RIKEN and Universiti Sains Malaysia sign memorandum of agreement
13 July 2012 (Volume 7 Issue 6)
RIKEN President Ryoji Noyori and Universiti Sains Malaysia Vice-Chancellor Dato’ Omar Osman commemorate the signing of an MoA in Japan with RIKEN and USM colleagues.
As part of its ongoing program to develop scientific links with leading regional and international research centers, RIKEN put in place a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) at a signing ceremony in Japan on 6 April 2012. The agreement, concluded by RIKEN President Ryoji Noyori, who holds an honorary Doctor of Science from USM, and the university’s vice-chancellor, Dato’ Omar Osman, will further strengthen the ongoing collaboration between the two institutions.
RIKEN’s association with USM—one of the largest universities in Malaysia and a leading research institution in Southeast Asia—began in 1993 with the first academic exchange between RIKEN and USM. Since then a number of USM students and researchers have been sent to RIKEN to pursue research in a wide range of fields including biomass, chemical biology and immunology. Future research collaboration will be overseen at USM by microbiologist K. Sudesh Kumar who earned his PhD at RIKEN between 1995 and 1999 and then subsequently carried out research there until 2001.
The memorandum will help to expand the number of fields covered under the collaborative umbrella, an example of which is the launching of the USM-RIKEN joint Laboratory for Bioprobe Discovery in September 2011, where researchers make use of the rich natural resources of Southeast Asia in order to produce drugs for dengue fever and malaria.
