in Kuala Lumpur.

A novel feature of the QS Summer School Summit is the opportunity for schools to throw an elevator pitch! How do you explain your summer program in 90 seconds? And how do you generate not just interest, but make your audience really enthusiastic? At the end of the first five sessions and right before a meal or coffee/tea break, participants can briefly pitch their program to the audience to spark the curiosity and gain the interest of other participants.

What’s all the fuss about?So we have summer schools. A bunch of students turn up on campus, attend lessons, have fun, go home. What’s the big deal? Why do we need a special summit, numerous learned papers, ongoing debate?

Well, with internationalization at the top of the world’s universities’ priority list, the importance of summer schools has never been greater, and their organization is becoming both a science and an art. The skills are amply represented by the specialist speakers at QS Summer School Summit. Among them are South Africa’s Dr Nico Jooste (Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University), Wales’s Michael Snelgrove (Cardiff Metropolitan University), and New Zealand’s Elaine Webster (University of Otago).

From the Netherlands will be Jeroen Torenbeek (Utrecht University) who, with Inez Meurs of University for Applied Sciences in Utrecht, has edited a book in the EAIE’s Professional Development series entitled “International Summer Schools”.

Jeroen and Inez believe in taking a hard look at the motivation to start a summer school before taking the plunge: “Even if there is general consensus that ‘the time has now come for our university to start a summer school,’ it will be prudent to think carefully about the motives before going any further. The key question is ‘why are we doing this?’ Only when this question has been answered, is it possible to address all the many other questions that will arise, which include ‘what are we going to do, how are we going to do it, when, with whom and for whom?’“

Sophia Krause, program coordinator of Freie Universität Berlin International Summer and Winter University (FUBiS), will also be speaking. In 2008, she directed the first FUBiS on demand program and has since been in charge of FUBiS tailor-made programs.

Summer in the CityA preview of QS Asia’s innovative Summer School Summit to be held in Malaysia from December 3–4, 2014,

co-hosted by the country’s top ranked institution, University of Malaya.By Tony Martin

We asked Sophia the leading question: What does she believe are the key features of a summer school that make it successful both in terms of student recruitment and in ultimate participant satisfaction? She feels that, to secure a successful recruitment, short-term study-abroad programs should constantly seek to establish new contacts with academic institutions in order to expand their partnership network and to maintain the existing relationships. In this process, it is crucial to be a reliable partner and create an environment of trust that promotes open communication and mutual understanding. To achieve participant satisfaction, Sophia sees transparency and flexibility as the key contributing features. Recognizing that all participants are individuals with specific personal needs, unique cultural perspectives and different social backgrounds, a program should aim to equip its students with what they need to make a wise decision regarding their international academic experiences. This requires providing clear information about the program and its courses well in advance. Instead of being a fixed module, the program should provide its participants with the flexibility to choose all aspects including courses, accommodation and extracurricular activities.

Above, as a potential participant in the QS Summer School Summit, you have two examples of the kind of practical thinking and invaluable experience that our speakers will contribute.

Asian summer schools – already diverseSummer schools in Asian universities are a relatively new phenomenon and, consistent with the highly proactive approach to internationalization in the region, some are already operating at a good level of sophistication. We look at two short case studies presenting very different summer programs: Hanyang University’s International Summer School (HISS) in Korea and Singapore Institute of Management’s SIM Global Institute.

Each year, HISS takes place during the month of July. Its key feature is to introduce students to Korean education, culture and leisure. From the 70+ offered courses, students can choose up to three, and also participate in field trips which let them experience Korean culture first hand. These field trips focus on industry, history, culture, leisure and entertainment. All courses are taught in English except the Korean language course.

Teaching is by 60-65% international faculty invited from renowned universities around the world.

HISS is held on Hanyang University’s Seoul Campus located near the center of the city. For housing, students can choose from on-campus dormitories, campus housing or residences.

In 2014, 400 of Hanyang’s own national students participated along with 800 international students who originated from 34 different countries, the majority coming from USA and Singapore. Mignon Robles, a student from Mount Royal University, Canada, enthused about her experience: “HISS can be described using a

million different words. But for me, the word would be unforgettable. From the places we visited on our field trips, the classes I took, the food I ate, and especially the people I met, Hanyang has given me memories to cherish for life.”

SIM Global Institute takes a very different approach to its programs in terms of level, approach to teaching, and locations.

Topically distinctive “Master Classes” are held in various cities around the world. They examine the most current global phenomena by bringing together motivated participants, consisting of senior academics and business leaders, and using a combination of academic instruction, in-depth dialogues and case studies to unpack the issues of interest. Duration varies from two to five weeks.

Classes are conducted in the format of executive education and can take place in a combination of university seminar rooms or professional business facilities. Participants are accommodated in hotels or university residences depending on the specific location of each program.

Summer 2014 saw SIM Global Institute Taiwan present “Responsible Business in the New Economic Order: How Businesses Profit by Doing Good” in Taipei and SIM Global Institute Barcelona followed with “Innovative Growth Strategies”. Participants have come from Singapore, Vietnam, South Korea, Poland, Holland, USA but, as founder of the SIM Global Institute, Neo Beng Tong points out: “Participation is limited to no more than 20 students for each program. We are interested in the depth and quality of the experience and not on the high volume of enrollment.

“Foreign faculty involvement is high,” he continues. “A number of high profile senior academics have taught in our programs including Prof Alan Barrell and Prof Charles Hampden-Turner of Cambridge University, and Prof Jessie Poon of State University of New York at Buffalo – a prominent economic geographer who sits on the editorial boards of several top international journals. Prof Yuko Aoyoma of Clark University, editor of leading journal Economic Geography, has also taught, as has Prof David Bailey, of Aston University, former Director of Birmingham Business School and a prominent political economist.”

Participants are free to organize their own social and leisure time and are also offered a series of relevant cultural activities that aim to showcase the particular city or region where the Master Class takes place. At QS Summer School Summit you will no doubt hear about many more models for launching summer schools and learn from the many different experiences of both speakers and fellow delegates. Be among Asia’s summer school pioneers and don’t miss this very special opportunity to accelerate your institution’s progress!

To learn more about QS Summer School Summit or to register, please visit www.qssummerschool.com. Alternatively, please contact Pieter Stek at Pieter@qs-asia.com

The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand is set to become the Asian hub for the Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS), a leading consortium of some of the world’s top research universities dedicated to achieving sustainability for the planet.

The international partnership was started by four of the world’s leading science and technology universities—ETH Zurich & EPFL, MIT, The University of Tokyo, and Chalmers University of Technology. Launched in 1996, AGS draws on members’ world-class strengths in academics, integrated research and outreach activities. Today, it connects many more top-flight universities in Europe, Asia and North America. By collaborating closely with industry, it seeks to advance a new paradigm for global sustainability.

Spearheading the initiative, Japanese Professor Kazuo Yamamoto, who deftly combines a faculty position at The University of Tokyo with his duties as vice president for resource development at AIT, said the new AGS-Asia Secretariat bodes well for Thailand and the ASEAN region.

“It is time to expand the activities of AGS into the rest of Asia, and in particular, Southeast Asia,” said Professor Yamamoto. “Asia is where emerging economies are driving global economic growth. But it is also where modern development is placing pressure on the natural environment’s ability to cope.”

Currently, the consortium utilizes the extensive global network of AIT to connect with twenty-seven universities, institutes, and industry partners in

Japan. Notable members include The University of Tokyo, Hokkaido University, Tohoku University, Kyoto University, University of Yamanashi, Keio University, IGES, United Nations University, NIES, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

In Thailand, Chulalongkorn University, Thammasat University and Kasetsart University have also formed a cluster of like-minded higher education institutions. Other countries are expected to join the movement by setting up national-level networks.

Once operational in late 2014, the AGS-Asia Secretariat at AIT, just north of Bangkok, will be the nexus for the coordination of all nationally-focused arrangements aligned at a pan-Asian level, connecting Japanese colleagues with Thai partners and other universities and partners around the world. The hub will tap the region’s academic and research institutions, governments and industry committed to supporting sustainability, according to Professor Yamamoto.

A noted environmental engineer who formerly worked as an AGS secretary in Tokyo when it was first established, Professor Yamamoto explained that the alliance studies and applies multi-and interdisciplinary approaches to living and learning in fields such as the natural sciences and technology, agriculture, and medical sciences.

AGS-Asia will have a soft structure, he said, which will make it attractive for disparate faculty, researchers and professionals to participate. It also aims to create an inviting environment where junior and senior academicians will willingly collaborate.

Convinced that AIT is the natural home for the growing alliance, Professor Yamamoto said it would leverage the institute’s considerable international reach and burnish its strengths in academics and applied research focused on sustainable development outcomes.

AGS-Asia also dovetails with AIT’s flagship effort to transform its verdant campus into a bona fide “living sustainability laboratory”, where concepts learned in the classroom and analyzed in laboratories are practiced everyday by more than 2,500

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Thailand’s AIT to be Asian hub for global sustainability research

postgraduate students, faculty and staff.

By complimenting AIT’s existing Center of Sustainable Development in the Context of Climate Change (SDCC), and the institute’s myriad of programs, fields of study and centers of excellence, officials expect AGS-Asia to fuel a regional critical mass of sustainability thinkers and practitioners searching for solutions to one of the greatest challenges facing humanity.

Asia & Oceania

Hindustan University has had a glorious 2014 with plenty of awards in various fields. The university won the Volkswagen Award 2014 presented by the Volkswagen Group for outstanding performance of the training facility; National Education Excellence Award 2014 presented by Associated Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ASSOCHAM) India for the best B-School in South India; Worldwide Achievers Award 2014 for outstanding service and contribution to the education sector; and Excellence Award 2014 for the best university for offering US$500,000 in scholarships.

Hindustan College of Engineering started in 1985 as one of the first higher education institutions offering undergraduate and postgraduate courses in engineering and technology in the private sector of Tamil Nadu State, India. The Institution was conferred university status in the year 2008 by the Ministry of Human Resources Department. The university is well acclaimed for imparting holistic education and is renowned for its state-of-the-art infrastructure.

Hindustan University offers innovative courses such as Robotics and Automation course in partnership with YASKAWA, Japan, a leading manufacturer of industrial robotics and factory automation systems; MBA Defence Technology programming partnership with Cranfield University, UK; and SWEBOK (Software Engineering Body of Knowledge) partnership with IEEE Computer Society, the world’s leading computing membership organization.

Hindustan University reaps awards

The scientific, business and general community were excited about a University of New South Wales Australia (UNSW) study suggesting people with hearing loss might one day have a bionic ear implanted that not only improves their hearing, but would actually regrow their auditory nerve.

The work centers around the cochlear implant, a device that has already revolutionized auditory medicine but utilizes the existing technology in an innovative way.

UNSW Australia scientists from the Translational Neuroscience Facility (TNF) found that when the tiny cochlear devices were inserted into animals with hearing loss, small electrical charges allowed DNA for a nerve growth stimulus factor to be delivered to the inner ear.The process saw the auditory nerve regrow within a few days, while animals that received the gene therapy had more than twice the hearing sensitivity.

“The result was so good, that hearing sensitivity was indistinguishable from having no nerve damage at all,” says TNF director, Professor Gary Housley.If the results can be reproduced in humans born with profound hearing loss, or with age-related, or environmental hearing loss, it would be a major advance on current treatments, in which patients have to “learn” to use the bionic ear and which can leave some inputs sounding “robotic”.

“People with cochlear implants do well with understanding speech, but their perception of pitch can be poor, so they often miss out on the joy of music, for example,” Housley explains. “Ultimately, we hope people who depend on cochlear implant devices will be able to enjoy a broader dynamic and tonal range of sound, which is particularly important for our sense of the world around us.”

The study, featured on the cover of Science Translational Medicine, has the support of Cochlear Limited through an Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant.

Hearing loss to be a thing of the past soon

One of the most attractive features of the technique is its simplicity. “We think it is possible this gene delivery would only add a few minutes to the implant procedure,” says the study’s first author, Jeremy Pinyon, whose PhD is based on the work. “The surgeon who installs the device would inject the DNA solution into the cochlea and then fire electrical impulses to trigger the DNA transfer once the implant is inserted.”

It has long been established that the auditory nerve endings regenerate if neurotrophins—a naturally occurring family of proteins crucial for the development, function and survival of neurons—are delivered to the auditory portion of the inner ear, the cochlea.

But until now, progress has stalled because safe, localized delivery of the neurotrophins was difficult to achieve. Finding an effective pathway for the therapy has been described as a “holy grail” for medical researchers. “No one had tried to use the cochlear implant or other bionic devices to deliver gene therapy,” says Housley. “Our technique shows the cochlear implant can be very effective for this.”

Choosing the right site for the gene delivery is also crucial. “There is no advantage to having those auditory nerve fibers growing everywhere. You want them as close as you can get them to the electrodes in the bionic ear,” concludes Housley.

Pakistan’s Beaconhouse National University (BNU) has recently embarked on the mission of supporting the implementation of Punjab Transparency and Right to Information (RTI) Act–2013 by strengthening its demand side. The project is a pilot for selected districts of the province of Punjab, and is funded by The World Bank.

Supervised by a creative cell formed under the Centre for Art & Design Education and Research (CADER) at the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Arts & Design, BNU, the set of activities envisaged under the project include conducting think tank dialogues, and youth mobilization activities.

Specifically the project intends to: (a) highlight the importance of RTI and its implementation by stimulating dialogues/discussions among think tanks; and (b) raise awareness and build capacity of youth (university/college level students) at the local level in order to improve their knowledge of the RTI law and related processes, so that they can volunteer and spearhead campaigning to inform the society about their rights under the law and how to utilize it to improve the outcome for an average citizen.The initiative has led BNU to hold a series of think tank dialogues among politicians, civil society, public service representatives, media and youth in the cities of Lahore and Faisalabad.

The university has partnered with over fifteen educational institutions in the selected districts of Punjab and has organized activities with their collaboration by forming RTI Volunteer Clubs and engaging youth from across the selected cities to help spread awareness of the Act within their communities and other rightful stakeholders.

The activities successfully commenced under the project include a Social Media Activists Meet-up, RTI Art Fest (comprising logo design, poster design and comic-strip competitions), a Videography Competition and district-wide RTI Declamation Contests.

An earlier initiative by BNU under the name of “Humnawa Project” has received global recognition—an honorable mention by 2013 MacJannet Awards committee of the Talloires Network, TUFTS University, USA.

Beaconhouse National University sheds light on citizens’ Right to Information

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From left to right: Jeremy Pinyon, Associate Professor Matthias Klugmann, Prof Gary HousleyPhoto credit: Grant Turner/Mediakoo. News story credit: Uniken

 

Asia & Oceania

Students at SIM Global Education (SIM GE) can now sharpen their financial trading skills with the opening of the Financial Training Centre at SIM on June 6.

Launched in partnership with UOB Bullion and Futures (UOBBF), the center will provide educational and training opportunities for diploma and undergraduate banking and finance students.

The center reinforces SIM GE’s aim to provide an educational experience that expands outside the lecture theater and will replicate a real-world trading experience through the use of computer terminals with financial data and a stock market ticker with news headlines.

The terminals offer access to foreign exchange quotes such as USDJPY, exchange listed futures quotes such as SGX Nikkei 225 and historical information for market analysis. The skills developed through the center will enhance students’ work readiness and employability, as well as provide a solid foundation for further specialization.

UOBBF secured the involvement of CQG, a financial software company, and the Singapore Exchange (SGX), who will provide complimentary data and software services for a period of five years.

The center will be integrated into the curriculum of the Diploma in Banking and Finance, and will also be made available to SIM GE students taking bachelor’s degree programs in accountancy, economics and finance.

Close to 2,500 undergraduate students will have access to the center and its facilities.

Subjects taught at the center will incorporate materials designed in consultation with industry practitioners to ensure alignment with up-to-the-minute trading trends and will aim to combine knowledge and real-world application.

Future use of the center will include specialist workshops and seminars in foreign exchange and futures trading as well as other fields of banking and financial expertise.

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Singapore’s SIM GE and UOB Bullion and Futures open Financial Training Centre

Pakistan’s COMSATS partner American university to revolutionize future of engineering education

Dr Lee Kwok Cheong, CEO, SIM GE (left), and Matthew Png, CEO, UOB Bullion and Futures, officially opening the center.

Asia & Oceania

In early May 2014, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Pakistan, hosted a partnership visit by senior faculty members of North Dakota State University (NDSU), US. Up till now, CIIT-NDSU relationship was based on CIIT faculty members receiving expert graduate training at NDSU alone; this one-week visit, however, culminated in the signing of an additional document that significantly broadened the contours of the partnership.

It is rare to find an international partnership that covers a variety of dimensions and audiences whilst serving the needs of both institutions. In this case, the new facet of partnership extends across electrical and computer engineering departments in both universities, and through internationalization, it also raises the quality, prestige and breadth of engineering activities.

CIIT and NDSU have pledged to transform the face of traditional engineering education in Pakistan. Through faculty mobility, inter-departmental and inter-institutional research collaborations, STEM-based teaching methodology review and most significantly revision of curricula, CIIT aims for its engineering education to be internationally relevant and incorporate evidence-based global competencies for learning outcomes. There would be a higher focus on research and development, as well as entrepreneurship and engineering for societal development.

This dynamic approach to engineering education is necessary to serve the needs of both the global market and more particularly for developing countries like Pakistan, where the traditional economy may be on the stagnant side, and there is an immense need for problem-solving by out-of-the-box thinking and expertise.

Pro Rector CIIT, Dr Haroon Rashid, and Dean College of Engineering NDSU, Dr Gary Smith, at the signing ceremony

University of Queensland researchers have developed a new autonomous landing system, which uses visual cues from cameras to control landings.

Bees have inspired development of a new aircraft landing system that is fully independent of outside technology, improving passenger safety by deterring blocking or hacking.

University of Queensland researchers at the Queensland Brain Institute

have developed and successfully trialed the autonomous system, which uses visual cues from cameras to control landings.

The project, run by Saul Thurrowgood in Professor Mandyam Srinivasan’s Neuroscience of Vision and Aerial Robotics laboratory, has developed a landing system that differs from other autonomous techniques in that it is independent of outside technology such as laser-range sensors, radio beacons or GPS signals.

“It is totally independent of GPS signals, which can be blocked or hacked, and is a start for aircraft to independently understand their surroundings,” said Mr Thurrowgood. “I took cues from bee biology to create the system.

“Bees use optic flow for their descent —using the rate of motion beneath them to guide their landing—and recent testing also shows that they

may also use stereo vision for their touchdown, which is using two eyes to judge distance.

“We have incorporated both of these techniques in our automatic landing system, but modified them for use in a fixed-wing aircraft.

“The system used cameras mounted to the front of an aircraft with a 2m wingspan, which the plane used to guide itself, sense its altitude, control its throttle and shut itself off when it landed.

“All commercial aircraft need to have backup systems, and this research provides the option of having different types of sensing. If one isn’t working then the pilot has something else to fall back on.”

The study was supported by the Australian Research Council, the US Army Research Office, Boeing Research and Technology Australia, and by a Queensland Premier’s Fellowship. It has been published in the Journal of Field Robotics.

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First in Asia – ITB CIPTA awards $12,000 cash prizes

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Institut Teknologi Brunei (ITB) and Brunei Liquefied Natural Gas (BLNG) partnership in hosting the CIPTA competition. CIPTA (Creative, Innovative Product and Technological Advancement) is derived from a Malay word, which means “create” or “invent”. This is the first competition in Asia to award cash prizes of up to US$12,000 and is open to higher education institutions from ASEAN member countries.

CIPTA is a biennial competition aimed at inspiring youth and the public in general to develop creative products, processes or technology to encourage research and development and to embed the culture of science, engineering and technology in the ASEAN region. This year’s theme—Towards a Smart Nation—highlights the importance of supporting the nation’s vision of cultivating an innovative society that will produce a diversified and sustainable economy based on a culture of knowledge and innovation.

Officiating The Crown Prince CIPTA Award, Energy Minister Honorable Pehin Datu Singamanteri Colonel (Rtd) Dato Seri Setia (Dr) Awang Haji Mohammad Yasmin Bin Haji Umar said in his speech: “To achieve the status of a truly smart nation, we need to be proactive in the pursuit of producing our very own technological innovations. We must learn from the success stories of countries, some without natural resources that have transformed themselves into sustainable economies by prioritizing the acquisition of new knowledge and innovation.”

The CIPTA award has produced winners with creative inventions that have won several international awards and have also been commercialized. “The response from The Crown Prince CIPTA Award participants has been promising whereby seven participants have filed patents with BruIPO” said Associate Professor Dr Zohrah Sulaiman, acting vice chancellor of ITB.

The award ceremony will be held next year and will be graced by His Royal Highness Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah Ibni His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, the Crown Prince and Senior Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office.

Bee-inspired landing system to sting aircraft hackers

Minister of Energy Pehin Datu Singamanteri Colonel (Rtd) Dato Seri Setia (Dr) Awang Haji Mohammad Yasminn along with Associate Prof Zohrah, the acting vice chancellor of ITB inspecting entry from previous CIPTA after the launching ceremony.  

 

Asia & Oceania

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National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), southern Taiwan, alongside six Global Academia-Industry Alliance (GAIA) members, signed an MOU with University of Malaya (UM) and the university’s spin-off company, Bioapps-UM this June.

The agreement centers around a collaboration between the parties for innovative research and development, clinical trials, training and education, and services in the fields of medical devices and bioengineering.

The signing of the MOU marked a new era in the Taiwanese medical device industry as it entered into the Malaysian market, thus opening a brand new channel for marketing Taiwanese medical devices and equipment to Asia and the rest of the world.

The collaboration will not only help overcome problems faced by Taiwanese brands in the international market, but also create better economic benefits and impacts through academic innovation, leading research and evidence-based clinical trials.

Witnessed by Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Chia-Juch Chang, the signing ceremony was attended by NCKU President Hwung-Hweng Hwung, UM President and Vice Chancellor Dato’ Mohd. Amin Jalaludin, and Southern Taiwan Science Park Director General Chun-Wei Chen, and representatives of BioApps-UM and GAIA members—Codent Technical Industry, Taiwan Caretech Corporation, SportsArt Fitness, Matise Instruments, and 4G Technology.

Under the agreement, the sixTaiwanese medical device

Taiwanese medical industry wins Malaysia’s heart

manufacturers are able to sell their products such as medical equipment and rehabilitation aids to Malaysia through BioApps-UM under collaborated evidence-based clinical trials and research.

Medical devices and products include dental handpiece (Codent Technical Industry), cone beam computed tomography or CBCT (Taiwan Caretech), dental chair (Matise Instruments), rehabilitation appliance (SportsArt), rehabilitation aids (Nam Liong) and customized ceramometal (4G Technology).

There are plans to expand collaborative relationships with key opinion leaders at top universities’ hospitals in the world in order to promote and sell Taiwanese medical devices in overseas markets.

“We choose Malaysia as the first base of Taiwan’s medical devices mainly because of the close relationships established between NCKU and many other Southeast and South Asian universities through the Presidents’ Forum of Southeast and South Asia and Taiwan Universities (SATU),” said Dr Fong-Chin Su, director of NCKU Medical Device Innovation Center (NCKU MDIC).

GAIA initiative is a brand new model of international academia-industry collaboration that combines Taiwan’s medical and healthcare-related industry, government bodies, global academic institutions and research centers to jointly develop and market Taiwanese medical devices and equipment as well as build world-class Taiwanese brands.

Surprising alternative to harmful chemical materials discovered

Professor Kim Sung-hwan from Ajou University’s Departments of Physics and Energy Systems Research has discovered a use for natural silk extracted from cocoons in nano processes. It is harmless to the human body and performs just as well as the harmful chemical materials currently being used.

The discovery was published on Nature Nanotechnology website on March 23, titled All-water-based Electron-beam Lithography Using Silk as a Resist. A team led by Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto in Biomedical Engineering from Tufts University, US, joined Professor Kim, the first author of the paper in the research process.

The team demonstrated that natural silk protein extracted from cocoons could be used in nano-level processes and that water was the only material required, proving the eco- and bio-friendly processes possible. Lithography is used in the first stage of producing nano elements; this requires “resist”—a material that reacts to an electronic beam or light.

The team substituted harmful chemical materials like benzene or hydrofluoric acid currently used in nano processes (e.g. making semi-conductors) with natural silk as the resist; a major challenge for the application of nano technology to bio fields.

Professor Kim proved that silk performed as well as the already commercialized artificial synthetic resists used for electron beam lithography. It allows a 10 nano-meter patterning during the process; the same level as existing resists. The cost of silk is also competitive as more than 70% of the cocoons can be utilized.

Silk can also be fused with biologically functional materials like enzymes for nano-unit bio sensors and bio markers. By using silk, highly efficient bio-devices can be manufactured to react to the slightest hint of body fluid or blood.

“There has been active research of silk as a base material enabling eco-friendly nano elements,” said Professor Kim, adding “This paper is significant in that it identified silk as a natural element and base material, helping the convergence with biotechnology as well as with nano technology and information technology.”

From left to right: NCKU President Hwung-Hweng Hwung; Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Chia-Juch Chang; and UM President and Vice Chancellor Dato’ Mohd at the signing ceremony.

Asia & Oceania

BETTER WORLDFOR THE

INSPIRING GLOBALEDUCATION

The University of Newcastle (UON) has received $30 million to develop and roll out world-leading abatement technologies for fugitive methane emissions from underground coal mining operations. The new technologies could reduce these emissions from the sector by as much as 90% and reduce Australia’s annual greenhouse gas output by 3%.

The research will be led by internationally-renowned energy researcher and chemical engineer, Professor Behdad Moghtaderi, based at the university’s Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER), and funded by partners, including the Australian Government Department of Industry and ACA Low Emissions

Technologies Ltd. The research will be conducted in partnership with major mining companies, including Glencore.

The release of fugitive methane emissions is a by-product of underground coal mining. It represents a growing environmental and safety challenge for industry, and accounts for 64% of all greenhouse gas emissions from this mining sector. Coal mining-related activities account for around 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity, according to the World Coal Association.

The four-year research project will address some of the major technical barriers to the full-scale commercial deployment of ventilation air methane (VAM) emissions abatement technologies, including the critical challenge of safe connection of VAM abatement technology to the ventilation systems of underground mines.

“The University of Newcastle, based in Australia’s largest coal mining region, is at the international forefront of VAM abatement technology development.

I am driven by the imperative to develop technologies that address greenhouse gas emissions—the future of our planet depends on it,” said Professor Moghtaderi.

“On an Australia-wide scale, removing VAM emissions from underground coal mining operations would be equivalent to removing 2.8 million cars from our roads.”

Once developed, the project outcomes will be equally applicable in other countries with underground coal mines.

The university vice chancellor, Professor Caroline McMillen, said the $30 million agreement—the largest funding award to the university for a single research project—was the result of UON’s outstanding research talent and an increased focus on fostering novel models for collaboration.

“This significant funding agreement with industry and government partners is testament to Professor Moghtaderi’s performance and reputation as a researcher who is driving world-class innovation.”

University of Newcastle researcher to introduce world’s first emissions abatement technology

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An important new series on midwifery by medical journal The Lancet says midwifery has a crucial part to play in saving the lives of millions of women and children.

University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) Professor Caroline Homer, the only Australian lead author in the series, headed a study estimating the number of deaths that could be averted in 78 countries if midwifery services were scaled up.

If the coverage of midwifery services around the world increased by just a quarter, it is estimated the current rate of maternal deaths could be halved by 2030, according to a major new series in leading international medical journal The Lancet. Apart from saving lives, it also improves their continuing health and wellbeing and has other long-lasting benefits.

Launched overnight in London, The Lancet says the series is the most critical, wide-reaching examination of midwifery ever conducted, produced by an international group of academics,

clinicians, professional midwives, policymakers and advocates for women and children.

New estimates produced for the series suggest that in the countries with the highest burden of infant and maternal deaths, over three quarters of stillbirths and maternal and newborn deaths could be prevented in the next 15 years if effective midwifery was available to all women. Even if improvements in the coverage of midwifery services were much more modest, the potential for saving lives is huge.

While most maternal and child deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries, where lack of access to effective midwifery is the primary obstacle to improving mothers’ and infants’ health, the series also says that overmedicalization of pregnancy is increasingly threatening the health and wellbeing of women and their families in both high-income and lower-income countries.

“Both underuse and overuse of medical interventions in pregnancy contribute

to short and long-term illness for an estimated 20 million childbearing women,” Professor Homer said.

The return on investment from the education and deployment of community-based midwives is thought to be similar to vaccination in terms of the cost per life saved. However, according to the series authors, the scale of the potential effect that increasing access to effective midwifery could have is yet to receive adequate international recognition.

Australian UTS study shows midwifery services are more life-saving

 

 

Asia & Oceania

Prof Behdad Moghtaderi, UON energy researcher

N A T I O N A LT A I W A N

U N I V E R S I T YO F

S C I E N C EA N D

T E C H N O L O G Y

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST, Taiwan Tech)http://www.ntust.edu.twOffice of Academic AffairsWeb: www.academic.ntust.edu.twAddress: No.43, Sec. 4, Keelung Rd., Da’an Dist., Taipei 106, Taiwan (R.O.C.)

GraduateTel: 886-2-2730-1296Fax: 886-2-2730-1027Email: admission@mail.ntust.edu.tw UndergraduateTel: 886-2-2737-6300Fax: 886-2-2737-6661Email: undergraduate@mail.ntust.edu.tw

Contact

The Best Technology University in Taiwan

39 | WOW News

A research group at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) conceived the idea Physical-layer Network Coding (PNC) and published a “challenge paper” in ACM Mobicom 2006, a premier conference in mobile computing.

Challenge papers that contain new ideas that challenge existing assumptions, and have the potential to open up exciting avenues that influence the direction of future research.

PNC has emerged as a promising technique that can significantly improve the capacity and energy efficiency of future wireless networks.

Future wireless networks aim to accommodate two orders of magnitude growth in wireless devices, to support ever-rising bandwidth-hungry services, and to minimize energy consumption. With the exponential increase of wireless devices, and the escalating per-device data-rate requirement, interference among the wireless devices is becoming a dominating bottleneck in wireless network design.

In conventional wireless networks, mutual interferences among wireless devices are viewed as hindrances to efficient communications over wireless networks. Based on this view, sophisticated signal processing and coding techniques have been employed to mitigate interference. The per-device data rate is, unfortunately, inversely proportional to the number of devices utilizing the same wireless medium.

PNC circumvents the disadvantages of conventional interference-mitigation techniques by efficiently harnessing the interferences of signals. With this revolutionary methodology, it is

now possible to increase the number of devices without sacrificing the per-device data rate, leading to tremendously enhanced performance over conventional schemes.

The essence of PNC is to harness multi-user interference, allowing multiple devices to transmit their messages simultaneously. Instead of mitigating the multi-user interference caused by simultaneous transmissions, PNC systems treat the interference as the linear encoding of multiple user signals and compute a linear function of the source messages. The computed functions are then forwarded to the destinations. Upon collecting sufficient linear functions, each destination recovers its desired messages by solving these linear functions. This mechanism efficiently addresses the interference bottleneck problem, leading to dramatically improved system performance.

The term “network coding” (NC in PNC) refers to this computation done by the network. The term “physical” (P in PNC) refers to the fact that, physically, interferences are nothing but superimposed electromagnetic waves, and an appropriate transformation can turn these superimposed electromagnetic waves into useful signals in the form of the above linear functions.

The new communication paradigm brought forth by PNC has attracted the attention of researchers in the field of wireless communications and networking. As of mid-2014, there have been more than 1,200 Google Scholar citations to the original PNC paper of the group. To date, many international journal issues and special workshops have also been dedicated to PNC.

Chinese University of Hong Kong researchers revolutionize wireless capability

Vietnam’s FPT University conducts first overseas study program with Japanese students FPT University received a group of 12 students from Japan for their overseas study program this February, a first for the university. The program plays to the strengths of FPT University and FPT Corporation—the pioneer in globalizing Vietnam’s economy—and has equipped the students with English training, internship and global communication skills. They were also able to experience Vietnamese as well as other cultures thanks to the university’s international student community.

The intensive one-month program provided the students with a local teacher to help them dramatically improve their English skills. It also included a soft skills class to aid them in communication skills and teamwork.

They were brought to cultural locations like the Temple of Literature, Museum of Ethnology, Ha Long Bay and Bat Trang to experience the country’s culture and architecture, and appreciate its beautiful geographical landscape and environment.

The Japanese students were delighted to share their own culture with FPT students during Haru Matsuri—Spring Festival—where there was Japanese food, Yosakoi dance, kendo, and calligraphy.

FPT University aims to turn Vietnam into a study destination for international students seeking overseas programs, especially those from Japanese institutions. FPT Corporation has offices in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, making it one of the few successful Vietnamese businesses in Japan.

Shinshu University’s students in an activity in Vietnam

Asia & Oceania

Russian International Olympics University has developed Master of Sport Administration, a one year course (Sep 2014–Jun 2015) designed for specialists who aspire to hone their professional skills in sport and industry.

The goal of this program is to form a generation of effective managers, who have knowledge and skills both of strategic and operational management of sports organizations, events and

Russian university announces unique degree

venues in any economic environment.Located in Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, the master’s degree will involve 19 world-class faculty members from 10 different countries.

The degree also provides internship opportunities at the Olympics venues for its students, and is instructed in both English and Russian.

Over the course of two years, the Women Empowerment (WE) project has empowered over 3,000 women in the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, increasing their chances of employment. The project has also strengthened the women’s capacity to make decisions at the individual, family, and community levels. Economic empowerment is fostered through AMMACHI Labs’ computerized vocational education and training (CVET) programs, while social-democratic empowerment is enhanced through Life Enrichment Education (LEE) tailored to the needs of the community.

Over 18 months, the group has opened 18 Women Empowerment Centers as well as 9 mobile centers across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. They have trained 3,134 women. These graduates went on to start 29 self-help groups and 6 small businesses, earning a collective amount of over INR 1 million rupees (≈ US$17,000) by the end of the project. Furthermore, the graduates have been champions for change, spearheading 73 community awareness activities ranging from alcohol awareness campaigns to environmental clean-up activities. By focusing on women, AMMACHI Labs is creating a ripple effect that improves the welfare of the community at large.

More than 1,500 women from various parts of India poured into Amritapuri for the two-day event in early May—A Celebration of Empowerment. This was the capstone event of AMMACHI Labs’ Women Empowerment project, co-funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) and Amrita University.

The participants shared one thing in common: They were all graduates of AMMACHI Labs’ unique computerized vocational education and life-enrichment education courses. The head of the United Nations in India, Ms Lise Grande, praised the AMMACHI Labs’ Women Empowerment project, saying, “[The United Nations] scours the world looking for the best projects, the most innovative projects, and projects which will have the highest impact.

“The one we’ve chosen for India is this project, and we chose it because AMMACHI Labs is the most creative way of empowering women. Of all of the projects which the UN funds around the world, this is the one dearest to our heart. It’s the one we are most proud of; and it’s the one that we intend to take to the rest of the world so that they can learn from what you have achieved.”

Head of United Nations in India, Lise Grande

Microsoft confers top honors on India’s VIT University students

Around 200 Indian students were selected to compete in the finals of Compudon-IV, Microsoft’s annual Microsoft Office Specialist World Championships, which was held in Noida, Delhi.

According to Dr Dhenesh V Subramaniam, faculty coordinator, associate professor and coordinator at Microsoft Innovation Centre (MIC), eight of them were from MIC, VIT University, Vellore campus, five of whom received top honors.

Those who competed had, as part of an agreement with Microsoft, a chance for placements and internship opportunities with the company and its associate partners through the Ed-vantage campus program. “The Microsoft Innovation Centre at VIT University organizes other events such as Ideation fest, Appathon, Hackathon and Microsoft certifications to enable students to get access to placement and internship opportunities in Microsoft,” said Dr Subramaniam.

Congratulating the team, VIT University founder-chancellor, Dr G Viswanathan said “VIT is synonymous for research and development, besides winning competitions in the domestic and international front.

“We encourage our students to come up with innovative and unique society-oriented research, which has made our university top in various global rankings. This team has yet again proved that VITians outperform other teams.”

Amrita University at the forefront

of women empowerment

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Programmers from around the world gathered at Ekaterinburg from June 22–26, to participate in the 38th ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals.

ACM ICPC is the most prestigious global programming competition organized by and for the world’s universities, supported by ACM, sponsored by IBM, and headquartered at Baylor University, US. This year’s event was hosted by Ural Federal University (UrFU) and saw a participation of 122 university teams from 44 countries.

UrFU has a successful history of excellence in problem solving, is undisputed in the ICPC throughout the central region of Russia and its surrounding countries, and has placed teams in the world finals with three bronze medals. The university hosts the annual Ural Open Programming Championship, which attracts competitive teams from Russia, Poland, China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Mongolia.

Besides participating in the competition, programmers experienced the latest developments of IBM Research and Development Labs, talked to leading international IT experts, and took part in sightseeing and leisure activities.

The winning team from St Petersburg State University, Russia, solved 7 tasks in 5 hours, demonstrating professionalism and excellent time

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Ural Federal University hosts “battle of brains” University of Santo Tomas passes audits in succession

The University of Santo Tomas (UST) recently passed the 2nd Surveillance Audit without incurring non-conformance to the ISO 9001:2008 standards. The audit was conducted by TÜV SÜD PSB Philippines with their IMS lead auditor, Ms Brenda Bathan-Estonanto, and scope auditor, Ms Pamela May Gunay, over two days from February 20–21.

During the 1st Surveillance Audit, conducted in April 2013, a total of 24 findings was generated as against the 13 findings in the 2nd Surveillance Audit—a significant improvement of 46%.

The successful 1st and 2nd Surveillance Audits were led by Associate Professor Joehanna K. Ngo, PIE, and Engineer Nestor R. Ong, PIE (both are ASEAN Engineers), with the collaborative efforts and commitment to quality management among administrators, academic officials, and QMRs.

UST has been ISO registered to ISO 9001 standards since 2012—another milestone for the university, which

will reach its 403rd year mark as a premier institution of learning in Asia by 2020.

Earlier in March this year, UST rector, Rev. Fr. Herminio V. Dagohoy, O.P., hosted an appreciation dinner for members of the diplomatic corps and cultural agencies.

Guests, including Archbishop Guiseppe Pinto, Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, and the dean of the diplomatic corps witnessed the launch of three key events that would highlight the university as a heritage zone, a cultural site, and a premier academic institution of higher learning in the Philippines.

Attendees engaged in a virtual campus tour through the launch of the UST Heritage Tour, a partnership between the university and the Department of Tourism (DOT), with the aim of supporting DOT in promoting the Philippines’ tourism by highlighting the university’s historical significance and contribution to the nation.

The members of the Diplomatic Corps and heads of cultural agencies together with Rev. Fr. Herminio V. Dagohoy, O.P., UST rector (1st row, 5th from left), and HE Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto, Apostolic Nuncio and Dean of the Diplomatic Affairs (1st row, 6th from left) gathered at the UST Museum for an Appreciation Dinner on March 25, 2014. Present in the photo is Vice Rector Fr. Richard G. Ang, O.P. (1st row, 8th from left) and UST officials.

management skills under pressure. The team won the World’s Smartest Trophy, as well as prizes and job/internship offers from IBM and other top IT companies.

Teams from Moscow State University, Peking University, and National Taiwan

University took the 2nd, 3rd and 4th places respectively, winning the gold medals. The regional champions were New York University, St Petersburg State University, Alexandria University’s Faculty of Engineering, Instituto Militar de Engenharia, Peking University, and University of New South Wales.

Asia & Oceania

Qatar University College of Pharmacy (CPH), along with Supreme Council of Health (SCH) Qatar Council for Health Practitioners, Hamad Medical Corporation and Primary Health Care Corporation, has been instrumental in inaugurating the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in Qatar. Provision of the OSCE is happening for the first time in the Middle East and comes following a 9-month pilot project to implement the exam in Qatar. It will become part of the pharmacy licensing exam in Qatar with the expected outcome of pharmacists with acceptable minimal benchmarks practicing in a clinical setting with patients. Qatar University (QU) held the pilot examination on its campus with 47 candidates comprising CPH students, community, and clinic/hospital pharmacists on May 27. While the exam is voluntary in the pharmacy profession in Qatar, it has become a requirement for all CPH final-year students. The exam assesses the clinical skills of prospective and practicing pharmacists and is currently the “exit from degree” assessment used in pharmacy programs in Australia, Canada, UK, and US. It gauges minimal standards in depth by how exam participants interact with mock patients and entails moving from station to station and being assessed at each for various skill sets. With emphasis on patient care, examinees are assessed on interaction with patients; communicating clearly with ESL patients; communicating across cultural barriers and ethical issues; critical thinking; building a patient-care plan; and application of knowledge. Also assessed is knowledge and process of developing a care plan of the common diseases prevalent in Qatar.

QU president, Prof Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad said “We are proud of this accomplishment achieved alongside

First time in the Middle East—Qatar University implements “exit from degree” assessment

CPH assistant professor of clinical pharmacy, Dr Mohammed Diab, leads exam practice session

UAEU to bridge all food gaps towards substainable UAE

our partners. It is a testament to our collaborative efforts towards serving the community and realizing the goals of Qatar National Vision and the National Health Strategy.” The lead-up to piloting the exams included an exchange of visits between a CPH and SCH delegation and members from the University of Toronto (UofT) for training and capacity-building sessions. UofT expert consultant Dr Zubin Austin, who guided the process of implementing the pilot exam, said “This is a milestone achievement for Qatar.”

United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) has established the Khalifa Center for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (KCBGE) on its main campus in Al Ain, UAE. His Highness Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs opened the first-of-its-kind research center, which provides a high-quality scientific and educational environment and specializes in the genetic fertilization of plants with the aim of increasing agricultural production.

KCBGE comprises four units: The first holds plant genetic transformations (genetically engineered plant lines), the second houses in-vitro plant propagation, the third facilitates greenhouse testing and field evaluation, and the fourth supports the development of bio-information.

Studying the reactions of plants to different environmental conditions and stress factors is essential to any agricultural plan. Understanding how they react to limited or excessive water supply, sunlight, and nutrients helps in identifying the most strategic growing practices. In response to growing populations,

these studies have leaned towards conserving resources while promoting high yield in crops.

The center aims to: Achieve sustainable development in agriculture and plant production; support the strategic integrated agricultural development planning of the nation; advance the UAE’s international reputation in scientific research; use advanced techniques for the genetic improvement of plants; find solutions to the agricultural challenges that face the community; and maximize the optimum use of human and economic resources to contribute to finding a radical and lasting solution.

KCBGE will offer theoretical and practical courses and conferences, as well as establish collaborative research programs and exchanges with its partners. The center will house research on the genetic propagation of local plants, creating opportunities for the permanent provision of crops and the control of pests.

KCBGE will address the issue of food consumption, helping avoid future food gaps caused by potential overpopulation, improve the agricultural sector’s performance and effectiveness, increase productivity through modern agricultural technologies and develop intra-regional trade locally while promoting marketing capabilities in agricultural commodities.

The new center will also support the economic integration of agriculture, providing a state-of-the-art environment that adheres to the strategic goals and vision for agricultural development within the country.

43 | WOW NewsMiddle East & Africa

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Marseille, France – KAU president, Professor Osama S. Tayyeb, launched a new research ship on May 27. The inauguration ceremony, which marked the handover of the new vessel “Al Azizi”, was attended by the mayor of the city of La Ciotat, the Saudi Permanent Representative to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Dr Ziyad bin Abdullah Al-Diraiss, and Dr Al-Aidaroos, dean of the Faculty of Marine Sciences.

Al-Azizi was specially built for KAU by the H2X shipyard, a subsidiary of Ix-Marine, a division of the iX-Core maritime group, to carry out oceanographic research—another achievement by the Faculty of Marine Sciences.

It is worth noting that King Abdulaziz University (KAU) has been recently accredited by the National Commission for Academic Accreditation and Assessment (NCAAA). “KAU earned praise from evaluators for the clarity and appropriateness of its mission statement, adequacy of its computing equipment and software and related support services, full involvement of the female section in planning and decision making processes, the appropriate provision made for students and staff with physical disabilities or other special needs and the provision of supportto scientific research,” said Professor Abdulfattah S. Mashat, KAU vice president for development.

Saudi KAU launches research

ship in French waters

Two University of Jordan (UJ) researchers—Professor Ali Nayfeh (engineering) and Professor Shaher Momani (mathematics)—have been recognized in Thomson Reuters’s The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014 as Highly Cited Researchers. They have also been selected as the year’s Hottest Researchers.

Highly Cited Researchers presents more than 3,000 authors in 21 main fields of science and the social sciences. These researchers earned the distinction by writing the greatest numbers of reports officially designated by Essential Science Indicators as Highly Cited Papers—ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication.

Iran with 11 and Saudi Arabia with 35 researchers are the other two countries from the Middle East to feature in the publication.

On another delightful note for UJ, Dr Alia Shatanawi, assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, has received a 2014 UNESCO- L’Oréal International Fellowship for Women in Science.Fifteen 2014 UNESCO-L’Oréal International Fellowships were

Jordanian scholars join the “Hottest Researchers” list

granted to young women whose research projects have a possible impact on human well-being and the environment. The recipients of the fellowships in 2014 carry out their research in various fields within the life sciences, such as neurobiology, genetics, ecology and biotechnology.

Dr Shatanawi’s research focuses on unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of cardiovascular complication in diabetes in the hope of finding new methods for the early prediction of these complications.

In 1998, the L’Oréal Foundation and UNESCO joined forces to create For Women in Science partnership, which supports women researchers all over the world. These committed, courageous women, unified by a common passion, contribute to the advancement of all the fields of science.

In addition, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University awarded UJ president, Professor Ekhleif Tarawneh, an honorary doctorate in recognition of his efforts in scientific research and for strengthening the relations between UJ and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University.

At the commemoration ceremony, both universities signed a memorandum of understanding to foster scientific research, enhance the exchange of students and staff as well as establish Al-Farabi Center for Culture, Ethics and Politics at UJ.

A team of architectural engineering students from the British University in Egypt (BUE) won the Bergen International Wood Festival (BIWF) in Norway. Held from May 11–17, this year’s festival theme was celebrating Norway’s 200th anniversary of the constitution. The festival featured twenty groups from twelve countries.

The three BUE groups were the only participants from the Middle East. BUE had participated three times in this biannual competition before, and this year was their fourth appearance.

BIWF focuses on constructive, structural and tactile qualities of wood, where designers, architects, craftsmen and students from across the globe compete with each other in the creation of special structures in wood.

Egyptian engineering students win the wood festival in Norway

KAU president, Prof Osama Altaybe, revising the work of new KAU research vessel in France

Middle East & Africa

In 2011, Caterpillar established the Middle Eastern Resource Group (MERG) with a mission to support Caterpillar’s growth and success globally, bridge the Caterpillar and Middle Eastern cultures, and empower members through development and cross-functional service opportunities while supporting an environment of diversity and inclusion at Caterpillar.

One of the first initiatives identified was to establish relationships with technical institutions training the future managers, engineers, and technicians, who will understand the needs of customers and dealers. To that end, Caterpillar identified Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) as one of their primary candidates for a pilot project pending final selection and approval of the project by the business/dealership affairs group.

The pilot project includes providing an engine along with working closely with JUST to train technicians and engineers using various other resources provided by Caterpillar.

As part of an initial screening process, 11 candidate universities were selected from 7 different countries (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel and Turkey). JUST was one of the top candidates as compared the workshop capabilities, staff and faculty members, and the number of the school alumni that worked for or are currently working for Caterpillar.

“We have nearly completed our assignment; that being to select a university that meets our criteria,” said Caterpillar University Team Lead, Mustafa Alsaleh, in his letter to the JUST president, Professor Abdallah I. Husein Malkawi. He added “We congratulate you and your team at JUST for all the good work that you have been doing to make JUST what it is today.”

JUST becomes Caterpillar’s primary candidate for pilot project

Lebanese AUBMC doctors conduct first Google Glass surgery in Middle East

The first virtually augmented surgery in the Middle East and only the third outside of the United States was conducted last April at American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) as part of the Global Smile Foundation (GSF) MENA mission in Lebanon, in collaboration with the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at AUBMC.

The surgery was carried out as part of a pilot program utilizing software by Vipaar, a remote video software company, which uses Google Glass to allow surgeons to communicate from thousands of miles away.

The software was used during the surgical procedure on a two-and-a-half-year-old girl with a cleft lip. The Vipaar technology allowed Dr Usama Hamdan, president of GSF MENA, and Dr Ghassan Abu-

Sittah, head of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at AUBMC, to communicate with a reconstructive surgeon at New York University, Dr Raj Vyas.

During the surgery, Dr Vyas was able to see the surgery process in the eyes of Hamdan and Abu-Sittah on his iPad in NYC. In turn, Vyas, who has previous experience with the Vipaar technology, virtually demonstrated where the incisions should be made. The surgical team in Beirut was able to see the surgical markings through the glasses as if they were on the patient’s face.

“The software will allow us to share expertise in performing cleft lip procedures, amongst others, with surgeons in remote or poverty-stricken areas in need,” said Hamdan.

“Most patients with cleft lips come from impoverished backgrounds and the support of foundations such as the Talia Foundation and organizations like INFORPRO make it possible to provide patients with life-changing surgeries.”

AUBMC and the Global Smile Foundation MENA have been partnering together since 2012 to provide surgeries for patients with cleft lip in Lebanon and the region.

47 | WOW NewsMiddle East & Africa

 

Architecture students from Abu Dhabi University (ADU) College of Engineering presented UAE’s debut national pavilion “Lest We Forget: Structures of Memory in the UAE” at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, held in June.

Curated by Dr Michele Bambling, in collaboration with a research team of architects, the pavilion represented a hundred years of the nation’s architectural history and urban development through models and drawings.

“Participation in the prestigious Venice Biennale is considered the pinnacle of an architect’s career. So to have 7 of our undergraduate students’ work

featured among some the works of world-renowned architects during the UAE’s first national pavilion is a great feat, and a testament to the quality of education offered at Abu Dhabi University,” said interim provost and dean of ADU’s College of Engineering, Dr Aly Nazmy.

Venice Biennale witnesses 100 years of UAE’s architectural history

ADU students presenting their architectural models and drawings to the Biennale’s research team of architects.

From Left to right: Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, Dr Usama Hamdan, and Dr Nadine Hashash

WOW News | 48

Lebanese students shine at UN

A new university is in the making in the Asir Region of Saudi Arabia through the separation of several campuses that will merge to form Bisha University.

King Khalid University was established in 1998 through the merger of branch campuses of two older universities, King Saud

University and Imam University. Since then the university has significantly broadened the range of its programs, providing valuable services to students and communities in the region where it is currently located.

The decision of the Ministry of Higher Education to separate what will become Bisha University is welcomed news. The new university will be able to operate from the beginning on a scale that is more than adequate to provide effective higher education programs designed to meet the needs of students in the northern part of the region.

Bisha University will begin with five of the existing campuses offering a wide range of programs for male and female students, with significant

benefits for those communities, simplifying operations for the remainder of King Khalid University.

On another delightful note, King Khalid University has issued a new strategic plan to guide its development over the coming years.

The new plan aims to achieve six broad strategic goals: Ensuring a focus on quality and continuing development in all parts of the university; improving the university’s technical, financial and administrative performance; developing and extending rigorous graduate programs; implementing processes for continuing improvement in quality of teaching and learning; enhancing the university’s infrastructure; and fostering effective partnerships with the community.

King Khalid University gives birth to Bisha University

When Lebanese American University’s delegation to the Model United Nations (MUN) won six awards at the 15th Annual Global Classrooms International Model UN in New York last May, they were on top of the world—quite literally. “To celebrate, we went to the top of the Rockefeller building for the best view of the city,” says one of the delegates, Laeticia Kamel, “We worked so hard, we deserved it.”

The Global Classrooms Lebanese American University Model United Nations (GC LAU MUN) is the product of a long history of collaboration between the United Nations Association of the United States of America and the university through its Outreach and Civic Engagement unit (OCE).

The program provides knowledge and skill-based training for students over several sessions on both the Beirut and Byblos campuses. In fact, over the past

nine years, GC LAU MUN has given more than 447,500 hours of peace-building and diplomacy training. The Lebanese delegations have always excelled in their annual participation of this international conference. In 2012 they received the Secretary-General’s Award and this year, expectations were high.

Kamel is one of the six high school students trained by LAU’s OCE to participate in the New York event.

“It wasn’t easy. We weren’t allowed to bring prepared speeches, they had to be improvised,” says Kamel. “The highlight of our performance was the fact that we managed to integrate 10 of our own clauses without anyone modifying them, which was huge. We basically wrote the whole resolution!”

As a result, the six came home with six Best Delegation awards—the highest

ratio of awards per delegation—after competing against 2,400 students from 130 educational institutions.

The delegates were judged on their knowledge of the UN system, diplomatic composure, creative simulation, deep understanding of the topics, involvement, tact, negotiation skills and ability to reach resolutions.

Some of the topics LAU’s delegation debated while representing Nicaragua included expanding the role of women in governance and policy, for which Chloe Abi Zeid Daou and Carole Abdel Khalek won Best Delegation in UN Women. Sean Aoun and Sally Farah won for the model UNDP session on Eradication of Poverty: Post 2015 Development, while on the Economic and Social Council, Laeticia Kamel and Badih Salha won awards for their presentation on Economically Displaced People: Environmentally Displaced Persons and Social Vulnerability.

“Their exemplary diplomatic tact and representation, their superb preparation, outstanding performance and dedication to team play won them the applause and admiration of all the international UNA USA secretariat. They were the talk of the conference,” said Elie Samia, OCE’s executive director.

Middle East & Africa

 

RESEARCH

TECHNOLOGY

KNOWLEDGE

QUALITYCOMMUNITY

The Connections to Success

King Khalid University

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

www.kku.edu.sa

WOW News | 50 Middle East & Africa

The University of Buraimi (UoB) has signed a memorandum of academic cooperation with the University of Western Sydney (UWS), and partnered University of Ulster, the second largest university in the whole of Ireland.

The agreement with UWS will facilitate future collaboration, which includes conferences and lectures, as well as research projects and academic staff and student exchanges.

Both parties will begin immediate discussions to identify key focus areas that will gradually build relations and mutual trust. Professor Hesham A E Magd, vice chancellor, plans

Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) was accredited—for the first time in Iran—by an international body of accreditation, ASIC. Association Service for International Colleges (ASIC) accredited the university as Premier University at a ceremony held in May, on the university campus, Tehran.

Present at the meeting were Mr Lee Hammond, ASIC CEO; Dr Arabkheradmand, TUMS vice chancellor for global strategies and international affairs; Dr Nekoofar, director of international relations, accreditation and ranking; as well as other senior academics from TUMS. Dr Nekoofar considered the accreditation by ASIC an achievement for TUMS and mentioned that, under the leadership of Dr Arabkheradmand, TUMS International Quality Assurance and Accreditation Network (IQAAN) had been formed. The CEO of ASIC expressed great satisfaction over the superior accreditation mechanism of TUMS and the feedback of the officials in charge. Moreover, ASIC’s top official stated that accreditation mechanism of the university will be published in the next edition of ASIC newsletter as an unprecedented experience. Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), which is known as one of the

to strengthen ties with Australian higher education institutions, which are globally recognized for academic rigor and research output.

UoB’s College of Health Sciences and the University of Ulster’s Faculty of Life and Health Sciences has identified an opportunity for collaboration in the field of nursing, which will provide students with unique opportunities in and around Oman.

UoB—a young yet dynamic higher learning institution—recognizes the intricacy of forging relations with international institutions for future internationalization strategies and values its advantages.

leading medical sciences universities in Iran and the Middle East, is hard at work to push the boundaries of conventional higher education in Iran. With more than 1,500 faculty members and 15,000 students, as well as 70 research centers and 16 hospitals, TUMS comprises one of the biggest and most productive medical sciences communities in Asia. Currently, the university is host to international students from more than 40 countries. Each year, nearly 2,000 students from Asia to Africa to Europe apply for a medical degree at this university.

In a country where approximately 95% of university students are Iranian nationals, Tehran University of Medical Sciences is eagerly going the extra mile to create, maintain, and enhance an international context of tertiary education.

Oman’s University of Buraimi takes its internationalization to the next level

Tehran University of Medical Sciences first in Iran to receive international accreditation

University of Babylon undergoes metamorphosis

University of Babylon recently received a QS 2-star rating—the second of its kind in Iraq—at the 4th QS-MAPLE conference held from May 6–8 this year. The university went through a series of strict assessments that focused on criteria like quality of education, employment status of students after graduation, research, internationalization, facilities, access for scholarships, and student support.

In addition, the university recently signed three contracts with a foreign construction company in order to expand the university beyond its three campuses. The first project, valued at US$7.9 million, will see designs of the new main campus by a well-known American company. The second is the construction of three studying halls for the Colleges of Pharmacy, Engineering, and Dentistry; and the third is the establishment of the new central library building.

Earlier this year, University of Babylon received 17 awards at Knowledge Day Award 2014 for research achievements, and 26 of its professors were recognized at the National High Education Day held by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

With regard to internationalization, the university has signed MOUs with top universities from the US, UK, Australia, Poland and Romania. More than 30 visiting professors have so far visited its main campus and related faculties to hold seminars and lectures on recent

Artist’s impressions of the new main campus (top) and the new central library (bottom)

51 | WOW NewsMiddle East & Africa

In May 2014, students from the Faculty of Engineering of Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) won the first VEX Robotics Lebanese Championship. The objective of the competition was to create of an innovative robot by using the VEX Robotics Design System.

The VEX Robotics World Championship is an annual gathering of top robotics teams that have won the regional tournaments held in cities around the world. USEK team was the first team ever in the Middle East to win this competition and get recognized internationally by VEX U.

On another note, in May 2014, USEK organized an International Colloquium on Socio-Cultural, Economic Issues and Prospects in Latin America: Relations with Lebanon and the Middle East.

On this occasion, USEK welcomed participants from Latin America, as well as ambassadors of those countries. New agreements have been signed with University of Tres de Frebrero (Brazil), John Kennedy University (Argentina), and Central University of Chile.

Jordanian researcher wins best cancer research award in the Arab world

Dr Munir Abu-Helalah of Mutah University, the first physician in the region to hold a PhD in preventive medicine, won the Prince Saud Bin Nayef Award for the Best Cancer Research in the Arab World in the category of researchers younger than 40. The award ceremony was held on April 9 in Damman, Saudi Arabia.

The award was supervised by Saudi Cancer Foundation, Eastern Region, and judged by a ten-member panel, five from MD Anderson Cancer Center in the USA, and five senior oncologists from five countries in the Middle East.

Cancer researchers from the Arab world competed for this award. Dr Munir’s prize-winning research was on the quality of life and psychological wellbeing of breast and colorectal cancers survivors in Jordan and review of the management offered to these patients.

Outcomes of this research showed that there are no psychological support services for cancer survivors in Jordan.

According to the research, in spite of good to high overall scores for quality of life in Jordan, which are close to results from Western countries, the psychological aspects related to cancer diagnosis or complications of treatment are neglected in Jordan. Around 50% of the cases have had undiagnosed depression or anxiety; one third undiagnosed severe anxiety or severe depression.

Dr Munir holds a medical degree from Jordan University of Science and Technology (2001), Master of Public Health from University of Dundee, UK (2004), and PhD in epidemiology and preventive medicine from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, University of London (2009).

USEK wins the first VEX Robotics Lebanese championship

USEK team with the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Pascal Damien (third from left), and the Secretary General Rev. Fr. Michel Abou Tacca (center).

American University of Sharjah (AUS) now offers the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam via computer-based testing, the first and only of its kind in the Middle East, which is also administrated by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) in the US.

An agreement was signed with Pearson VUE—the computer-based testing (CBT) business of Pearson—to become a Pearson VUE Authorized Test Centre Select to deliver NCEES certification exams.

Dr Hany El Kadi, associate dean of College of Engineering said the FE exam is typically the first step in acquiring the Professional Engineer

American University of Sharjah first in the Middle-East to offer computer-based fundamentals of engineering exam

(PE) license in the US and has been designed for recent graduates and students completing their undergraduate engineering degree.

“NCEES is extremely happy to have in place a partnership with an outstanding institution as AUS that allows the NCEES examinations to be offered to its students and other candidates in the area. By offering the NCEES exams, AUS will receive data on the performance of their candidates, which can be used to evaluate their individual programs. Also, the candidates taking the exam will enhance their opportunities for future employment outside the UAE,” said Jerry Carter, chief executive officer of NCEES.

53 | WOW NewsMiddle East & Africa

In 2010, UKZN Professor Cephas Musabayane and Mr Mark Tufts discovered a method to administer insulin into the bloodstream via a skin patch. Now the team has developed insulin-containing dermal patches capable of sustained, controlled insulin delivery into the bloodstream.

Study results show that after five weeks of daily treatment with the patches, no inflammation or necrosis was detected in the rats’ skins. The untreated rats maintained high blood glucose levels throughout the study and showed extensive depletion of glycogen in liver and muscle tissues. The patch, combined with insulin, restored the expressions of Glucose Transporter4 (GLUT4) and Glycogen Synthase (GS) to similar levels as non-diabetic control animals.

Topical application of the patches to the infected rats was found to increase plasma insulin concentration, reduce blood glucose, and increase liver and muscle glycogen levels. It also increased the expression of GS and GLUT4 in hepatic and skeletal muscle tissues, respectively.

Findings show that applying the patch reduces the number of daily bolus injections needed to maintain insulin concentration, and would provide pain-free self-administration. Professor Musabayane highlighted its ease of use, noting that it would not require devices to prevent drug leakage.

According to Professor Musabayane, the patches did not show any negative effects on the morphology of underlying tissues of the skin, owing to the protective effect of the antioxidants, vitamin E and eucalyptus oil within.

The number of diabetic patients in the world is estimated to rise to more than 366 million by the year 2030, according to the WHO.

UKZN scientists develop pain-free alternative for diabetic patients

On April 24, a South African research center hosted by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and directed by a leading international UJ researcher in economic geology opened its doors to Africa. The Centre of Excellence for Integrated Mineral and Energy Resource Analysis (CIMERA) will study the origin, distribution and character of mineral and fossil energy resource systems in South Africa and the African continent.

The research center is highly relevant to the continent because of the rapidly rising demand for bulk commodities such as iron, manganese and bauxite in Africa. CIMERA aims to supply highly-trained mineral and energy resource analysts to industry, to ensure the sustained development of the scientific and economic sectors of the mineral and energy resource industries in South Africa and Africa. CIMERA is co-hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS), and partners with researchers at several other South African universities.

The center will examine the metallogenesis of the Early Earth mineral resource systems and fossil energy resources of sedimentary basins. It will also conduct further studies of South Africa’s main resources (gold, uranium, iron, manganese, platinum and chrome) as well as the critical metals of the future, such as rare Earth elements. Small-scale mining opportunities and environmental and medical geology are included in its scope as well.

South Africa contains the most valuable deposits of minerals in the world. However, throughout the continent sufficient knowledge to

South African universities set up CIMERA for the benefit of the continent

ensure long-term economic viability of extraction is lacking. CIMERA aims to be the hub for research and human resource development for mineral and energy resource analysis in Africa.

In the last five years, CIMERA researchers from UJ and WITS have collaborated with academics from top institutions listed in the Nature Top 200 Index in publishing articles. These include universities in the USA (MIT, Yale, Caltech), Germany (Max Planck and Helmholtz Institutes), Canada (McGill), and Australia (Australian National University), as well as universities in China, Finland, France, Russia, Sweden and the UK.

The University of Johannesburg creates a supportive environment for world-class research, teaching and learning in one of Africa’s biggest cities, while actively collaborating with prestigious universities in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East.

In the Asia-Pacific, UJ researchers actively collaborate with top universities in Japan, China, Australia, Taiwan, South Korea and India in co-authoring academic publications. These partnerships focus on the fields of physics and astronomy, engineering and planetary science. In the Middle East, the collaboration is mainly with researchers in Turkey, Greece and Israel.

In the West, the dominant collaborations are with researchers at leading institutions in the United States (Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford), the United Kingdom (Oxford and Cambridge), Canada, Germany and France.

In Africa, UJ’s foremost collaboration is with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), also located in Johannesburg. In addition, UJ researchers collaborate with other South African universities such as the University of Cape Town, as well as institutions in Nigeria, Kenya, Cameroon, Tanzania and Botswana.

Professor Cephas Musabayane (top left) with his PhD students, Mr Phikelelani S. Ngubane, Ms Happiness Sibiya and Mr Silindile I. Hadebe.

WOW News | 54 Middle East & Africa

Developed by University of Pretoria – World’s first accurate technique of age/sex estimation by bone

Forensic anthropologist Dr Kyra Stull has developed a reliable tool that the police, forensic pathologists and anthropologists can use to estimate the age and sex of the remains of unidentified missing children. In the process, she has also compiled the world’s largest known sample of children’s long bone images.

Dr Stull developed the tool as part of her doctoral research in anatomy at the University of Pretoria. Her PhD was one of eight conferred by the Faculty of Health Sciences during its Autumn Graduation Ceremony. A total of 214 new doctors and 42 dentists also graduated.

Scientists generally argue that difference between boys and girls are not fully established in their skeletons until they reach adolescence. Dr Stull has, however, shown that it is indeed possible to accurately and reliably estimate the sex of sub-adult children using a large number of measurements from their long bones (including the humerus and femur).

She applied statistical models that have yet to be used in anthropology for this purpose. As a next step, a computer software program will be developed, which can be used by forensic anthropologists and other forensic practitioners.

Dr Stull obtained skeletal information of 1,380 children from Cape Town’s Salt River Forensic Pathology Service and Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. She then analyzed Lodox Statscan radiographic images captured from this group of children. The Lodox Statscan is a full-body, low-dosage radiographic machine and is used in trauma units or in forensic laboratories during post-mortem examinations.

“The machine was originally designed in South Africa for the diamond mining industry but has since been used in hospitals and morgues worldwide,” explains Dr Stull.

Her sample is reflective of the South African population, and has led to the development of the first accurate,

reliable, and applicable technique in the world to estimate the age and sex of children. Historically, forensic anthropologists could only compare data to antiquated growth studies from North America and Europe.

“Estimating age from the skeletal components of a living child is complex,” Dr Stull explains. “It is even more difficult when the child is deceased and unknown.

“Homicide involving children is ubiquitous in all countries and dire improvements are needed to address the accuracy of methods routinely used in forensic anthropology, forensic pathology, and other related fields,” she believes.

Images obtained through Lodox Statscan are proving to be invaluable, as researchers do not have to rely on actual collected bone samples to build biological profiles. Anthropologists and other practitioners have long used skeletal collections as the primary data source for their research but find it difficult to create or validate the techniques they develop for children because only a few documented skeletal collections of children’s bones exist.

In addition, the available material is often either too limited or antiquated to apply to modern populations. Children, for instance, are now taller than they were 100 years ago and experience maturation at earlier ages. Furthermore, genetic differences, environmental influences, nutrition, and lifestyle also cause variation among populations.

Dr Kyra Stull, measuring a femur that is part of the Pretoria Bone Collection at the University of Pretoria. Photo credit: Jolandie Myburgh

A Lodox Statscan radiographic image of a child around 4 years of age Photo credit: Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital

55 | WOW NewsEurope & Americas

Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León erects biggest internationalization center in Latin America

Mexican university enjoys national recognition

May 19, 2014 – Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo León (UANL) has inaugurated a Center for Internationalization with state-of-the-art facilities to serve as the university’s new office of Vice Presidency for Foreign Affairs.

The new Center for Internationalization—biggest in Latin America—will significantly expand the activities of the Center for Asian Studies (CAS) which was established in 2006 with the aim of supporting the internationalization of students and professors of UANL through formalized partnerships with universities and research centers of excellence in Asia. CAS also enables various academic units of the university to study the Asian region in a multidisciplinary manner.

The main focus for CAS is the sub-region of Northeast Asia (China, Japan and Korea); but also Southeast and South Asia, particularly India, are vital given the economic weight as well as their historical and commercial relations with Mexico and Latin America.

“Asia is vital for the future of the UANL, as well as for the state of Nuevo Leon; hence we have been signing strategic partnership agreements with universities and foundations in Asia,” said Dr Renato Balderrama Santander, director of CAS.

The Center for Asian Studies offers short-term specialization, international lecturers, academic programs, study tours in Asia, language courses for Latin America and for Asia, business consulting and some other programs linking Asia with Mexico and Latin America.

It is worth noting that UANL has a representative office in Shanghai in order to follow up with projects in mainland China and the countries around, and to broaden the scope of its presence in Asia. In 2014, the Center for Asian Studies signed agreements with prestigious universities in the Republic of Korea (Hanyang University) and in China (SUIBE and SWUST).

As part of the relationship with Asia, cultural and academics bridges have been created through the opening of the King Sejong Institute for Korean language education and educational collaboration with China.

Recently, the Center for Asian Studies has been honored to be the head office of King Sejong Institute in the northeast. The institute belongs to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of South Korea and is supported by the Korea Foundation e-School Project for Latin America.

From left to right: Lic. Gregorio Canales Zambrano, honorary consul, Republic of Korea in Nuevo León; Dr Renato Balderrama, director of Center for Asian Studies, UANL; Mr Seong Hoa Hong, ambassador, Republic of Korea in Mexico; Dr Jesus Ancer Rodriguez, president of UANL; Dr Daniel Gonzalez Spencer, vice president for international affairs, UANL; Mr Chi Young Chang , director, Korean Culture Center in Mexico

The University of Guadalajara, from the Mexican State of Jalisco, recently celebrated two important events. First, the Congress State conferred the designation of meritorious on the University of Guadalajara. Upon receipt of the parchment with the designation, the general rector, Itzcóatl Tonatiuh Bravo Padilla, emphasized the 222-year history of the university and that the designation is a tribute to all anonymous academics who have contributed to the development of the State of Jalisco.

“The award responds to the gratitude and appreciation of both citizens and authorities, to an institution that since its inception has remained attached to the principles that govern the spirit of secular education, free and critical thinking, committed to the truth and the promotion of civic values, and their contributions to educational, scientific, technological and cultural field,” said the rector.

Secondly, the University General Counsel (UGC) approved the university’s Institutional Development Plan 2014-2030 (IDP 2030). The plan proposes a number of fields as strategic areas: Management and administration, teaching and learning, research and postgraduate, extension and outreach and internationalization.

The conformation of the IDP started from October 2013 with a consultation process with students, academics and entrepreneurs, through several focus groups, six forums and 311 presentations; all this combined with the participation of thousands of people in the online consultation.

IDP strategies include a change in the pedagogical approach focused on student learning, career diversification, expansion of enrollment and the spread of the English language with special emphasis on technological areas.

 

WOW News | 56 Europe & Americas

A Finnish team of researchers was the first in the world to discover a gene mutation in ameloblastoma, a tumor of the jaw. Researchers have been searching for the mutation that causes ameloblastoma for decades, and this mutation has now been found in a patient living in Finland.

The core of the team making the discovery comprised researchers from the University of Turku and the University of Eastern Finland.

The UK’s University of Sussex has recently launched an exciting partnership with The Guardian newspaper, becoming the first university to sponsor a section of its website entitled The Global Student.

The Global Student aims to generate a debate about the importance of gaining international experience while at university. As well as covering subjects such as studying, working and living in the UK for overseas students, it will also aim to motivate UK students to participate in the huge variety of international activities that higher education has to offer whether these are placements, volunteering, student exchanges or summer schools overseas.

Employers and Government are beginning to recognize the valuable skills gained through studying overseas. Initiatives in the UK such as the UK Strategy for Outward Mobility are seeking to encourage participation and raise awareness of the impact such experiences can have on students’ future careers.

The discovery is extremely important because it has direct implications for the treatment. Traditionally, ameloblastoma is treated by surgery, often resulting in tissue deficiencies and loss of teeth. A suitable drug therapy could reduce the need for surgery and the recurrence of ameloblastoma.

Ever since the University of Sussex was established in Brighton in 1961 there has been a quest for tackling global issues. Marcus Williams, director of student recruitment at Sussex, commented “The university’s global ranking (currently 55th in the world for international outlook) is indicative of the internationalism at Sussex.

“There is incredibly exciting and impactful work going on internationally in every part of our university among both the staff and student community.

“The recently published UK Research Excellence Framework impact studies articulate some of that international work and the Global Student partnership gives another opportunity to communicate the international impact of Sussex.”

Already, the website has attracted significant positive comment and feedback from students and overseas partner universities and agents.

Finnish mutant helps researchers with first-in-the-world anti jaw tumor drug

University of Sussex and ‘The Guardian’ pioneer education-media link

Italian cutting-edge technology wins “Best Poster of the World” award

A team of undergraduate and postgraduate students at the CIBIO (Centre for Integrative Biology) of the University of Trento have engineered a system that controls the ripening of fruits, an achievement that has made them iGEM finalists.

“B.fruity”, as it is called, is the engineered bacterium that, depending on blue light exposure, synthesizes either ethylene—a hormone naturally produced by fruits to boost ripening—or methyl salicylate, which inhibits the process.

They presented this cutting-edge idea at the iGEM 2013 competition, winning the “Best Poster of the World” award. By so doing they made their way to the finals organized at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston where they earned a gold medal for their numerous scientific merits.

Once they engineered the method and tested its effectiveness, they went even further, envisaging two systems that could make life easier for people who eat fruits both when they are at home, and when they are away.

“B.fruity home edition” is a paper bag equipped with a little container filled with ethylene and methyl salicylate in two separated compartments. Depending on what you wish to do with your fruits, you can activate one or the other and have your fruit ready whenever you please, in a natural, safe environment.

“B.fruity vending machine” exploits the devised method to guarantee that the fruit about to be sold is ripe while the other ones are preserved unripe to avoid wastage.

BRAF V600E immunostaining in mutation positive (A) and negative (B) ameloblastoma

 

57 | WOW NewsEurope & Americas

The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) will lead an initiative recently signed into law by California Governor Jerry Brown to create a statewide research grants program called Cal-BRAIN—California Blueprint for Research to Advance Innovations in Neuroscience. Cal-BRAIN is a state complement to the BRAIN Initiative announced by US President Barack Obama in 2013 to decode and understand the human brain.

The Cal-BRAIN program will provide research funding and training to develop new brain-mapping techniques and technologies. The aim is to improve the ability to see what goes on in the brain in much greater detail and at a much faster timescale, and so produce exciting new discoveries that would help in the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders of all kinds: Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Post

UC San Diego to lead President’s initiative

Traumatic Stress Disorder and other behavioral health issues and injuries that affect everyone from young children to military veterans.

UC San Diego played a significant role in the national BRAIN initiative. Responding to President Obama’s “grand challenge” to chart the function of the human brain in unprecedented detail, the campus established the Center for Brain Activity Mapping to tackle the technological and biological challenge of developing a new generation of tools to enable recording of neuronal activity throughout the brain.

Both Cal-BRAIN and the national initiative are expected to spur not only a new academic discipline but also a new industry cluster of “neurotechnology.” The tools and inventions needed for mapping the

A new study led by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, estimates that autism annually costs the country at least £32 billion—more than heart

London LSE study reveals shocking truth about a medical condition in UK

Photo credit: ©istockphoto.com/agsandrew

 

brain will also likely have broad applications to a range of disease monitoring beyond the brain and even to fields beyond health.

“UC San Diego’s leadership role in Cal-BRAIN is of vital importance, not only to the university and the San Diego region but for the state as a whole,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla.

“We will be developing the next technology cluster in ‘neuro-tech’ just as we did in high-tech, clean-tech and more, creating high paying jobs and world renowned results. I am confident that, with our strengths in neuroscience and biotechnology in San Diego, we will be producing ground-breaking research with significant social impacts.”

Ralph Greenspan, director of the Center for Brain Activity Mapping and associate director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UC San Diego, as well as professor in residence of neurobiology and cognitive science, is one of the original architects of a white paper that sparked America’s national BRAIN Initiative. Most recently, he was co-author of a proposal to the state legislature that served as a blueprint for the Cal-BRAIN bill that was just signed into law.

“Our vision was for Cal-BRAIN to serve as a driver for trying out different possible technologies and converging on a unified approach for doing effective brain mapping, in which UC San Diego will play a key role,” Greenspan said. “Cal-BRAIN is a great start to realizing the ultimate goal: Mapping the brain’s trillions of connections in real-time.”

disease, cancer and stroke combined—in treatment, lost earnings, care and support for children and adults with autism.

More than 600,000 people in the UK have autism, a condition associated with poor social and communication skills and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior. A quarter of people with autism are unable to talk, and 85% do not work full time.

Professor Martin Knapp from LSE said that 40–60% of people with

autism spectrum disorders also have intellectual disabilities, costing around £1.5 million over a lifetime, adding to the economic and social impact.

Christine Swabey, CEO of Autistica, the UK’s leading autism research charity, said “We know that progress is possible. The right research would provide early interventions, better mental health, and more independence. But right now we spend just £180 on research for every £1 million we spend on care.”

Celebrating outstanding achievements in international higher education

An exclusive top-level presentation of the workings of the best of Asia, Middle East & Africa’s universities

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59 | WOW NewsEurope & Americas

Starting in January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., USA, will offer the first hybrid on-campus/online J.D. degree granted by an ABA-accredited law school. The new enrollment option now makes it possible for people from anywhere in the world to earn a J.D. degree from an accredited American law school without relocating to the United States. The first-of-its-kind program will feature two interrelated elements: Intensive, in-person, experiential learning; and online coursework that integrates foundational doctrine and skills. The hybrid option will be offered along with Mitchell’s 113-year-old part-time program and its 40-year-old full-time program. Students who enroll in the new hybrid program will be on campus for at least one week each semester participating in 56 intensive hours of realistic simulations and other coursework. Students will prepare for their on-campus work through an e-learning curriculum designed by William Mitchell faculty to integrate legal doctrine with practical legal skills.

In addition, students will have the opportunity to complete externships in their communities under the supervision of practicing attorneys. This innovative hybrid of on-campus and online learning will provide new access to those seeking a rigorous, experiential J.D. degree from an ABA-accredited law school.

Earlier this month, William Mitchell received a variance from the American Bar Association allowing it to combine its nationally recognized skills-training curriculum with expanded use of digital technology. Without the variance, the ABA only allows law schools to make one-third of each course available through distance learning, including live and pre-recorded online lectures, web-based student-to-student assessment, moderated online discussion forums, and live chat. The variance approved by the ABA for the William Mitchell hybrid program allows the law school to present about 50% of its curriculum via e-learning technology. The variance is the first of its kind and comes on the heels of a draft recommendation by the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education that law schools be permitted to experiment and innovate. William Mitchell’s program is designed to extend the law school’s current success with digital technology. For the past few years, faculty members have been researching, implementing, and evaluating online teaching techniques. The outcomes have been positive for students and professors, according to William Mitchell President and Dean Eric Janus. “Our research demonstrates that when implemented thoughtfully, courses blending face-to-face and online instruction offer students the best of both worlds,” Janus said.

“By harnessing e-learning technologies, professors expand their repertoire of pedagogical tools, allowing greater creativity and flexibility in achieving desired learning. Adding to traditional law school teaching methods, our courses will include online interactions and content delivery that engage today’s students, provide additional teaching and learning accountability, and prepare students to use technology that they will encounter in practice.”

Minnesotan law school to offer first ABA-accredited “hybrid” J.D. degree in US

MIP Politecnico di Milano to offer EMBA online – first time in Italy

MIP, the Business School of Politecnico di Milano, has come up with an innovative Executive MBA, the Flex EMBA. For the first time in Italy, students can acquire the same set of skills, build the same relationship networks and are awarded the same diploma as traditional Executive MBAs, with the added benefit of greater flexibility, while the balance between work and family is made possible using the most up-to-date technologies.

MIP’s Flex EMBA is based upon a revolutionary innovative distance-learning platform, developed by MIP on Microsoft technology, which integrates—for the first time—tools for personal and collaborative productivity, based on Office 365 applications, within a user-friendly environment.

Students enjoy an innovative digital experience, where smart working concepts are introduced into an educational situation. Attendees can access courses on-line and, when there is no internet, even off-line by using an app developed ad-hoc for Flex EMBA.

The platform allows students to access recorded video material, participate actively in live video discussion sessions and workgroups moderated by a professor, and work with other students on assignments and have one-to-one sessions with teachers. All this can take place from any location using any digital terminal. For this reason, the Flex EMBA platform is a radical innovation in the field of solutions complementing distance learning.

Starting with its first edition on October 24, 2014, Flex EMBA will take a minimum of 18 months to complete—and a maximum of three years.

 

WOW News | 60 Europe & Americas

Many founders of social enterprises demonstrate a virtually ideal leadership style: Transformational, charismatic, ethical, inspiring employees with their vision. Yet they too are faced with the complex challenges of daily business. In particular, when an organization reaches a certain scale the question arises: How to build a professional and competent management team?

Professor Andreas Heinecke, holder of the Chair of Social Business at the German EBS Universität, who is also in charge of an international task force of experienced social entrepreneurs, has developed practical recommendations for aspiring young professionals. Their findings were included in the manual “Leadership in Social Enterprise; How to Manage Yourself and the Team” which was published in May in collaboration with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the World Economic Forum (WEF). “On the one hand, the manual sets out to enable young founders to benefit from the experiences of the most successful social entrepreneurs. On the other hand, it provides access to the essential concepts and tools for all those who, though lacking a formal business and management education, are driven by a passion to bring about social change,” explains Magdalena Kloibhofer from EBS Universität.

The manual is based on an extensive data collection, numerous in-depth interviews and a global survey of social entrepreneurs and their management teams.

Germany’s EBS Universität issues unique entrepreneurship guidance

Nowadays, thousands of British students choose to visit China each year, with young people being encouraged to study in China to boost their job hopes. With increasing importance being placed on the teaching of Mandarin by the British Government, the Confucius Institute in the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London, is leading the way in expanding teaching of the subject to more schools in England.

Katharine Carruthers, director of the IOE’s Confucius Institute, says “One of the key challenges of changing practice and attitudes to Mandarin teaching in schools is how to develop a solid infrastructure for teachers of the subject.

“Our vision is simple: To double the numbers, ultimately aiming for one teacher in every three secondary schools so that every child can be given the opportunity to learn Mandarin should they wish to.”

Following his own trip to China at the end of last year, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced his ambition to double the number of Chinese learners in the UK. The IOE Confucius Institute is already making plans to act on his ambition and is set to lead the way in ensuring schools in England are equipped with qualified Mandarin teachers.

Currently, 38% of independent school pupils teach the language compared

British PM announces ambition to double the number of Chinese learners in UK

with only 11% of state schools, but the IOE’s aim is to train enough teachers of Mandarin Chinese so that there is one teacher for every three secondary schools.

The Education Minister, Elizabeth Truss, who has also long been supporting the work of the IOE Confucius Institute, has spoken of her support for growing and widening the reach of the institute next year. A new model Confucius Institute, which is set to launch in the spring will aim to increase the number of Mandarin teachers to 1,200 by 2019, with the hope that many will head to state schools.

About 30 specialist teachers currently qualify in Mandarin each year, and only 1% of the UK’s adult population speak it fluently.

Dr Briana Fiser, assistant professor of physics at High Point University, was recently granted a US patent for a medical diagnostic device that could eventually help save lives.

Fiser developed small, micron-sized rods, which can be used to detect how well a patient’s blood is clotting. According to the patent, the rods can be used by paramedics in a future point-of-care medical device that would help them determine what life-saving measures they should or should not use on patients.

“Immediately after a trauma occurs, the shock sustained by the tissues in a patient’s body affects that patient’s clotting abilities,” explains Fiser. “The patient could develop what is called a trauma-induced coagulopathy, a

US High Point University researcher’s blood clotting solution will save many lives  

clotting disorder that could mean a decreased ability to form a blood clot. People who are admitted to the emergency room with a trauma-induced clotting disorder are four times more likely to die from their injuries, and a quarter of patients admitted to an emergency room for trauma have a coagulopathy.”

Fiser was awarded the patent along with researchers Rich Superfine, Richard Spero, Adam, Shields and Ben Evans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr Briana Fiser

The president of Chile, together with the rector of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Ignacio Sánchez, and Roberto Angelini, inaugurates an 11-story complex that will promotea culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Chile president inaugurates 9,000 m² innovation center

The Innovation Center UC Anacleto Angelini, a complex of 9,000 square meters, is destined to become a regional benchmark for the development of innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.

Before an audience of more than 400 attendants, the President expressed her satisfaction for being part of the official opening of this building, saying “it represents a commitment with knowledge, with new ways of responding to the challenges that development imposes and with sustainable growth.”

Located at the entrance of Campus San Joaquín, the building of the center was possible thanks to a US$15 million donation by the Angelini family and Empresas Copec.

The center’s work will be based on a model of partnerships and will be

From left to right: Rector Ignacio Sanchez; president of the Republic of Chile, Michelle Bachelet; businessman Roberto Angelini; Alfonso Gomez, chief executive of the Innovation Center at UC, during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

 

Establishing an effective graduate talent pipeline is increasingly recognized as an imperative for universities across the world, with institutions now striving to equip students with the skills, knowledge and expertise demanded by employers operating in all sectors of the economy.

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has long realized the importance of working closely with employers and in 2007, the institution took the bold step of developing a new and globally unique model of higher education.

The university’s World of Work Programme is now firmly embedded across the undergraduate curriculum in degrees ranging from criminology to zoology and architecture to history, ensuring all students graduate with a globally respected academic qualification plus the skills and experience to support economic growth.

Partnerships with business and industry continue to flourish and directly influence the World of Work Programme. Current employer partners operate in all sectors of the economy and range from

UK institution to boost graduate employability in the Middle East and North Africa

61 | WOW NewsEurope & Americas

opened to different disciplines and industries. Codelco, SONDA, Google, Entel and the Fraunhofer Center of Excellence are some of the companies that have already committed their participation. The center aspires to not only lead a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, but also become a platform for multidisciplinary research.

“We want to contact professors and students from different university faculties so that they may address with different viewpoints the most important challenges for the country. In addition, of course, we are interested in becoming a point of connection between the university, the productive and public sectors.

We want the virtuous alliance between the academia, private and public sectors to come true,” said Rector Ignacio Sánchez.

large multi-national corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises and professional bodies. Many of the partners are household names such as Sony, Siemens, Jaguar Landrover, the RICS and the CBI to name just a few.

Employers provide work-related learning opportunities, contribute to the curriculum and help to define and verify a range of transferable World of Work skills, applicable to all graduate-entry positions. Students identify, develop and seek verification of their key competencies via three written statements assessed against criteria again developed with employer partners. Crucially, only students who successfully complete a final face-to-face interview with an employer are awarded a World of Work Skills Certificate.

Since 2010, LJMU has been increasingly working with higher education institutions around the world, sharing best practice on graduate employability. The British Council regards the World of Work Programme as a “best practice” approach to employability for universities.

A successful pilot program, funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education, has been completed with

Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Malaysia’s largest public university, and resulted in the formation of a new World of Work Malaysian Employer Advisory Group. This group included senior managers from GlaxoSmithKline, HSBC, Deloitte, ICAEW and Shell. Their input helped ensure that LJMU’s employability program was specifically tailored to Malaysia’s economic needs.

Further engagement activities, again supported by the British Council, have been completed in Vietnam and the UAE, and LJMU is now providing support to universities in Egypt, Jordan Morocco and Tunisia as they develop strategic employability approaches to boost graduate employability.

“Sharing the challenges surrounding career development and employability in universities and transferring knowledge about how to develop successful strategies is exciting”, said Terry Dray, LJMU’s director of graduate advancement and employer engagement. “Many universities with whom we have worked are now planning to develop and enhance services whilst working collaboratively with partners including employers and student groups.”

Movers & Shakers!

Professor David A. KirbyVice PresidentThe British University in EgyptEgyptPrevious AppointmentFounding Dean Faculty of Business Administration, Economics and Political ScienceThe British University in EgyptEgypt

Professor Miki SugimuraVice President for Academic Exchange Sophia UniversityJapan Ongoing AppointmentProfessor of Faculty of Human SciencesSophia University Japan

Professor Peter Mathieson President The University of Hong KongPrevious AppointmentDean of Medicine & Dentistry University of BristolEngland

Professor Ghassan AouadPresidentChartered Institute of BuildingUnited KingdomOngoing AppointmentVice President for Academic Affairs Gulf University for Science and TechnologyKuwait

Professor Bhanu Chowdhary Associate VP for Research Strategic InitiativesQatar UniversityQatar Previous AppointmentAssociate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies Texas A&M UniversityUSA

Dr Mohammad Khulaifi DeanCollege of LawQatar UniversityQatar Previous AppointmentAssociate Dean of Academic Affairs, College of Law Qatar UniversityQatar

Professor Dr Zainuddin Abdul Manan DeanFaculty of Chemical EngineeringUniversiti Teknologi MalaysiaMalaysia Previous AppointmentFounding Director of UTM-Process Systems Engineering Centre (PROSPECT)Universiti Teknologi MalaysiaMalaysia

Dr Abood Al SawafiVice ChancellorA’Sharqiyah UniversityOmanPrevious AppointmentVice ChancellorSohar UniversityOman

Professor Khin Yong LamVice President (Research) Nanyang Technological UniverstySingaporeOngoing AppointmentChief of Staff Nanyang Technological UniverstySingapore

Professor Young-Seog KimDirector of ADBL CenterSeoul National University of Science & TechnologySouth KoreaPrevious AppointmentOrganizer of Humaniod Robot Competition in International Robot Contest of Korea Seoul National University of Science & TechnologySouth Korea

Professor Dipak C. Jain, Ph.D.Director (Dean)Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn UniversityThailandPrevious AppointmentVisiting Professor/Academic AdvisorSasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration Chulalongkorn University Thailand

Dr. Bjorn KjerfveChancellorAmerican University of SharjahUAE Previous AppointmentPresidentWorld Maritime University Sweden

Please send an email to barathan@qs-asia.com to submit your entry.

4th QS-MAPLE conference in Abu Dhabi

May 6–7, 2014

Our most sincere gratitude

to all participants

President Pranab Mukherjee of India received a personal briefing on the progress of Indian universities when he accepted the first copy of the QS University Rankings: Asia. Mr John O’Leary, member of the Executive Board of QS World University Ranking, also attended the function at Rashtrapati Bhavan on May 12.

President of India first to see QS University Rankings: Asia 2014

A month later, India hosted another QS rankings launch on June 17, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who leads the largest democracy on the planet, and Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani were presented with the QS University Rankings: BRICS 2014.

PM Modi had been in office for just a month; and the fact that he found time for QS before he had even managed to meet President Obama or other leaders of the world is what makes this rankings launch exceptional.

Universities in India get their best scores this year in the area of employer reputation, and have shown improvements in terms of citations per faculty. But like Brazil and Russia, their scores for international faculty and students have been getting steadily worse since 2011.

Among the BRICS countries, China remains dominant in the university rankings. This reflects points made by Martin Carnoy, a professor of

President Shri Pranab Mukherjee (left), receiving the first copy of QS University Rankings: Asia

education at Stanford University, about an increasing trend for differentiation amongst BRICS institutions. According to Carnoy, the gap between the elite universities, which are often public, and the mass institutions, which are often private, is growing. BRICS governments are putting more money into elite institutions, and this is particularly true in China, where top institutions receive twice as much funding per pupil.

In a paper published in June, Stanford’s Carnoy said there was no evidence that the gap between elite and mass institutions was increasing in India, and the QS rankings appear to correlate with this. India’s highest ranking institution (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi) does not appear in the top 10 BRICS universities, and the number of ranking Indian institutions has decreased by one since 2009—while all the other BRICS countries have increased their representation.

WOW News | 64 QS EVENTS

The 4th QS-MAPLE conference and exhibition concluded on May 8 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The event was jointly co-hosted by Khalifa University and Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC).

4th QS-MAPLE convened more than 300 academics from as many as 40 countries—representing 149 entities that included higher education centers, government organizations and media—to exchange their knowledge, learn from the discussions and presentations, and network in a relaxed atmosphere.

The conference introduced three new elements this year: Live streaming of the conference to over 30 countries around the world, advanced polling mechanism for the more efficient progression of QS

4th QS-MAPLE—QS’s second biggest event—concludes in Abu Dhabi

Squared Debate, and the QS-MAPLE mobile app in order to provide the delegates all necessary information at the touch of their fingers.

4th QS-MAPLE featured two QS Squared Debate sessions on the topics of “private versus public universities’ quality of higher education” on day 1, and “Local versus international accreditations” on the second day. Both sessions were very well received by delegates, who had the chance to actively participate and voice their objection/support.

At the closing plenary, the 4th QS-MAPLE Creative Awards ceremony was held. The first prize winners of the competition were: Dar Al-Hekma University from Saudi Arabia for corporate video, University of Johannesburg from South Africa for international print advertisement, Nanyang Technological University – Corporate from Singapore for international student recruitment brochure, and the University of Newcastle from the United Kingdom for international Website.

Also at the closing plenary, QS Stars certificates were granted to the following universities: University of Malaya (five-star rating) and University Malaysia Perlis (three-star rating) from Malaysia, and University of Babylon (two-star rating) from Iraq. University of Malaya also signed a memorandum of understanding with QS to co-host QS Summer School Summit—a new addition to QS events portfolio—in December 2014.

The 4th QS-MAPLE conference carried on the altruistic motive of QS Asia Quacquarelli Symonds and offered US$6,000 in scholarships to two deserving students from Khalifa Universtiy—Dereck Bastienne, an undergraduate aerospace engineering Student; and Abdul Rahman Farraj, an undergraduate mechanical engineering student.

The 5th QS-MAPLE conference will be held in May 2015 in Doha, Qatar; with Qatar University as the organizing partner.

FOURTH QS MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICAPROFESSIONAL LEADERS IN EDUCATIONCONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION

4th QS-MAPLE