International Experience

1. Chairman, International Rubber Research and Development Board (IRRDB) (2014-2016). IRRDB, based in Kula Lumpur is a 60-year-old international association of S&T Institutes and other agencies conducting research on rubber and rubber products. Its membership includes research Institutes from 20 countries from Asia, Africa, South America and Europe, including the Montpellier-based French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (Centre de CoopérationInternationaleen Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, CIRAD, a founding member of IRRDB). Its objective is to promote international cooperation in rubber science and technology, including industrial research. I was Chairman of IRRDB from 2014 to 2016. As its Chairman, I organized a major international collaboration for sharing high yielding rubber clones among natural rubber growing countries and reviewed the constitution of IRRDB.
2. IRRDB Vice Chairman and Chairman of Training Committee (2006-20014): Helped select young and midlevel scientists from different IRRDB member countries for international trainings and organized short-term international exchange programs through the IRRDB Fellowship Program.
3. Liaison Officer for IRRDB Plant Physiology Specialist Group (2001-2006): Coordinated Physiology research in the IRRDB member countries.
4. I have been a member of the Governing Board of the UK College of Business and Computing, London (2016).
5. Member of the Environment Committee of the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries (ANRPC) and Coordinator, IRRDB Working Group on Climate Change: Evaluated effect of climate change on rubber industry in various countries.
6. My long years of association with IRRDB and ANRPC took me several times to a large number of natural rubber producing countries and research institutions around the world that conduct research on natural and synthetic rubber and rubber products. These countries include Malaysia (Malaysian Rubber Board, Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia), Thailand (Rubber Research Institute of Thailand, Kasetsart University and Prince Songkla University), Indonesia (Indonesian Rubber Research Institute), China (Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences), Vietnam (Rubber Research Institute of Vietnam), Cambodia (Cambodian Rubber Research Institute), Philippines (Department of Agriculture), Sri Lanka (Rubber Research Institute of Ceylon), UK (Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre), Liberia (Liberian Agricultural Company), Guatemala (Gruopo de Occidente), Mexico (rubber plantations), Germany (UNFCCC), Switzerland (UNCTAD), Brazil (Michelin rubber plantations in Bahia) and France (French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development, Centre de Coopération Internationaleen Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, CIRAD). The purposes of these visits have been either to give invited lectures, organize thematic workshops or conduct review meetings of IRRDB activities in the above countries/organizations.
7. Expert member, International Review Committee that evaluated a major R&D project between France (Centre de Coopération Internationaleen Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement, CIRAD) and Thailand in 2013 (Hevea Research Platform in Partnership, HRPP, Bangkok). HRPP is a co-operative platform for research and higher education established between Kasetsart University, Prince of Songkla University and the Rubber Research Institute of Thailand in Thailand and CIRAD in France. INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique), IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement), Montpellier SupAgro, Université Montpellier 2, Université B Pascal Clermont-Ferrand were Associate members from France.
8. Worked at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in the USA on the impact of elevated CO₂ on native vegetation in the marshy lands of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and in Cape Canaveral, Florida (1992-95), the longest running elevated CO₂ experiment in the world.
9. Graduate student at Imperial College London and Rothamsted Experimental Station in the UK (1989-92) as a Commonwealth Fellow.
10. During my tenure in England and the US, I attended a summer schools (Robert Hill Institute of Photosynthesis Research, University of Sheffield, July 1990), training course (Trends in photosynthesis research at Majorca, Spain, September 1990) and a number of important international conferences, including the annual conference of the American Society of Plant Physiologists and Canadian Society of Plant Physiologists (Minneapolis, 1993; 1994), Annual Conference of the Ecological Society of America (Tennessee, 1994), international workshop on climate change (Massachusetts, 1994) and the 41^st Harden Conference on Photosynthesis (London, 1993)..