AIT's agent of change

For Professor Said Irandoust, president of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok is now his second home after Sweden, where he previously spent more than two decades as a citizen.

Born in Azerbaijan, Irandoust, now 48, left Iran in 1979 in the final weeks of the Shah regime to avoid the political upheaval back then.

"Iran was in the state of heightened uncertainties. At the time, no one knew what would happen next," he said, adding that his parents were also worried about the future of their children's education.

As a result, Irandoust (which literally means "friend of Iran") went to Sweden to join his brother and pursue higher education.

Irandoust got a master's degree in chemical engineering at Sweden's Chalmers University in 1984 and a PhD in 1989 with a thesis on monolith reactors.

In 1994, he was appointed associate professor and took up a position at the Department of Chemical Reaction Engineering. In 1998, he became a professor at the School of Chemical Engineering at Chalmers.

Prior to moving to Bangkok to serve as the AIT president in July 2005, Irandoust was vice president of Chalmers University.

As a Muslim in Sweden, the professor took it as a challenge to help boost the understanding of Islam among Europeans.

In his opinion, conflicts should be resolved via dialogue in which knowledge, tolerance and debates figure prominently.

"AIT itself is doing just that with a natural platform for interracial, religious communications. We have students from [more than] 40 countries whose common goal is to acquire knowledge and cross-cultural experience.

"When people meet [in person], their views can change. In my view, all students, Muslim or non-Muslim, share more similarities than differences.

"It's hopeful that everyone will share the opinion that human dignity is respected and that there is mutual understanding among mankind so that we could have long-term and sustainable happiness in the global context," he said.

Currently, AIT has about 2,000 students, of which 1,500 are studying for master's degrees, while the rest are pursuing doctoral studies  in the fields of engineering, science and technology, management, and business besides others.

Set up in the 1950s, AIT today has more than 16,000 alumni working in Asia and elsewhere.

AIT, which gets funding from 20 member countries in Asia and Europe, is also a regional hub for cross-border research in areas such as climate change, alternative energy and resources management.

In addition, the United Nations has designated AIT as a centre of excellence in the region for its Millenium Development Goals (MDG) programme, which started in 2000 and will run till 2015.

MDGs include poverty reduction, gender equality, partnership for development, sustainable development, among others.

According to Irandoust, AIT could serve as an agent of change on these issues in Southeast Asia via regional educational institutes and private-sector organisations.

For instance, AIT may work with universities and colleges in the region to help revise curriculums so as to take into account potential solutions to these global issues.

For companies and other organisations, there could be changes to help achieve the MDGs via training and other programmes.

Programmes on corporate social responsibility for more sustainable production and consumption or microbanking for the underprivileged are among the examples.