The “VNU/UTokyo Strategic Partnership Project” started in 2015. The project was firstly launched from an education collaboration of analytical chemistry to leading universities in developing countries in cooperation with the Japan Analytical Instruments Manufacturers’ Association (JAIMA) and foster the growth of capacity in analytical chemistry and its role in education and research. Analytical technologies are important in Vietnam because Vietnam is rapidly growing country and the analytical technology is the foundation for the science and technology.

VNU University of Science, Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU-HUS) and UTokyo had been discussing collaboration possibilities and strengthen mutual understanding to prepare a syllabus and curriculum of analytical chemistry. Both sides continued to improve syllabus, had more than 15 meetings in Hanoi to finalize the syllabus. After the completion of the joint syllabus program and the effective implementation of the first on-site activities, the idea of establishing an advanced laboratory dedicated to education and training activities at VNU-HUS had been considered, based on the upgrading of the existing facilities at VNU-HUS. In 2018, with the cooperation of JAIMA, analytical equipment and laboratory instruments were installed, and an analytical R&E center was established in VNU-HUS. Also, since 2018 VNU-HUS faculty and graduate students have been invited to analytical chemistry laboratory training in the School of Engineering of UTokyo and trained to grow teaching assistant (TA) for the analytical experiments.

Based on the success, we also started the research collaboration for environmental pollution management because it is serious social problem in Vietnam. Several technologies are being developed such as field chemical testing devices using microfluidic devices, environmental monitoring systems, combination with physical sensing technologies and data science. Vietnam government and industries are involved in this research project. The output will be implemented in Vietnam and contribute to environmental management. Also, excellent analytical technicians will be provided from this project by establishing certificated analytical training courses, which are originated from the analytical chemistry education collaboration established so far. Currently, the collaboration fields are expanding to other area: medical diagnosis such as telemedicine and home diagnosis devices, data science, physical sensing such as remote-sensing, and economics and policy sciences. Vietnam is an rapidly growing country, and the long-term collaboration in education, research, an business is quite important. This project will be the basis of this continuous collaboration between Vietnam and Japan. These collaboration will also contribute to SDGs with these technologies and human resources.

The activities will be expanded to other ASEAN countries as well.

Expanding to Medical, Biology, Agriculture, Economics, Physical sensing, and Data data science