COLLABORATION WITH CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY
BANGKOK, THAILAND

The practice of engineering is certainly becoming more international in nature, and will only continue to do so. As such, it is important that we provide our students with international experiences during their education. At the same time, recent industrial expansion and new research initiatives have evolved in many developing countries around the world. Given these factors, CEES has been building on collaborative activities with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. This collaboration includes both the educational and research components of our mission.

Chulalongkorn is the premier university in the country of Thailand, having been founded in 1899 in honor of Rama V, the King of Thai that you may remember as the young prince in the play "The King and I" or the movie "Anna and the King". Thailand is a country of over 60 million people, and only the best of the best are able to attend Chulalongkorn, so we obviously have the chance to work with some very talented students. However, much as was true in U.S. universities in the 1950's and 1960's, most of the faculty have not remained current in their field of expertise by conducting research. This also has the side effect that technology development in Thailand has lagged behind other countries. For these reasons, the Thai government and Chulalongkorn University have identified strategic areas to build collaborative relationships with select U.S. universities. In the environmental engineering/hazardous waste management area, the University of Oklahoma and the New Jersey Institute of Technology were selected for this purpose. This collaboration involves U.S. faculty leading and advising research students at Chulalongkorn, as well as hosting Chulalongkorn students at the home university for four to five months per year. CEES faculty spend at least two weeks per year in Bangkok teaching and supervising research, with two faculty visiting back-to-back and offering a semester-long course in four weeks.