Institut Teknologi Bandung

"A world class technology university is not enough to teach from the textbook," said Akhmaloka in his speech, "It takes field knowledge so that graduates can become a superior human resources."

The laboratory is not the first petrophysical laboratory owned by ITB. However, the equipment in previous laboratory quite old. "The equipment in previous laboratory is twenty-five years old," said Abdul Hamid, Director of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia. "Actually, it is also equipment from us, but at that time our name is still Caltex, hasn't become Chevron," he continued.

"These new equipments are needed to produce reliable graduates. If the use of the tools that are used in the field are not taught in college, then when they're entering the world of industry, there will be uncertainty," said Abdul Hamid, "And it will be fatal, because we already entered the era of globalization," he continued.

The laboratory's construction is the result of cooperation ITB with Chevron, part of Chevron's partnership programs with universities known as the University Partnership Program (UPP). In addition to the construction of this laboratory, Chevron also provides scholarships for outstanding students of ITB, held a guest lecture, and send selected ITB students and lecturers abroad for industrial visits.

Building Cooperation

Akhmaloka warmly welcome this ITB-Chevron partnership. He said ITB strongly supports collaboration with other industry players. Apart from this laboratory, ITB also been working with other industry players. For example, ITB was recently working with Indosat to build telecommunications innovation centers. In cooperation with Huawei, ITB also in progress for shaping the telecommunications training center.

"The most important thing is cooperation. University and industry need each other, but so far in Indonesia, many are equally silent. Many universities research in Indonesia is considered not applicable, because it had nothing to do with the industrial world." said Akhmaloka.

"But what we need to keep in mind, that cooperation is two-way dialogue. What ITB needs, what the industry needs, they should be able to help each other," said Akhmaloka. He also hope that the provision of this lab is not charity. "ITB should also be able to give something to the industry," he said.