MTEC adheres to its missions in conformity with the National Science and Technology Development Agency’s 6th Strategic Plan (2017-2021), which is linked to Thailand’s 20-Year National Strategic Plan; for example, the BCG Economic Model is one of the main focuses. MTEC will take advantage of high technology infrastructure, especially the Eastern Economic Corridor of Innovation (EECi), to meet the needs of various sectors, solve the problems, and help businesses develop their products and services. All of these are expected to contribute significantly to positive socio-economic impacts.
MTEC’s research works have covered the development of materials technology, design and manufacturing technology, infrastructure development that is crucial to the development of the country. MTEC places great emphasis on interdisciplinary research and development and technological capability enhancement in order to generate new knowledge and serve the needs of the country in response to the rapid changes in technologies.
Operational Mechanism
MTEC has developed its own management system by creating a technology development plan and research S-curves, which is a tool that assists in research management, resource allocation, and works planning both in research and support sections. MTEC has focused on research planning that is consistent with the national strategy and solves the country’s urgent problems in order to enhance the generation of knowledge and the enhancement of capability in response to the rapid changes in technologies.
MTEC has delivered outputs, such as academic works, research articles, prototypes, and intellectual property. These works lead to outcomes which is the utilization of the outputs in various forms, both in commercialization and public interest, through the technology transfer, contract, and collaborative research, thus leading to impact and investment in both economy and society. The domains of utilization are categorized into 5 major groups, namely, Manufacturing and Engineering Services Industry, Safety and Quality of Life, Health and Wellness, Agro-based Industry, and Agriculture.
Since the end of 2019, the world have been changing rapidly, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a high level of uncertainty for the global economy and Thailand. In addition, the budget reform by allocating from Thailand Science Research and Innovation Fund in place of the Budget Bureau poses a challenge to MTEC which must adapt its research management processes in alignment with the external funding sources and the country’s research budget system. MTEC have formed strategic alliance with both domestic and international research institutions, thus creating opportunities to support research budgets in the form of large projects from various funding sources, and improving internal management processes, especially the adjustment of mechanism to support the research management process to achieve flexibility for the rapidly changing situation.