In recent years, there has been increasing recognition at many levels that finding and implementing solutions to complex global problems requires deeply integrated activity from many disciplines, often called a transdisciplinary approach, and a workforce with the capabilities to implement such an approach. Traditionally higher education (HE) has been organised in discipline siloes with organisational, language and world view barriers to mutual understanding, let alone the sort of transdisciplinary action necessary to address complex global problems. This project will develop and implement within Thailand, a transdisciplinary postgraduate programme focused around the issue of climate change and specifically the call to action encompassed in Green Deal agendas. The courses will be implemented in the first instance by a Faculty of Agriculture (Kasetsart University), a Faculty of Public Health (Thammasat University) and a School of Environment, Resources and Development (Asian Institute of Technology) supported by Maastricht University (Netherlands) and Heidelberg University (Germany). Together the partners will develop and deliver nine transdisciplinary courses focused on Green Deal approaches, which will be combined at the end of the project to form a new degree of Master of Science in Transdisciplinary Practice.Partnerships with key government, private and civil society organisations are considered to be critical to ensuring the relevance and impact of the courses; so, these agencies will be involved from the beginning in planning the overall programme, developing and delivering curricula for each course. In addition, opportunities will be provided for personnel from these agencies to participate in courses for training.Through the Hub for Innovation in HE, the project seeks to engage other HEIs and relevant agencies to foster transdisciplinary education and practice, disseminate information and lessons learnt and sustain capacity building initiatives.

The MS FSCC project brings five leading Southeast Asian higher education institutions in agriculture and life sciences from the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia to build a joint master’s degree on the topic of Food Security and Climate Change. These HEIs have been working together within the Southeast Asian University Consortium for Graduate Education in Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC) since 1989 and have a concrete experience of exchanges in Science and Academic programmes but never reached the level of building a joint degree. The MS FSCC was designed on the model of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degrees in Europe. It aimed at responding to acute needs in the professional sector that developed recently, where each individual university may not have all the disciplinary resources to address such topics at the highest (postgraduate) level. This difficulty is generally increased when the professional targets of the learning objectives lead to multidisciplinary orientations of teaching and research. A consortium of universities sharing common learning objectives and organising the mobility of students according to their individual academic strengths was assumed to be in a better position than individual Universities to produce graduates relevant to the market needs. This is the case with Food Security and Climate Change to prepare graduates to work at implementing the commitments of the member countries at the last Paris Conference on Climate Change, while taking into consideration the challenges of food security linked with the recent implementation of the ASEAN integrated market. This corresponds to a new professional challenge in the area of agriculture in SE Asia. The UC has the necessary skills to address this challenge, but individually, none have all the skills needed to properly address the training needs in this domain. Building a joint degree and using mobility to get the best offer in the region may better address that new challenge rather than what they would do individually. Simultaneously with the development of the synopsis of joint MS FSCC programme was the challenge of offering a dual/double degree, an innovation that the UC had never done before. By building common rules to govern within the MS FSCC: exchange/mobility of students, mutual recognition of courses between pairs of Universities within the UC, organisation of summer schools to offer courses to accommodate all students, option to have one semester mobility in Europe to complement the local supply of courses, FSCC-wide quality assurance system recognised by each of the collaborating Universities, and joint evaluation of master thesis between academic teams, Departments, Faculties of the different co-graduating Universities, the UC has experimented agreements that lead to building other post graduate joint programmes, a major institutional innovation in the SE Asian academic world. Whereas building this joint degree was much inspired by the European experience of the Erasmus Mundus programme, it required several adaptations and innovative rules in the participating Universities’ academic systems. These adaptations took more time than initially expected as it had to be accepted in five Universities in parallel and in real practice, for real students, in a real joint programme, and not just in theory. These innovations have been clearly identified, and at least they have been addressed in the case of a first collaborative programme, run with three successive cohorts of students.

The adoption of Industry 4.0 by developed countries poses a significant threat to other countries and nations. It is expected that each country will face a number of challenges related to the skill level of its employees. Industry 4.0 will provide expertise in information technology, data analytics… in the industrial sectors. The result is a growing need for skilled employees trained in cross-cutting areas and capable of managing new processes and information systems. The aim of this project is to build Skills 4.0 THrough UniversitY and Entreprise Collaboration (SHYFTE) by analysing the gap between the skills acquired in HEIs and the skills required by industry 4.0, and develop a new model of emergent skills in line with the needs of the industry of the future. To provide a performant job market platform in Thailand, China and Malaysia. SHYFTE project will provide an emergent skill development strategy in both EU and Asia with main focus on four research domains: Industrial engineering and management, Software Engineering and Big data analytics, Wireless and Networks analytics, and Artificial Intelligence by incorporating the competencies of all partners to fill the skill gap in Asian partner countries. The overall aims of SHYFTE project are:- To support academic and administrative staff in Asian HEIs to design and implement new methodology and learning materials to enhance and improve the competences and skills related to Industry 4.0. That will enable HEIs organizations aligning their learning program strategy both to the requirements of the regional industry and the global labor market. - To build and strengthen links between HEIs and Industry 4.0, and promote the job market by minimizing the skills gap.- To build Skills 4.0 LABs or Learning centers of excellence in Asian Partner's HEIs to enable each of them to become the reference center in its country and disseminate the outcomes of the project nationally and regionally.

Currently Thailand clearly lacks in capacities to supply the beverage industry with adequately trained students and qualified non-academic staff. There are either technical engineers with technical knowledge & skills, but lacking of deeper knowledge on food quality, hygiene, production processes, etc., or food scientists, less skilled in engineering and without deeper knowledge in beverage technology. Now the Thai beverage industry trains their employees in house or in a limited number by Universities or overseas. The last option is only possible for few selected employees. A proper structured and sustainable collaborative concept for high quality continuing professional development (CPD) training for beverage technology is not established.To overcome these gaps a consortium of Thai and EU universities and companies of the beverage industry will establish systematically an independent joint Academy, with hubs in Thailand and EU, to enable a new sustainable collaboration between the partners for a continuing needs analysis, for developing new demand driven educational products using innovative pedagogical approaches and teaching tools to be used in CPD and higher Education (HE). Special emphasis will be given also to hygiene and environmental aspects and skills like teamwork, critical thinking and English language. The developed educational products will be qualified according international standards and implemented in a postgraduate master, in existing curricula to have an optional focus in beverage technology with the option for double/joint degrees with EU universities. Further the Academy will establish a high quality and certified LLL program using existing facilities and a certification scheme for different profiles like quality and safety manager, brewing technologist, wine technologist, etc.With the postgraduate education and the CPD training an impact will be achieved both in short time as well long term with the tuned curricula.