NXPO President Dr. Kitipong Promwong attended the opening ceremony of Design for Society Virtual International Forum 2020 taking place from 9-10 November 2020 at Chulalongkorn University. The forum was organized by the Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University, in collaboration with Chulalongkorn University Architecture Alumni Association and Chulalongkorn University Design for Society Centre.
In his opening address, Dr. Kitipong highlighted the need to build design culture in a society, some policy initiatives that NXPO is leading, and an important role of higher education institutes in promoting both science, technology and innovation, and social sciences, humanities and arts.
Under the new Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI), NXPO has expanded its role to cover policy in social sciences, humanities and arts. Teaching social sciences, humanities and arts in school helps with the development of character in young children and builds vibrant communities.
He added that NXPO recently released a white paper on strategic direction for higher education, science, research and innovation for post-COVID recovery. The white paper outlined recommendations in six areas as follows:
- Alleviating poverty, facilitate fair wealth distribution and improve access to public services with area-based development;
- Strengthening human values and social power to enable balanced development;
- Implementing Bio-Circular-Green Economic model (BCG) for sustainable development;
- Enhancing industrial competitiveness and lay the groundwork for future development;
- Transforming education and manpower development system to better address national challenges;
- Reforming higher education, science, research and innovation system to effectively drive the economic and social development.
Dr. Kitipong further introduced some recent initiatives that NXPO has taken on to create an effective science, technology and innovation ecosystem such as the Thai Bayh-Dole Act that will promote the exploitation of research findings, the de-regulation of government procurement to facilitate research and innovation and the establishment of innovation sandbox to evaluate new technologies and innovative solutions.
