KUNMING, CHINA – 01 July 2026 – Leadership from the Asian Institute of Technology’s (AIT) Faculty of Public Policy and Sustainable Development (FPSD) conducted a highly successful institutional visit to Yunnan Normal University (YNU) to lay the groundwork for academic and research collaboration. The FPSD delegation, led by FPSD Dean Associate Professor Dr. Thi Phuoc Lai Nguyen and Deputy Dean, Prof. Kyoko Kusakabe, was warmly received YNU’s School of Management leadership, including Dean Professor Li Yan, Vice Dean Ms. Zhou Ning, and Department of Public Administration Chair Mr. Ding Wen, along with key faculty representatives from the school.
At the meeting, Dean Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lai showed a concise video introduction of AIT and presented the FPSD while the other party screened their own promotional video and provided a brief overview of its school’s internationalization strategy and its vision for collaboration with AIT.
The two parties engaged in discussions for potential areas of collaboration, including joint research on topics such as governance and public policy, social innovation and people’s livelihoods, resilience, climate change, and sustainable development. Organization of joint workshops and conferences, joint programs, and faculty exchange programs were also discussed. As an immediate first step, the universities discussed an initiative to send YNU faculty members to AIT at no institutional cost to AIT. Both parties expressed a strong commitment to formalizing these collaborative efforts through an upcoming Memorandum of Agreement (MoA).
Following the leadership meeting, our FPSD professors provided short guest lecture seminars to a number of faculty members and YNU students. The seminars generated a lot of interest from the students in applying to AIT. This prompted a discussion to have AIT provide a dedicated online session with YNU students to provide more detailed guidelines on the AIT application process as well as on the how to access the study support from the existing collaboration of AIT with China Scholarship Council (CSC).
