Funded by the U.S. State Department, the Lower Mekong Initiative and implementing partner Arizona State University announce the beginning of year two of the LMI Young Scientist Placement Program.
This year's theme is Public Health & Bioinformatics, and the host university for the four-week placement is the Faculty of Engineering at the National University of Laos. Over the course of a month, the program will deliver skill-building workshops, allowing participants to apply skills learned toward research initiatives and new technology development.
2019 Cohort Composition
Video for the 2019 LMI Young Scientist Program on Public Health and Bioinformatics
Week One: Introduction to the Main Public Health Challenges in the Region
Video by LMI Young Scientist, Daraden Vang from Cambodia
Week Two: Design Thinking & The Human-Centered Design
Week two was dedicated to a 4-day Deign Thinking workshop led by experts from the School of Global Studies from Thammasat University in Thailand. This workshop introduced participants to this human-centered methodology, an iterative process which seeks to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent.
"Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems; it is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods."
Hermes Huang, Lecturer from the School of Global Studies at Thammasat University
By the end of week two, the 33 participants grouped into six teams around projects using models, computational methods and information technologies to address public health challenges in the Lower Mekong Region caused by vector borne diseases.
The week concluded with a field trip to the Lao province of Savannakhet to visit the provincial health office and participate in a dengue fever survey and mosquito and larvae collection activities in Tonhen Village.
Mr. Jeffrey Goss, Associate Vice Provost for Southeast Asia from Arizona State University, welcomes participants to week 2, with a focus on Design Thinking.
Participants get ready for a sensory and ethnographic data-gathering activity through Vientiane's downtown to interview different groups of people. The purpose of this activity was to collect information from the general public on their base knowledge of vector-borne diseases.
A team from Myanmar, Vietnam and Laos work on an activity on ideation and prototyping.
Young scientists from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos teamed up to develop an Intervention Optimization Tool. This data-based decision making tool will provide recommendations to public health officials on the best strategies to reduce mosquito populations, while minimizing organizational expenses, costs to society, and dangerous exposure to communities, to save lives through diminished outbreak threats.
The Honorable Rena Bitter, U.S. Ambassador to Lao PDR, invited the LMI Young Scientists to her residence in Vientiane for a relaxed evening of food and networking between participants, instructors and special guests in recognition of their hard work.
Dr. Tiengkham Pongvongsa, M.D., Ph.D., Deputy Director of Savannakhet Provincial Health Office led a discussion on the current dengue outbreak situation in Savannakhet and researchers from the University of Health Sciences presented the DENCLIM Project, which studies the relationship between climate change and dengue outbreaks.
Taking a break after a very hot day conducting fever surveys and mosquito and larvae collection at Tonhen Village.
Video by LMI Young Scientist, Daraden Vang from Cambodia
Video by Daraden Vang, LMI Young Scientist from Cambodia
Week Three: 21st Century Skills Workshop
Week three was spent on building 21st century professional skills, such as: running effective meetings, interpersonal communications, team optimization, presentation skills, critical thinking and conflict resolution.
This week also included a presentation at the American Center by Vannida Douangboupha, one of the Lao participants, who gave a Ted Talk-style presentation on Dengue and useful techniques to control mosquito populations at the household level.
This week also included a field trip to the Mahosot Hospital to visit the microbiology and virology labs to learn about laboratory methods to identify dengue and other infectious diseases through techniques such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
The week ended with a 2-day cultural tour to Vang Vieng where the participants had fun hiking, exploring caves, zip-lining and kayaking.
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See what impact the 2018 Young Scientists made
“The goal of this program is to support young scientists in developing a network of like-minded professionals who can use science and engineering to find joint innovative solutions to common challenges in the region.”
Jose Quiroga, Director, LMI Young Scientist Program
Learn more at asuengineeringonline.com/lmi