Dear AFOB Members,

My two-year term of the 4^th AFOB Presidency has got a start on October 1, 2018. The AFOB Secretariat is leading by Prof. Tai Hyun Park as the Secretary General of AFOB. Professors Duk Jae Oh, Penjit Srinophakun, Takeshi Omasa, and Yinhua Wan have been appointed as a Deputy Secretary General of Financial, Public Relation & Policy, Publication, and Academic Committee, respectively. Meanwhile, Prof. Young Je Yoo has kindly accepted my invitation to serve as an Editor-in-chief of AFOB Newsletter. We are pleased to work together for AFOB and appreciate very much for your sustainable support to AFOB. 

The AFOB is continuing to move forward by organizing meetings and academic activities that cover all area of applied biotechnology as well as new technological advances to wider audiences. As an annual event, the ARS 2019 was successfully held in Singapore on January 23-25, 2019. This ARS was organized by the Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI), A*STAR and the Singapore Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (SSMB). Prof. Kong-Peng Lam, Director of BTI served as the Chair and Dr. Dave Siak-Wei Ow was Secretary General. Prof. Yuan-Kun Lee, President of SSMB delivered the closing remarks. Later of this year, the AFOB flagship event ACB 2019 will be held in Tamsui, Taiwan on July 1-4, 2019. The submission of abstracts for oral presentation has been closed. However, late submission of abstracts for poster presentation is still open until May 29. We hope you don't miss this major AFOB event.

YABEC 2018 was successfully held in Taipei on November 15-17, 2018. The existing YABEC (Young Asian Biological Engineers’ Community) was called Young Asian Biochemical Engineers’ Community before 2016. In this January, I went to IIT Kharagpur to inaugurate an India-based YABEC/AFOB Office. A new YABEC composing of young AFOB members from India, Bangladesh and Nepal is establishing with a YABEC Workshop to be held on 29-30 April, 2019 as the starting event. This new YABEC may be called YABEC-West, if we call the existing one YABEC-East. Also, we wish young scientists/engineers in Southeast Asian countries can establish YABEC-South in the near future.

This year, we are more focusing on the collaboration with bioindustrial sectors in AFOB regions and making efforts to Asian Bioeconomy. A strong academic-industry partnership could not only help bioindustry to drive innovation but also assist the growth of academic bioentrepreneurship. We hope each AFOB RBOs can work on the AFOB-Bioindustry Network (ABN) in order to promote collaboration between academia and industry in biotechnology over Asia. For the forthcoming ACB 2019, Taiwan RBO is organizing a conjunction event “Bioindustry and Biobusiness Symposium & Expo”. Local and foreign biocompanies are inviting to join this ACB by presentation of their innovative products/technologies, exchange for business collaboration, and booth exhibition. Recently, we are collaborating with Thailand RBO for organizing an AFOB workshop entitled “Microbial agents for biofertilizer, biostimulant and biocontrol for sustainable agriculture”, which will be held on June 3, 2019 in Thailand Science Park, Bangkok. In addition, AFOB Korean RBO is going to organize an AFOB-Bioindustry activity. Bio-Incheon Forum will be held in Songdo, Incheon on August 20, 2019. Theme will be biopharmaceuticals to promote the bio-industry in this field. Furthermore, AFOB will join Bio Asia -Taiwan Exhibition 2019 (July 25-28, 2019, Taipei) together with some networked biocompanies to form an AFOB block. Hope we can promote AFOB there and recruit ABN members. To conclude the first-stage of AFOB-bioindustry collaboration, an AFOB Bioeconomy Forum is scheduled to be held on November 12, 2019 in Phuket, Thailand, in conjunction with TSB 2019.

We keep cooperating with European Federation of Biotechnology (EFB) and Synthetic Biology Australasia (SBA), and supporting and promoting each scientific division of AFOB. Three AFOB-EFB joint symposia on the topics of Applied Biocatalysis, Environmental Biotechnology, and NBB (Nanobiotechnology, Biosensor and Biochip), respectively, are being organized in ACB 2019. These joint symposia are co-organized by counterpart divisions/sections of AFOB and EFB. Particularly, for PhD students from Europe and Asia, an AFOB-EFB Joint Student Seminar on Biotechnology of Proteins is being organized. There will be also an AFOB-EFB-SBA Joint Seminar on Synthetic Biology to highlight the collaboration among three societies. Recently, further options for the cooperation of AFOB and EFB have been proposed. Details of the cooperation and implementation will be discussed at gathering of AFOB and EFB board members during ACB 2019 in early July. We hope that AFOB members can be benefited from these transcontinental cooperation for their research and exchange.

Best regards,

Wen-Chien Lee, PhD

President of AFOB