Activities of Education, Training and Research at Asian Institute of Technology
ACRoRS will be able to provide researchers with NOAA AVHRR and Japanese Satellite Data such as JERS-1 OPS/SAR at inexpensive rate.
Strategic Goals of STAR Program
After almost five year argument about the goals in consideration of requirements, demands and geographic location of AIT, STAR Program reached these resolutions as follows.
STAR Program should focus on technology oriented courses rather than applications oriented ones. There are tow reasons behind this goal. One is that a limited number of faculty cannot cover all application fields such as tropical forest, landuse planning, land degradation, tropical coastal zaones, disaster management, watershed management etc. The second reason is that high quality graduate students can survive in any application field, if they have a strong technical background.
However STAR program should develop applicability of the technology in the Master and Doctor thesis. Because STAR program is a graduate school with only Master and Doctor courses, the students have already engineering or scientific background in a specific field. Therefore, it is not very difficult for these students to apply the high level technology to their speciality.
STAR Program should encourage more research and publications of journal papers. This is a philosophy behind this goal, that is, only a top runner of research can lead highest quality education in a graduate school.
STAR Program should strengthen the ability of software development rather than the skill how to use the existing software or models, As a graduate schools, we don't need to produce just computer operators. We need software developers who develop their own software or models to solve environmental problems that cannot be solved with existing software alone.
STAR Program should grow professional researchers by continuing to support the finance for outstanding graduates. In the same way, STAR Program should accept outstanding young researchers from outside, for promotion of research.
Education Program in Master Course
According to the goals, STAR Program has set up the following curriculum guideline for Master course in five terms of twenty months.
Basic configuration of terms (ss appendix 1)
First Term: Lectures of fundamental theory and principle. This is to standardize the level of master students.
Second Term: Lectures with computer laboratory sessions. This is to develop the software capability by hands-on-training.
Third Term: Lectures with advanced technologies. This is to strengthen the student's knowledges with a target on the subsequent master thesis. Special study with literature review will be also suggested to students. Proposal defense of master thesis should be passed.
Fourth Term: Master thesis research including preprocessing remote sensing and GIS data and field study. Progress report should be passed.
Fifth Term: Master thesis research including editing master thesis and final final defense with oral presentation in an open door seminar style.
Appendix 1
Curicula of STAR program, AIT
| Field of Study |
| Remote Sensing & GIS | Computer Mapping Technology |
| January Term 1999 | January Term 1999 |
| Fundamentals of RS and ApplicationsFundamentals of IGS* Applied Mathematics and Computer Programming for RS & GIS* | Fundamentals of Mapping TechnologyDigital Terrain Model* |
| May Term 1999 | May Term 1999 |
| Digital Image processing*Advanced GIS*Microwave RS | Automated Mapping*Integrating Mapping and 3S Technologies; RS, GIS & GPS |
| September Term 1999 | September Term 1999 |
| Advanced RS*Integrating RS and GISAdvanced Digital Image Processing* | 3D Information ProcessingVisualization for Computer Mapping |
| · Challenges in space Technology (Overseas Experts will be invited to provide students with latest information |
*Including Computer laboratory session
