According to a recent report with the attempt to increase the competitive capability of the country’s industries, Thailand’s CMKL University this year set up a major project to drive deep-tech training and expand work-based research, as well as to offer its first PhD and master’s degree courses.
CMKL University is a collaborative initiative of Carnegie Mellon University and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL), established late last year to offer master’s and PhD degrees in electrical and computer engineering.
In its latest move, the university has announced it will expand its offerings with short-courses offering deep training in key potential technologies, and to continue to collaborate with the large corporates to increase their competitiveness through improving productivity and efficiency.
The president of CMKL University said the mission of CMKL University is to contribute to raising the country’s competitiveness by empowering the capabilities of large corporates as well as to build vast deep-tech human resources.
It is now planning short training courses in artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, data analytics, and cybersecurity, to be offered to the public with an aim to create a significant number of skilled workers for the future.
The school this year joined hands with the Electronic Transaction Development Agency (ETDA) to teach cybersecurity training courses.
The President also stated that they aim to offer deep-tech training courses to the general public as well as a tailor-made course for agencies and organisations. The public component will be for executives, deep-tech staff, operations workers and university students. The tailor-made course would be calibrated for private-sector organisations and government agencies.
By 2019, it aims to train 200 to 300 people, using three to four organisations to deliver the tailor-made courses.
The school is also committed to expanding its collaboration with the large corporates for work-based research. The idea behind work-based research is to pick a real-world problem or need and to conduct research and development to address the pain-point but also to empower business efficiency to achieve the company’s goals.
Since being established, the school has worked with two major industry players – both are five-year collaborations.
The goal for one of the link-ups is to improve logistics efficiency and productivity, as well as to create new products and services. Needed technologies include data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Meanwhile, the link-up with the other group is for work-based research is to empower its smart-farm strategy. It needs technology to increase product safety while also reducing costs. Among the technologies they need is the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud services and Big Data analytics.
The collaborations are done under a team-driven approach, with teams composed of both PhD and master’s students along with lecturers and researchers from both KMITL and Carnegie Mellon University, together with human resources from the companies.
The president noted that everyone involved will work together from zero until we achieve the goal – that why it needs (five years) time in collaboration. He urged everyone to work towards creating an impact on business in order to finally impact the country’s competitiveness.
Moreover, CMKL University has also joined hands with ETDA to conduct co-research and development in cybersecurity and forensic data analytics. Its one-year project started in mid-2018.
It was noted that this kind of collaboration is aimed at creating a real impact on every dimension, including building the deep-tech human resource capabilities, addressing the real problems and needs of organisations, and creating an impact on the country’s competitive advantage as a whole.
By 2019, CMKL University aims to double the number of collaborations between organisations and agencies both in the private and government sectors. It is now planning work with a major tech company around blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies.
