The Sakai-ASEAN Week Executive Committee launched the SAKAI ASEAN Week Science and Technology Student Exchange Program in 2014 and every year they invite university students in the field of science and technology from universities in Cambodia, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore. Each university sends two students to Sakai and Osaka Prefecture University welcomes them on campus to offer the opportunity of laboratory exchange. One of the goals of the program is to encourage them to attend graduate school at OPU in the future.

In 2017, six students from the first group (Cambodia, Brunei, Malaysia) visited OPU Oct 5 to 13. In December, two more students from Singapore will come.

After four years, the program was expanded and the duration of the laboratory exchange at OPU extended from three days to six days.

On Oct 2, the student delegation visited OPU President Dr Hiroshi Tsuji and had meetings with the university staff and the faculty members of their host laboratory.

Each of the visiting students belonged to different laboratories depending on their research field.

2 Students from RUPP

• Laboratory of Prof Michihiko Kataoka (Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Dept of Applied Life Sciences)
• Laboratory of Dr Teruo Wada (Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Dept of Applied Life Sciences)

1 Student from UTM and 1 from UTB

• Laboratory of Prof Michifumi Yoshioka, Prof Katsuhiro Honda, Prof Noriyuki Fujimoto, Dr Yusuke Nojima, Dr Katufumi Inoue (Graduate School of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Science) and Prof Tomoharu Nakashima (Graduate School of Humanities and Sustainable System Sciences, Dept of Sustainable System Sciences)

1 Student from UTB

• Laboratory of Prof Koji Mimura（Graduate School of Engineering, Dept of Mechanical Engineering）

Each student visits their own laboratory and participates in laboratory exchanges such as presentations and discussions to deepen their understanding about the field.

Every day after visiting the lab, the students had a brief meeting at the international office and commented on OPU:
“I think faculty members are very friendly and the relationship between professors and students is close.”
“Senior students help other students very much, and that’s good.”
“I was surprised to see that the number of female students in science and technology is very small.”

One of the students said “I would like to attend graduate school at OPU.”

Although short, the visiting students seemed to have enjoyed their laboratory experience and they shared information and advice with each other about their research. For the OPU students, it was a really good opportunity to interact with students from Cambodia, Brunei and Malaysia. The program was meaningful for both OPU students and visitors.