Imperial celebrates growing links with Thailand

Imperial celebrated its growing links with Thailand by announcing several new programmes to strengthen connections with the country.

Leaders from 13 Thai universities and officials from Thailand’s Ministry of Education visited Imperial - which has just been ranked as the UK and Europe's top university - to see how it will work closely with Thai researchers and students in global health and engineering.

Science and technology are a key pillar of the UK–Thailand Strategic Partnership Roadmap, which was signed between the two governments earlier this year. 

New global health fellowships 

Imperial has launched new global health fellowships for early-career Thai researchers to spend up to a year in London. 

Funded by the UK Government’s International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF) and delivered in partnership with the British Council, the Early Career Fellowship scheme will enable three early career researchers from Thailand to join Imperial’s world-leading School of Public Health. 

The students will undertake placements within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis (GIDA) and the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (Jameel institute). Placements will begin in the 2024/25 academic year.   

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Training the next generation of engineers 

Imperial has also announced plans for new PhD Scholarships based at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. The Department, which has had strong links with Mahanakorn University of Technology for decades, will see the two universities train the next generation of experts in semiconductors and integrated circuit design for future healthcare technologies. 

Professor Pantelis Georgiou hosted the President of Mahanakorn University of Technology and the Deputy Permanent Secretary of The Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation to discuss the new partnership and celebrate the long-standing links between the two universities. 

Thai Scholarships 

There are several scholarship schemes to support Thai students to further their research, education and careers at Imperial. 

Earlier this year Imperial launched the ASEAN-UK SAGE: Women in STEM Scholarship. 
 
Imperial will host two Thai scholars through the scholarship, which is fully funded by the ASEAN-UK Government SAGE programme to encourage more women and girls to pursue STEM careers. 
 
The Thai Government also supports more than 30 Imperial students with scholarships. 

Imperial and Thailand 

Imperial has a thriving Thai community with more than 180 students at Imperial. There are also more than 1,300 alumni living in Thailand. 

Imperial academics have co-authored 570 joint publications with partners in Thailand since 2018 and key research partners include Mahanakorn University of Technology, Mahidol University, Chulalongkorn University, and Kohn Kaen University. 

Academics at Imperial’s MRC Centre for Global Infections Disease Analysis (MRC GIDA) are working closely with Thailand’s National Health Foundation and the Health Intervention and Technology Assessment Program (HITAP) across a number of health projects. 

Imperial is also part of a Southeast Asian Research Collaboration (SEARC) with Thai and UK experts producing vaccines and medicines for humans and animals in Thailand using biotechnology. This involves programming bacterial and mammalian cells to make proteins for new bio-pharmaceuticals.   

Imperial works in close collaboration with Khon Kaen University on research into cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer with low incidence in the West, but endemic in Thailand.  

This article was first published on 5 June by Imperial College London.