The Higher Institute of Information and Communication Technologies (ISTIC) recently hosted a conference on “End-to-End Autonomous Driving”. The conference was part of a partnership between Aizu University, a prestigious Japanese university specializing in ICT, and Carthage University, with support from JICA.
On a recent mission to Tunisia, Prof. Asano Atsushi, Director of Office for Planning and Promotion, talks to us about this partnership and its prospects.
What is the partnership between Aizu University and ISTIC?
Aizu University and Carthage University signed a university cooperation agreement in 2022. This conference is organized within the framework of the project “Establishment of a human resources development model for ICT start-ups for women and young people in Tunisia”. Two training and cooperation programs are underway. This year we welcomed an ISTIC graduate to continue his studies at our university. We organized 4 workshops for Carthage University students, mainly from ISTIC.
And we organized 3 lectures by Japanese professors on “Brain inspired system”, “Human centered computing”, “Edge computing”.
We also organized a webinar on women’s empowerment, featuring success stories from Tunisia and Japan in the dynamic ICT sector.
What are the prospects for this university cooperation?
Even after the end of the project, we intend to strengthen inter-university cooperation in research and education, based on our agreement. We will continue our cooperation with ISTIC in various fields such as edge computing, data analysis and so on.
During your mission to Tunisia, you visited a number of organizations involved in the startup ecosystem. What do you think about the Tunisian experience?
We visited The Dot and Startup Village to get a better understanding of the Tunisian ecosystem. The Tunisian government has taken a lot of steps to strengthen the creation of startups. We believe that the system can be further improved by offering more support to future entrepreneurs during the process. We believe that our project with ISTIC can contribute to this improvement.
