Universitas Gadjah Mada and University of Liege, Belgium, agreed to strengthen ties between them. An MoU was made to expand cooperation in academic and research areas.
UGM Rector, Prof. Ir. Dwikorita Karnawati, M.Sc., in her speech expressed gratitude to the efforts of the development of this cooperation. According to the rector, the efforts to strengthen this cooperation is essential for improving the quality of academic research on both sides.
Dwikorita also explained that UGM is currently conducting research distribution by cooperating with various industry partners.
"We also hope to eventually be working with industries in Belgium in an attempt to share research findings," she explained on Wednesday (16/3) at the signing of the MoU in the Meeting Room of UGM leadership.
Jean-Claude Marcourt, Vice-President and Minister of Economy, Industry, Innovation and New Technology of the Regional Government of Wallonia, and the Vice-President and Minister for Higher Education, Research and Media of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels, assess this cooperation as quite important. He hoped that implementation of this cooperation in the field of academic research can be enhanced further.
"The signing of this MoU is an important moment to increase the research and academic collaboration with many other universities in Belgium," he hoped.
He said that the Belgian government has just had a meeting with President Joko Widodo. The Belgian government led by Princess Astrid brings business delegation as many as 300 businessmen and 127 companies to Indonesia.
"The Belgian government wants to strengthen cooperation in various fields such as economy, agriculture, marine and others," he explained.
Pascal Leroy, Vice Rector of International Relations, University of Liege, said that they had collaboration earlier with UGM which in this case was Faculty of Animal Science. The strengthening of this partnership aims to widen cooperation in other fields, such as exchange of faculty and students, collaborative research, publications, organizing seminars, conferences and symposia.
Pascal said that in the near future, they will work on collaborative projects called germ plasm evaluation program. The program is on Indonesian cattle and Belgian Blue cattle in Indonesia.