A royal opening ceremony of NSTDA Annual Conference 2021 (NAC2021) took place on 25 March 2021. Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn presided over the opening ceremony remotely from Sra Pathum Palace as NAC2021 is held on a virtual platform to respond to the new normal.
In her opening remarks, Princess Sirindhorn congratulated NSTDA for its 30th anniversary and for three decades of strengthening Thailand’s science and technology. She hoped that NSTDA would carry on its commitment to be a driving force in the national development through science and technology. She declared the conference officially open and wished it a great success.
Following her opening remarks, Princess Sirindhorn delivered a keynote address to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the collaboration between Thailand and CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research). Princess Sirindhorn paid a visit to CERN for the first time in 2000. Since then, she has visited CERN another 5 times, the last one being in 2019, to forge the collaboration between CERN and Thai academic and research institutes in order to enhance the capacity of Thai research community in the field of physics. The collaboration has been coordinated by the Information Technology Foundation under the Initiative of Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn with several active programs such as the selection of Thai students to participate in the CERN Summer Student Programme, scientific meetings, a fellowship program sending Thai students and researchers to perform research at CERN and multiple academic and research agreements between CERN and Thai institutes. Over the past twenty years, CERN has welcomed a number of Thai scientists and students to conduct research in CERN research facilities, including participation in four worldwide scientific cooperation experiments: CMS, ALICE, ATLAS and LHC. This exchange program has been beneficial to several Thai institutes, namely NECTEC-NSTDA, Synchrotron Light Research Institute, Suranaree University of Technology, Chulalongkorn University and King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. She concluded her speech encouraging scientists from Thailand and CERN to continue to work together and make a scientific discovery that will benefit the world.
A series of video presentation of CERN executive team sending their congratulations messages for the 20th anniversary of the collaboration between Thailand and CERN and NSTDA exhibition on Bio-Circular-Green Economy (BCG) and Innovations in Response to the COVID-19 were shown to Princess Sirindhorn before concluding the royal opening ceremony.
NAC2021 will be held on 25-30 March 2021 with the theme STI driving BCG Economy for Sustainability. The event consists of a wide range of activities including 34 tracks of scientific seminars, 74 displays in the exhibition, STEM activities for children and Thailand Science Park Open House. All activities can be participated online at https://www.nstda.or.th/nac.