Researchers establish a German-Thai center of excellence in digital engineering in Bangkok

A cooperation agreement signed in Magdeburg in October 2013, is now taking on concrete form for researchers. In a series of workshops with over one hundred attendees, they are currently in the Thai capital conferring on how they should organize the planned digital engineering center in the Science Park of the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA).

It is supposed to open at the end of the year. On the one hand, it is intended to enable students to earn degrees in this field at their universities. On the other hand it is intended to establish digital technologies in Thailand’s industry, too.

Partnerships with industry and the country’ most important universities, including those in Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Khon Kaen, will assure the success of both goals.

The Master’s program in digital engineering, which is unique in Germany, is going to become a dual degree program offered at Thai universities, too, in the future. Graduates will earn a dual Master’s degree recognized in both countries. 

The researchers from Magdeburg’s Fraunhofer Institute and their colleagues from Otto von Guericke University have been working together in their joint Center for Digital Engineering for years.

The Fraunhofer IFF’s Regional Office in Bangkok has been maintaining close contacts with the country’s industries and universities for years, contacts which they all intend to intensify with this opportunity.

King Mongkut’s University of Technology in Thonburi and North Bangkok, Chiang Mai University, Thammasat University, Kasetsart University, Khon Kaen University, Mae Fah Luang University and Prince of Songkla University will be involved in the center of excellence. Each of the Thai universities, with impressive enrollment figures and even as many as 60000 students, stands for one specific facet of research, e.g. engineering, medical engineering, urban and infrastructure development, the environment or logistics.

http://www.iff.fraunhofer.de/en/international/asean-office.html