Title: The Japan USA-VIETNAM WORKSHOP on Research and Education in Systems, Computation, and Control Engineering, May, 1998 Date: June 23, 1998 The National Science Foundation's offices in Tokyo and in Paris periodically report on developments abroad that are related to the Foundation's mission. These documents present facts for the use of NSF program managers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy. Special Scientific Report #98-11 (June 16, 1998) The following report was prepared by Dr. Devendra P. Garg, Program Director for the Dynamics Systems and Control Program at the National Science Foundation. Planning for the workshop described in the following report began in November 1996 when Dr. Garg visited Japan as a Visiting Research Fellow (short-term) under the sponsorship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Professor Katsuhisa Furuta of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan served as host scientist for Dr. Garg during his visit and was integral in the planning and organization of the workshop. Dr. Garg may be reached via email at: dgarg@nsf.gov. THE JAPAN-USA-VIETNAM WORKSHOP ON RESEARCH AND EDUCATION IN SYSTEMS, COMPUTATION, AND CONTROL ENGINEERING, MAY, 1998 The Japan-USA-Vietnam Workshop on Research and Education in Systems, Computation, and Control Engineering, was held in Hanoi, Vietnam, from May 13 to 15, 1998. In addition to the support received from the AD/ENG office, Dynamic Systems and Control Program (CMM Cluster) in the CMS Division and the Knowledge Modeling and Computational Intelligence Program in the ECS Division, and from the INT Division in the SBE Directorate, this workshop was supported by the OMRON Company of Japan, and Rockwell Automation, Allen-Bradley Company of USA. Local support was provided by the National Center for Natural Science and Technology, the Institute of Mathematics, the Institute of Information Technology, the Hanoi University of Technology, and the National Council of Fundamental Research, all located in Hanoi, Vietnam. The Hanoi Workshop attracted over 300 participants. Fourteen delegates were from the United States. Of these, the NSF award made to the PI for the workshop provided the travel expenses of twelve delegates. Faculty members among these delegates had their affiliation with institutions such as MIT, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of California @ Berkeley, Boston University, University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign, University of Florida @ Gainesville, California State University @ Sacramento, New Mexico State University @ Las Cruses, University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor, and the University of Colorado @ Boulder. Under-represented minority, women, established researchers, as well as relatively younger faculty members composed the US group. Two of these delegates were recent CAREER awardees. Dr. Kishan Baheti (ENG/ECS) and I represented NSF. In addition, there were fifteen delegates from Japan, and 270 delegates from Vietnam. Other countries represented were France, Korea, Thailand, Philippines, and Hungary. Dr. Baheti and I made a presentation entitled "Control Engineering Research and Education for the 21st Century: Unexpected Turns, Unprecedented Opportunities" in the opening session of the Workshop. In addition, we participated in the technical and discussion sessions all through the workshop. The organizers had prepared the preprints of the full-length papers delivered at the workshop as a bound volume that was made available before the workshop to all participants. I made a presentation on behalf of NSF at the closing session as well. The workshop was deemed to be a huge success. Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka of the University of California @ Berkeley, the PI for the workshop proposal, is currently preparing a final report of the workshop for submission to NSF. That report will also include the evaluation of the workshop by the participants. In general, the participants found the disseminated material to be extremely educational and informative. The workshop provided an excellent opportunity to develop a first-hand appreciation of the prevailing status of research and education in science and technology in Vietnam. A strong sentiment was expressed to continue similar activities having collaboration with Japan and other countries. Plans were made to prepare write-ups about this NSF supported workshop that will appear in ASME and IEEE sponsored newsletters. Following the Hanoi workshop, I made a seminar visit on May 18, 1998 to the Asian Institute of Technology, located in Klong Luang, about 40 km north of Bangkok, Thailand. AIT is an institution which was established to take up a leadership role in the promotion of technological change and its management for sustainable development in the Asia and Pacific Region, through high-level education, research and outreach activities which integrate technology, planning, and management. The current enrollment at AIT is well over 1000 students, mostly from Asia, and 200 faculty and international staff. Only diploma, Master's and Ph.D. degrees are awarded at AIT. It does not have an undergraduate program. At the Asian Institute of Technology, I held meetings with the faculty of the Institute including Dean Mario Tabucanon of the School of Advanced Technologies. During my presentation, I described some of the innovative NSF programs such as CAREER and GOALI, and visited the AIT laboratories in the area of robotics and control. In addition, I described the opportunities available via the INT programs to relatively younger researchers, e.g., graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, from USA to participate in international research projects. On May 19, 1998, I visited the corporate headquarters and manufacturing facilities of the Satien Stainless Steel Public Company Limited, located in Ladkrabang, near Bangkok. During this visit, I was able to study a typical Thai company and its mode of interaction with local educational institutions. Prior to the meeting in Hanoi, I stopped in Taiwan to visit Tamkang University. Tamkang University, the first institution of higher learning established by the Taiwanese people, is a private university. It offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs through its College of Science and Engineering; College of Liberal Arts, Foreign Languages, Business Management; and the Department of Mass Communication, and Information Management. One campus of Tamkang University is located in Taipei, and the other is located in Tamsui, near Taipei. I presented a seminar entitled "Collaborative Research Opportunities via the National Science Foundation Programs" on May 11, 1998. The seminar was primarily attended by faculty members from the College of Science and Engineering, and a number of research scholars and graduate students. The talk was well received. Several inquiries in the question/answer session related to seeking additional information for pursuing avenues for research collaboration. A description of NSF's new initiative on Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence (KDI) generated a great deal of interest. My visit to Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand was professionally rewarding in that it provided an excellent opportunity to interact with leading researchers and educators from various countries, and to exchange information and ideas in both educational reform and research in emerging areas of engineering and technology. It was evident that several of the faculty I met were well aware of the research being conducted in U.S.A through international journal publications and conferences. However, many of them were not familiar with the NSF process of funding research. Their desire to collaborate with US researchers was extremely high. In addition, they were keen to learn about the areas of research emphasis identified by the National Science Foundation in the forthcoming years.