Cover Story
AFOB President’s welcome message
Welcome Pakistan to join AFOB as a regional member
Dear AFOB Members,
In the 17th AFOB Board Meeting on June 23, 2022, one of the decisions was to include Pakistan as a new regional member. The proposal to establish the AFOB Pakistan Regional Branch Office (RBO) presented by Dr. Mohammad Aamer Mehmmod was approved without objection. As President, I am delighted to welcome this new regional member on behalf of AFOB. AFOB now has 15 RBOs in Asia to support its activities. The Pakistan RBO is the first one in a country further west than India, and we hope to see more RBOs in Central and West Asia in the future.
As a South Asian country with a population of 220 million, Pakistan is a developing country with huge economic growth potential, and the development of biotechnology is expected to bring more significant contributions to its economy. Through the establishment of this new RBO, we hope that more Pakistani biotechnologists can participate in the activities of AFOB and cooperate with other AFOB members to jointly promote the research and development and academic exchanges of biotechnology in Asia. Young Pakistani biotechnologists can also join YABEC-West which is made up of young biological engineers and scientists from India, Nepal and Bangladesh to make it more active and fast growing.
Best wishes,
Wen-Chien Lee
President of AFOB
Introduction of AFOB Pakistan chapter
[Launching of Regional Branch Office of AFOB in Pakistan]
Pakistan is a South Asian country of 220 million people, the 5th biggest population, a site of ancient civilization of the Bronze age, 23rd largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, and 42nd largest economy in terms of nominal gross domestic product. Pakistan is included among developing nations and is considered one of the Next Eleven countries having substantial potential to grow on economic fronts. Among many, Pakistan has remarkable potential to contribute locally as well as regionally in the field of biotechnology for better human health, improved food security, sustainable environment, and producing green industrial products. Keeping in view the potential and commitment of Pakistani biotechnologists, the Executive Board of Asian Federation of Biotechnology, in its 17th meeting held on June 23rd, 2022, happily agreed to include Pakistan as a member state of AFOB, in response to the proposal submitted and defended by Dr. Muhammad Aamer Mehmood, Professor at the Department of Bioinformatics Biotechnology, Government College University Faisalabad.
It is mutually hoped that launching a Regional Branch Office of AFOB in Pakistan will add to the contributive vision and mission of AFOB and will allow Pakistani biotechnologists to work hand in hand with the leading biotechnology institutions in other member states.
Presentation at the 17th AFOB Board Meeting
The 1st delegate meeting of YABEC-South
YABEC-South will launch at the ACB-2022 at Bali, Indonesia, coming October.
YABEC (Young Asian Biological Engineers’ Community)-South follows
YABEC-East (founded in 1995), and YABEC-West (founded in 2019).
Hello everyone,
this is Kenny Lischer from Indonesia. I just want to give a quick update on YABEC-South preparation. So we've already had a discussion between ACB 2022 committee and AFOB-Indonesia Youth Division about the general concept and date of Inaugural YABEC-South. We've decided several things as follows,
1. The program is planned to be held on October 2nd-3rd, 2022 in Bali (Before ACB 2022 event). It will start with Social Hour/Dinner for Delegates on the Night of October 2nd, 2022 (around 7-9 pm) and a Half-day conference on October 3rd, 2022 (8 am-12 pm). After that, you can continue to join ACB program that will take place on October 3rd, 2022 starting from 1 pm.
2. Half-day conference will consist of a ceremonial of Inaugural YABEC-South, guest lecture (8-10 am), and presentations from delegates representing their country (10 am-12 pm). The presentations can be their research or activities. Please inform us about your topics for presentation during the event.
3. If a delegate has registered to join ACB, there will be no additional fee to join the YABEC-South event.
Further details are still under discussion. We also try to include undergraduate students from the Society of Biological Engineering of Indonesia to join this event. So we can extend the exposure of YABEC-South for future biological engineers.
On July 8, 2022, Dr. Takeshi Omasa, Osaka University
Japan was elected as the 6th President of AFOB.
Statement of Commitment
Sharing Asian Value, Visions, and Friendship
Young Je Yoo, Professor Emeritus
Seoul National University and Chair Professor, Gachon University, Korea
We Asians have common values compared to European or American people in many ways. Family is one of the most important factors for our happiness. Family scope can be extended to neighbors and finally to Asian community. We care and cooperate with our neighbors in order to live in peace and harmony. Trust formed and built through long-term relationships is more important than wealth. Once we trust someone, we easily call the other person our brother or sister. We respect also seniors in our family and society since their experiences and wisdom are invaluable for us to live in happiness. For example, we call teachers with respect or advising professor (cannot find an equivalent word in English) sometimes as another parent. This means family culture lies behind in Asia region. So when we get to meet people from Asia, we feel comfortable and familiar due to common values and culture. All the important religions came from Asia : Hinduism and Buddhism from India, Christianity from Israel, and Islam from the Middle East. One of the main lessons from those religions is to love humans and take care of neighbors. Neighbors are in a sense family in Asian value.
Then, how about the situation of our neighbors? Nowadays, we and our neighbors are facing global issues such as hunger, diseases and environmental issues. Not only that, but also we are experiencing competitions and challenges in overcoming the issues from the global world especially from Europe and America. We understand biotechnology is very important to solve global issues related to food, health, and environment. However, EU is operating EFB and America is very big counterpart to cope with these issues. With this in mind, we launched AFOB long time ago. I appreciate many who were involved in organizing and developing AFOB. However, AFOB is still a baby and needs to grow to reach its goals.
In this regards, I would like to suggest three issues to develop further. First, we need a vision paper of AFOB’s future to transform our dream into reality. Second, education for young people should be emphasized. We want young people to get interested in biotechnology, and to have a dream to contribute to humans through biotechnology. Education is the starting point of HRD (human resource development). And good research and further more cooperation is thus possible through talented and well educated people. Third, current cooperation between industry and academia is not enough and thus measures should be provided to jump up the cooperation. Ventures and start-ups are also to be grown up to handle the issues and finally contribute to our Asian community.
How to we possibly handle these issues? The starting point is strengthening the friendship based on Asian value and culture. AFOB Newsletter, conferences and many other activities could provide understanding, communications and chances among us to achieve our long-term goal. I dream AFOB can provide leadership in Asia to solve many current issues through sharing values, visions and friendship.