News
ANENT Meeting in India Charts Way Forward
New members join web-based nuclear education and training project
4 December 2007 - Prospective nuclear engineers in the Asian region will benefit from recent and new activities of the Asian Network for Education in Nuclear Technology (ANENT), such as developing reference curricular for universities in nuclear engineering and promoting knowledge management practices in nuclear education.
the 4th Annual Meeting of ANENT and 1st IAEA
National Coordinators Meeting in Goa, India,
on 19–23 November 2007
These initiatives were discussed at the 4th Annual Meeting of the Asian network, hosted by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and held in Goa, India, at the end of November 2007. Since the IAEA Technical Cooperation Department has been supporting ANENT since early 2007, this was also the first meeting of national coordinators for the TC project "Supporting Web-based Nuclear Education and Training for Regional Networking" (RAS0047). Eight new members have recently joined this activity, increasing the number of participating countries to 20. These are Bangladesh, Israel, Lebanon, Myanmar, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, the Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen.
"ANENT does not offer academic education but complements existing education mechanisms by a training system available via the ANENT web portal and cyber learning platform", says Ms. Keiko Hanamitsu, who coordinates the network at the IAEA. This includes preparing curricula and education materials that will be available to academic institutions and students in the region, including entire audio/video courses, multimedia presentations and literature in the areas of nuclear power engineering, energy planning, radiation protection, nuclear medicine, and non-power applications. Workshops at the IAEA and regional training courses, e.g. in the Philippines in 2008, support these activities.
Ms. Hanamitsu,
IAEA
A new activity will focus on knowledge management practices in nuclear education. "We will organize so-called 'knowledge assist visits' to universities and other training organizations" explains Mr. Yanko Yanev, who heads the IAEA's Nuclear Knowledge Management Group. "This will help them benchmark their programmes and educational practices against the best achievements in the world, and help them improve and innovate", Mr. Yanev adds.
The network will also offer fellowships for nuclear engineers at the IAEA, the European Nuclear Education Network (ENEN) and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, Italy, which agreed recently to cooperate with ANENT.
It is planned to hold the next ANENT meeting in China in 2008.
Contact: Ms. K. Hanamitsu, IAEA Nuclear Knowledge Management Unit