Four UK research-led engineering universities under the sterling group, which shares a commitment to UK excellence in Engineering research and teaching, successfully made their sixth annual visit to Vietnam from 9 to 17 September 2013.  Participants this year included five academics from the Universities of Aston, Loughborough, Newcastle, and Strathclyde. 

The British Council in Vietnam organised a wide range of activities for the participating universities, aiming for both their raising profile and exploring partnership possibilities with key engineering universities and international schools in Hanoi, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City.  The activities included:

• Public seminars and a series of academic lectures to more than 1,500 students and faculty members to introduce the UK excellent teaching methodologies as well as up-to-date research in various engineering areas such as Nano Materials, Bioprocess Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Marine Engineering, and Statistical Physics.
• Meetings with management and faculty members of key engineering universities to discuss collaborations in joint research, joint training, student mobility, and staff exchange.
• An Engineering Education Workshop for 60 academics and management members working at engineering universities in key cities of Vietnam. The Workshop was an opportunities for academics of both sides to exchange expertise, identify issues, solutions and good practices in Engineering education areas.

A success factor of the Sterling Group Mission this year was the contribution of the British Council’s UK-ASEAN Knowledge Partnership initiative which offered a fund of GBP30,000 for bidding.  As a result of the fruitful discussions, nine proposals were submitted as the application for the fund to start up the collaboration between the participating sterling group and Vietnamese universities.