Science Bridge e.V.

Well, we are back from the Fact finding Mission – that’s the bad side.
The mission was extremely successful – that’s the good side.
It will probably take us some weeks to sort out all the contacts, all the plans for activities and all the ideas.
At this point, let me thank all of you who made this a very rewarding trip that will have substantial impact!
Trina and Beivy and Saroyo who gave it a good start, Ari and his gang who did a great job in Padang and similarly Budi and his students who made Yogya a good experience for Jens and Susanne. Ence guided us through the IPB in Bogor and Sita and Ibu Muti made us survive Jakarta.
Anwar Mahkdonal from WUSKI will do his best to support the returning experts, Helmut Buchholt from the DAAD encouraged us to go on and organize a workshop later this year in Jakarta and possibly a Summer School in 2010.
Elke Neumaier, Sulochana Giesler welcomed us at the Goethe Institut and I hope that we fulfilled their expectations.
It was enlightening and very encouraging to talk to Kusmayanto Kadiman at RISTEK and with Indroyono Soesilo at People’s Welfare. They showed great interest and we promise that we will be back with a detailed proposal how to invest efficiently in science!

Though we returned back to “normal life”, things are still moving rapidly: within the last two or three weeks, a core network has been set up and started to prepare for a joint grant application. We will have a strict quality control but nobody is excluded – send us a 2-page project proposal and help to make this working!
At least in Padang and in Manado, people are ready to set up Science Bridge labs and to continue the courses for high school and undergraduate students.
We will see how the Indonesian student participation in the next semester’s on-line seminar works out!

We will post a more complete report and pictures later on the “Project” page. For now it is “back to work” and get the IGN-TTRC flying!

A more detailed report is now posted on the projects page.