"This year TSRA was held in ITB in the form of an Interdisciplinary Capstone Design Challenge (ICDC) competition. This competition involves various scientific disciplines in creating a product to solve a problem," said the Head Committee of TSRA Year 2022, Dr. Kusraprasapta Mutijarsa S.T., M.T., in his opening remarks on the TSRA Year 2022 Final Opening Ceremony, at the Multipurpose CRCS Campus ITB Ganesha, Saturday (5/11/2022).

There were 125 student delegations from five Tanoto Foundation university partners who participated in this competition. The students were assigned into a group of five where every member came from different universities.

The students came from different educational backgrounds; therefore, the group members did not only consist of students with science and technology backgrounds but also students with socio-humanities backgrounds. This was meant so that the participants can learn how to collaborate with other disciplines.

The students also learned to solve a problem and create a solution for the community in the form of a product prototype, which was created through an objective design approach and design thinking methods.

Meanwhile, the University Partnership and Cohort Management Lead of Tanoto Foundation, Yosea Kurniantor said that one of the programs that his party is currently developing is an educational transformation for the younger generation. His party is focusing on providing bachelor scholarships to 9 Tanoto Foundation university partners and some other university partnership programs. According to him, the research experimentation development program, the excellent human resources development acceleration program, and the future leader program can be done through this TSRA program.

"As a philanthropic organization, we believe that partnership or inter-party collaboration can be the key to the acceleration and optimization of the solutions for the challenges that are faced by our nation. However, on the other hand, we also need new methods or the latest thoughts regarding the current generation that we are currently helping to develop their collaboration capability in the current diversity. We are very grateful and proud to have the opportunity to cooperate with ITB to try to implement the concept of collaboration and competition in this TSRA 2022. We also expressed our gratitude to our five university partners because they agreed with this change in concept on how this year's TSRA will be carried out. We hope that this event will not only end up as an annual event to facilitate the students' research education but also a lesson for all of us," explained Yosea.

Opening the TSRA Year 2022 event, the Rector of ITB, Prof. Dr. Reini Wirahadikusumah, Ph.D., expressed that the objective of this year's TSRA is in line with ITB's visions and missions. Carrying the spirit of In Harmonia Progressio, where we possess a spirit to keep moving forward together in harmony.

She said that the participants who came from different scientific disciplines and universities have already collaborated in excellent scientific culture. This sure is not an easy task, knowing that they came from different backgrounds. However, so far, they have succeeded. This became a lesson for the lecturers in universities, to keep improving the excellent scientific culture in creating perpetual research and interdisciplinary knowledge.

"Everything that we have done when researching, very surely not only something that we have done inside a laboratory but also which has become an action that its decision has been taken scientifically. For this, this event becomes an excellent scientific culture that needs to be developed where interdisciplinary collaboration needs to be improved in Indonesia," said the Rector.

Source: Kemahasiswaan.ac.id

Translator: Favian Aldilla R (Civil Engineering, 2019)