Institut Teknologi Bandung

The delegates, comprised of 14 lecturers, 7 staff, and 22 USM students participated in various activities concerning the regional issue of sustainability, one of the most important aspects of the 17 SDGs issue.

The visitation was divided into two main events, an international joint workshop ITB-USM with the theme of “Physics of Earth and Sustainability” and an international student inbound held between the 15th to 21st of March 2023.

The two big universities from Indonesia and Malaysia have the same focal attention regarding the regional issue of sustainability in the ASEAN. Strengthening and accelerating said issue will become a shared matter. Moreover, Indonesia acted in this year’s ASEAN chairmanship, establishing ASEAN Matters: Epicentrum of Growth.

All USM students were partnered with ITB students and participated in the student exchange program as well as credit-earning to take a 2 credits class in ITB, FI-3261 subject Econophysics (Econophysics and Sociophysics) in the Physics Undergraduate Study Program, FMNS ITB with Dr. Acep Purqon as its lecturer.

The activity was welcomed by the Dean of FMNS ITB, Prof. Dr. Wahyu Srigutomo as the representative Dean of FMNS ITB, and Dr. Fadzli M. Nazri, as the representative Vice-Dean of USM. The two top universities hold an important position in solving various issues as well as creating innovation and technology to solve regional problems in ASEAN.

The chief activity organizer, Dr. Acep Purqon expressed that the event was also a kick-off meeting collaboration lecture between USM and ITB revolving around important global issues in which youths will receive the relay baton of expressing global resolution ideas and preparing a future together on how technology and innovation could become accelerator to the 17 SDGs targets in both countries.

The FMNS lecturer of the complex systems field also remarked that complex issue resolution would require more than one field of discipline— there needs to be a multidisciplinary collaboration. The course is designed with various modules, in which students are to be prepared for delving into society, discussing various innovations applicable to their related SDGs (sustainable development goals), and accelerating regional strategy between Indonesia and Malaysia. For example revolving food, energy, clean water, education, infrastructure, and partnership.

The course is also accompanied by RBL (Research Based Learning) from multiple groups, with each group being consisted of ITB and USM representatives, presenting various applicable methods to solve a multitude of issues in the 17 areas of SDGs.

The students were challenged to resolve a diverse set of problems from various areas of SDGs within the above-mentioned themes, which has been learned by each student's field of background and subsequently discussed through the lenses of these varieties of background in order to gain a wider perspective and achieve an option of solution together, through multidisciplinary means.