7 Administration Annual Report 2000 5 Academic Events Annual Report 2000 Contents Return to UNU/IIST's home page

6 External Linkages

 

6.1 Linkage with UN organisations

 

6.1.1 20th CONDIR and 47th Council Session of UNU

UNU/IIST hosted the 20th Conference of Directors of United Nations University and the 47th Council Session of United Nations University during 18-24 November. 53 participants from 33 countries attended the conference. The UNU Council is the highest governing body of the UNU. The Council Session reviewed the work of UNU Headquarter and 10 institutes of UNU over the world in the past year and planned the work in the coming year. The Chief Executive of the Macau SAR government and the Commissioner of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Macau SAR invited the Council members to a dinner respectively. The UNU Council members also visited Zhuhai by the invitation of Zhuhai Science and Technology Committee on 23 November.
 

6.1.2 El Nino Project Meeting

UNU/IIST hosted the mid-term meeting of the joint UNU (United Nations University), NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA) and UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) project on "Reducing the Impact of Environmental Emergencies - The Case of the "1997-98 El Nino" during 6-9 March 2000. 28 participants from 22 countries/territories all over the world attended the meeting. An opening ceremony was held on the morning of 6 March 2000 at which the Secretary for Public Works and Transportation of the Macau SAR Government was present and gave a speech.
 

6.1.3 Courses in Central Asia

The programme of courses in central Asia first proposed by UNESCO's head office has continued with the support of the UNESCO office in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Chris George presented a course on RAISE in Tajikistan in April 2000, and also visited a number of universities and institutes in Almaty. Richard Moore presented a similar course in Almaty in October 2000.
 

6.1.4 Improving university administration

Good administration is essential to run any institution effectively, to utilise its resources well and to plan for the future. IT is commonly used in university administration, but its introduction is often slow and poorly coordinated.

During 1999-2000, UNU/IIST carried out a joint project with UNESCO's Beijing office, also supported by the UNESCO Centre of Macau. The aims were twofold:
 

Two young lecturers from each of Mongolia, PRC China, and DPR Korea spent 3-4 months at UNU/IIST. Between them they produced specifications for management systems for
 


A prototype of the library administration system was also produced. All the results are freely available from UNU/IIST.

In July 2000 a workshop was organised by UNESCO in Beijing involving project members plus people from other universities and education administrators from the three countries. The results from the project were presented as well as ideas on how to implement them. There are good prospects for further work on implementation. In particular, there is a proposal from Mongolia to develop education management software across all levels of education (primary, secondary, tertiary, and vocational) with UNU/IIST help.
 

6.1.5 Other prospects

UNU/IIST was visited in July by Peter Bridgewater, Director of the Ecological Science Division of UNESCO. He is keen to develop a simple but distributed database system for the BRIM (Biosphere Reserve Integrated Monitoring) Programme. If he can find implementation effort from a Developing Country then UNU/IIST will undertake training and initial design work with the implementors.
 

6.2 Linkage with China

  1. The Macau administration was handed over to China in December 1999. In order to establish and develop good relations with the new host country, UNU/IIST made great efforts in 2000, and received a very positive response and generous support from the new Macau SAR Government and the Central People's Government of China. UNU/IIST continued its smooth operation in Macau.
  2. UNU/IIST was consulted by the Macau Legislative Assembly and the Macau SAR Government about the establishment of Macau Science and Technology Law.
  3. UNU/IIST gave two courses for Macau University in this period, and 3 training courses for Macau Meteorological Service on UNIX Shell Programming, Fortran Programming and Java Programming. UNU/IIST staff also gave a seminar on "On-line Implementation of Travel and Tourism Services" as part of the summer school on E-Tourism organised by the Institute for Tourism Studies, Macau.
  4. The Macau1999 web site marks the handover of Macau to China on 20 December 1999. This was completed by the end of March 2000. UNU/IIST has been invited to participate in the continuation of this project to develop the site into a portal web site for Macau.
  5. Macau Foundation and UNU/IIST agreed that the INCoM (Information Network Center of Macau) Project, Phase III, would focus on the design, implementation and development of the Internet Library for the UNESCO Center of Macau. The project cost was shared between UNU/IIST and Macau Foundation. The internet library now includes 116 fulltext books and magazines, more than 500 publications in its online catalogue, and 39 local artists' works in its Art Gallery.
  6. In order to further promote research and development of IT in Macau, the Office for the Development of Telecommunications and Information Technology (GDTTI) of the Macau SAR government and UNU/IIST signed an agreement on 30 June to jointly organise IT training courses for Macau professionals and conduct IT projects in Macau.

    7. On 17 August, GDTTI and UNU/IIST jointly organised at UNU/IIST the seminar "XML and Its Impact for E-Commerce", which was given by Prof. Erich Neuhold from German National Research Center for Information Technology, Darmstadt. More than 50 participants from 10 Macau institutions attended the seminar.
    On 23 October, UNU/IIST was invited by IPIM (Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute) and GDTTI to jointly organize an IT seminar at the Macau Landmark. This seminar was a part of the 5th Macau Trade and Investment Fair.
  7. On 10 March 2000, UNU/IIST received MOP 150,000 from Macau Foundation for Cooperation and Development (MFCD) for the sponsorship of a joint MFCD-UNU/IIST fellowship programme for Portuguese-speaking Countries and China. UNU/IIST proposed the fellowship programme to MFCD last year in order to further strengthen links between Macau, Portuguese-speaking countries and China through UNU/IIST training activities.
  8. UNU/IIST contributed to the EUREKA meets Asia workshop and exhibition, which was held in Macau from May 23 to May 27. Dr. Richard Moore presented the achievements of our MultiScript project in a seminar and UNU/IIST demonstrated some of our local projects at the Exhibition.
  9. Mr. Fu Guoyi gave a talk on "UNU/IIST and its local activities" at the Macau IT Exhibition 2000, organised by Macau Junior Chamber during 2-4 September.
  10. The director of UNU/IIST, as an invited international expert, joined a delegation of the Macau SAR government headed by the Chief Executive to visit Fuzhou and Xiamen during 5-8 September. On 14 November, UNU/IIST received a group of 4 visitors from Fuzhou, led by Mr Zhuo, Chairman of the Provincial Political Consultation Committee.
  11. In 26-28 July, the Workshop on University Management Software and Computer Science Curriculum Development took place in Beijing. This was a joint activity between UNESCO Beijing Office, UNESCO Center of Macau and UNU/IIST. Six ex-Fellows of UNU/IIST from China, DPR Korea and Mongolia, and Mr Chris George and Dr Richard Moore gave presentations at the Workshop.
  12. UNU/IIST organised the International Symposium on Software Industry in Developing Countries in Beijing in 22-23 August as part of the IFIP World Computer Congress 2000.
  13. The UNU/IIST Alumni Association organised fellows to visit 2000 China Hi-Tech Fair in Shenzhen during 14-15 October and Airshow China 2000 in Zhuhai on 8 November.
  14. In order to support China in developing its western part, Prof. Zhou visited Guiyang and Xi'an in 28 May - 3 June. Prof. Zhou and Prof. He Jifeng joined a delegation of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Macau as invited international experts to visit Xinjiang and Gansu in 14-23 September respectively. UNU/IIST also received 5 groups of visitors from Guiyang, Xi'an and Gansu.
  15. In order to further develop UNU/IIST training and research activities in the mainland of China, in 2000 UNU/IIST signed 7 MoUs with Chinese institutions. Among them 6 MoUs were with the institutions in the western part of China.

6.3 Memoranda of Understanding

In 2000, we signed the following Memoranda of Understanding.

On 21 February 2000, UNU/IIST and the Software Technology Centre of the Vocational Training Council (VTC/STC), Hong Kong signed an MoU with the aim to collaborate in research, training and consultancy, in particular to arrange courses jointly in Software Engineering and to seek joint software consultancy projects.

On 8 March 2000, School of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics, South Bank University (SBU/SCISM) in London signed an MoU with UNU/IIST to collaborate in research through the Centre for Applied Formal Methods at SBU/SCISM and to collaborate in teaching as appropriate.

On 24 May 2000, Department of Information Technology, Technical University of Denmark (IT/DTU) signed an MoU with UNU/IIST to find financial resources in Denmark for UNU/IIST fellowships for Chinese young professionals embarking on a PhD study at IT/DTU. The PhD subjects are in the area of formal techniques in software development.

On 30 June 2000, the Office for the Development of Telecommunications and Information Technology (GDTTI), Macau and UNU/IIST signed an MoU. According to this MoU, UNU/IIST will provide technical support to establish a web site for GDTTI, and both parties agreed to jointly organise training courses for fostering Macau IT professionals and conduct IT research and development projects in Macau. UNU/IIST will also assist GDTTI to further its international connections and cooperation.

On 3 November 2000, UNU/IIST signed an MoU with the Center of Information, Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, to jointly organise international training courses in Brazil and conduct joint research.

On 24 November 2000, UNU/IIST signed an MoU with the Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology. Under this MoU, the Department of Information and Communications of the Institute will receive UNU/IIST Fellows to be trained at the Department and also collaborate with UNU/IIST on research.

On 30 November 2000, UNU/IIST signed an MoU with University of Chittagong in Bangladesh to organise UNU/IIST training courses at the University and train its personnel at UNU/IIST.

In order to further develop UNU/IIST training and research activities in China, in 2000 UNU/IIST signed 7 MoUs with the following Chinese institutions:

(a) on 18 September, with the Xinjiang Department of Education and INESC Macau;
(b) on 22 September, with the Science and Technology Department of Gansu Province of China and the School of Information Science and Engineering of Lanzhou University;
(c) on 18 October, with the Xi'an Software Industry Association;
(d) on 6 November, with the Guizhou Academy of Sciences;
(e) on 14 December, with the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Department;
(f) on 15 December, with China Association for International Exchange of Personnel.
 

6.4 Off-shore Research and Fellowships

In order to conduct technical dissemination to more people through its former visiting experts and fellows, UNU/IIST has established a program of Off-shore R&D Projects.

The Off-Shore R&D Project with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, India, Semantics and Verification of Real-time Programs using Duration Calculus: Theory and Practice, 1997-1999, has been extended for another two years, 2000-2001, with new activities. In this project, Dr Paritosh Pandya and his colleagues are now working on extending the DCVALID checker to check timed CTL+DC formulas.

The Off-Shore R&D Project with Nanjing University, China, Model Checking for Realtime and Hybrid Systems. This project has successfully gained a grant of RMB 100,000 (US$12,091) from the NSF of China. They have also succeeded in developing algorithms and tools for checking the behaviour of timed automata (including linear hybrid automata) against linear duration invariants. They are now improving and enhancing the tool developed in the previous phase of the project and promoting industrial case studies. In 2000, two fellows from the project have been trained in UNU/IIST on this topic.

The Off-Shore R&D Project with Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. The project aims to formalise a variety of communication protocols, and to apply Duration Calculus in design and verification of real-time programs in multi-media systems. They have succeeded in modelling a multimedia protocol and verifying it with DCVALID. The project was granted RMB 120,000 (US$14,510) from the NSF of China during 1999-2001.

Under a joint fellowship programme with the University of Utrecht, UNU/IIST provided fellowships to two young scientists from Malawi and China to study under the supervision of Prof. C.A. Middelburg, former Senior Research Fellow at UNU/IIST. Funding was provided by the University to allow them to continue towards a Ph.D.
The two UNU/IIST fellows in Utrecht University were:
 
 
Yuan Zhaorui 02/01/1999 -- 31/12/2000  China
Edith Chipo Lwanda  04/01/1999 -- 30/06/2000 Malawi

Edith Chipo Lwanda's work resulted in material for a course on formal methods that she will give at her university in Malawi. Yuan Zhaorui is currently finishing her Ph.D. thesis.

info@iist.unu.edu, 08 Feb 2001
7 Administration Annual Report 2000 5 Academic Events Annual Report 2000 Contents Return to UNU/IIST's home page