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Progress-Report_DEF.qxd:Layout 1 5.6.2007 3:00 Page 34 A 34 VPRI International Affairs 3.12 Offshore Activities and Campus 37 VPRI and the EPFL unit for inter-institutional collaborations have designed a project for an offshore Research Center financed by and partly located in an Arabic country. It emphasizes the application of molecular sciences to medical and biomedical technologies and pharmacology. It involves two physical campuses, one in the foreign country and one in Switzerland at the Swiss ETH Schools. The proposal covers a 10-year period – the implementation phase of the Center. The foreign partner would provide the necessary financial investments and core funding for the Center; the Swiss partner would assume academic responsibilities. The Center aims to attract PhD students and train them in Switzerland and in the partner country. A graduate curriculum would be offered at the Swiss ETH and, progressively, in the partner country. Research work would be carried out at both sites, initially just in Switzerland, until laboratory space has been constructed in the Partner country. VPRI will further study current activities and models for offshore activities, because globalization makes it important for a key technology institution to be dynamically active in different parts of the world. Priority must be set on incremental approaches, favoring extensions of offshore education activities, especially along specific key subjects and towards specific prospects. 37 M. Burgat/Dr F. Vigliotti. B Cooperation@epfl VPRI 35
Progress-Report_DEF.qxd:Layout 1 5.6.2007 3:00 Page 36 B Cooperation@epfl 36 1. Introduction The aims that the EPFL seeks to achieve through its Cooperation@epfl unit are to contribute to tackling development issues through the promotion and strengthening of scientific cooperation, in conjunction with academic and research institutions in emerging and developing countries. Using an interdisciplinary approach that combines the knowledge produced by the different disciplines at the EPFL and the social, economic and institutional capacities of the countries of the South, Cooperation@epfl seeks to promote the application of state-of-the-art technologies to real social, environmental and economic needs in order to respond to the most pressing world challenges and to contribute to the efforts being made to reduce poverty. Accordingly, it seeks to enlarge EPFL’s research and educational activities in scientific cooperation for development at both a national and international level, and it also seeks to increase the amount and the diversity of external funding. Cooperation@epfl has been supported by the International Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB-COOP) since 2006 and the ISAB-COOP has guided it towards its objectives in the field of scientific cooperation for development. 2. Scientific Cooperation for Development at EPFL VPRI Cooperation represents a significant part of Swiss government policy and of relevant national legislation, and over the past few years it has become a major scientific priority for the State Secretariat for Education and Research. The tradition of cooperation for development at the EPFL goes back more than 30 years. In fact, it embodies this institution’s open approach to the world; an approach where humanist values and a scientific spirit combine to produce outstanding research that is guided by a sense of responsibility towards the major problems faced by people living in emerging and developing countries. Scientific cooperation for development means that the major issues of the contemporary world are dealt with scientifically through research and teaching, both within the EPFL itself and together with its partners in emerging and developing countries. Through its efforts to meet the challenge of contributing to a reduction in poverty, by means of improvements to the living conditions of the majority of the world population and by bringing the different stakeholders together with regard to the importance of sustainable development, the EPFL seeks to make maximum use of its outstanding know-how and its international prestige. The EPFL has cooperated with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) on a regular basis ever since the first joint project between the EPFL and a university in a developing country in 1967. Following the creation of a Cooperation unit in 1990, EPFL activities continued to expand over the years, and SDC funding followed suit. Long-lasting and stable partnerships with institutions and research teams in the South developed on a gradual basis. In 1998, the EPFL negotiated a credit framework with the SDC to co-finance a series of innovative interdisciplinary projects, which were launched after an internal call at the EPFL. These projects, which ended in 2001, were evaluated in a very positive light and they were followed by a further Call for Development Research Projects in 2003, which resulted in 5 projects being approved (2004-2008). All in all, more than 30 projects involving scientific cooperation for development are currently being conducted through the EPFL together with various laboratories and schools in a large number of countries. Some of these, such as the ones in Cuba, Colombia, Tunisia, Morocco, Burkina Faso, India and Vietnam, can look back on a long history of scientific partnership with the EPFL 38 . 3. The Creation of Cooperation@epfl In 2004, the EPFL Presidency attached the Cooperation Unit to the new Vice- Presidency for International Affairs and renamed it Cooperation@epfl. Cooperation@epfl developed from a mainly administrative structure to become 38 http://cooperation.epfl.ch/research.html VPRI 37
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