METALEX NANO Forum “Nano-Metalworking: Staying Ahead of the Game” opened this morning by H.E. Dr. Plodprasop Suraswadi, Minister of Science and Technology at BITEC Convention Center in Bangkok. “The government acknowledges the importance of technology development on national and economic competitiveness” said Dr. Plodprasop. “We must make R&D a national priority and addresses the need to invest in new technology development if we are to be globally competitive”.
Dr. Plodprasop went on to inform the participant that the government have completed the preparation for the first National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Framework, which will chart the STI development for Thailand in the next 10 years. The chart also will emphasize the need to increase R&D expenditure by 2% of GDP. He also stressed the need for SMEs and manufacturing sector to jointly invest in R&D as there are various supporting investment schemes available from the Board of Investment (BOI), Ministry of Industry, and Ministry of Finance.
Plenary Lecturers for the METALEX Nano Forum included:
Prof. Ioan D. Marinescu, Dept. of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, and Director of Precision Micro-Machining Center, University of Toledo, USA.
Prof. Jons Hilborn, Polymer Chemistry, Uppsala University, Sweden
Prof. Tomonobu Nakayama, Principal Investigator, NIMS, Japan
METALEX Nano Forum is jointly organized by NANOTEC and Reed Tradex as one of the highlight seminars for METALEX 2011. The aim of METALEX Nano Forum is to build public awareness to the application of nanotechnology in metalworking and at the same time address the various challenges that can occur.
