The U21 PVC Research meeting was held at the National University of Singapore  from 2 to 4 April 2008, with delegates from Birmingham, Glasgow, Hong Kong, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Melbourne,  Nottingham, Queensland, NUS and UNSW.  The meeting was chaired by Andrew Nee of NUS.

A number of presentations were made over the two days:
 

Barry Halliwell, Deputy President (Research & Technology) made a presentation on NUS research overview, followed by Q&A from the U21 members.

Mike Saunders and Vladan Babovic presented the activities of the NUS Environmental Research Institute (NERI) and the Singapore-Delft Water Alliance (SDWA) respectively. There is much synergy between the U21 Water Sustainability Program with those of NERI and SDWA. Mike mentioned that there is much opportunity for collaboration in water research.

U21 Water Project

Paul Tam from HKU made a presentation on the development of the Water Sustainability Program. Joseph H W Lee of the HKU CE Department is the Program Manager and also a team member of the U21 Water Futures for Sustainable Cities Program. Details can be found in: http://www.universitas21.com/Water/waterteam.html

Some of the activities included the launching of the Journal of Hydro-Environment Research and a U21 technical session on Urban Water Management was held on 17 January 2007, followed by an International Symposium on Sustainable and Safe Water Supplies from 18-19 January 2007. Details can be found in: http://www.universitas21.com/Water/waterreport.html  Another seminar on “Advances in Water Resources Management” was held on 25 March 2008 at HKU.

Chris Baker mentioned that the U21 Graduate Research Conference with Water as the theme will take place from 20 to 25 July 2008 at the University of Birmingham. This could be used to stimulate international collaborative initiatives in water research. Details can be found in: http://www.universitas21.com/event/PGConference2008.html

U21 members further suggested that the next U21 meeting could be tied to a water symposium. Some of the points to note are: (a) seek funding support (seed or otherwise), (b) identify active drivers, (c) match of common interests, (d) address global perspectives.

U21 Healthcare and Multiculturalism Programs

There has been little progress in these two areas since the last meeting. Paul suggested contacting University of Virginia (UVa) as they have ongoing programs in healthcare. It was noted that they will be hosting the 2008 U21 Health Sciences annual meeting from 17-19 September 2008. Details can be found in: http://www.u21health.org/meetings/virginia2008/index.html
 

U21 Initiatives

Research Students Scheme for Collaborative Research between U21 Members

A number of universities will be sending postgraduate students to the U21 Post-Graduate Research Conference in Birmingham.

Andrew mentioned that NUS is member of two other associations, viz., International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and Global Enterprise of Micro-Mechanics and Molecular Medicine (GEM4), and under the arrangements of these two associations, PhD students with continue to receive their scholarship from their home universities and can spend up to two years in a member university with tuition fee waiver.   U21 members agreed that the PhD student attachment scheme can be further explored. However, joint or double degrees will be more difficult to achieve. Other issues to be resolved include IP arising from research attachment, recognition of modules to be taken in member universities, etc. It was also mentioned by members from the Australian universities that the average age of PhD students is around 35 years old and there would be family commitments, etc., which could prevent them from spending time in overseas universities. David commented that time spent by PhD students in other U21 universities could be within the context of an existing research collaboration or used to help develop research collaborations.

On the whole, members present supported this initiative. Steve further mentioned that each member could fund a scholarship under a joint project in an approved or new program. David suggested that this group should outline the principles and request the Deans of Graduate Schools to work out the details of how such a scheme might work.

Visualisation

During the U21 meeting held in UVa in 2007, members visited the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH). Subsequently, the U21 members expressed keen interest in the development of digital documentation of natural resources as a pilot project.  It was noted that a U21 Digital Humanities Conference will be held in UVa from 24-26 September 2008, and details can be found in http://www.ht.lu.se/upload/LUPDF/HT/anstalld/htbulletinen/Universitas21_Information.pdf

Paul suggested for each member university to send one representative to participate in the UVa conference and report this in the next PVC (Research) meeting. A similar arrangement could also be considered for the Water Conference.

Major Research Focuses and Future Directions in Member Universities

Each member university made a detailed presentation on their research focuses and directions, followed by questions and answers.  Members noted many common research areas of interests from the member universities, notably in: Nano-science and technology; environmental technology and water research; ICT; energy research; medical sciences; brain and cognitive science, etc.

PVC (Research) Business Meeting

Bob Webb mentioned that his prospective VC, Professor David Greenaway, had proposed that Nottingham be the host for the next U21 PVC (Research) meeting.  Andrew will prepare a report for this meeting and collate all the items discussed and circulate to the members.

The following items shall be further deliberated:

a) Knowledge transfer (guidelines and mechanisms)
b) Managing research centres and initiatives
c) Research leadership.

CRISP is a university-level research centre headed by its director, Kwoh Leong Keong. CRISP received research funding from several sources such as the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (ASTAR) and NUS.