Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering

AOTULE

Formation	2007
Type	Asia-Oceania Engineering University League
Headquarters	Tokyo Institute of Technology, School of Engineering
Membership	13 Universities' Engineering Faculty, Staff and Students
Executive Chairman	Nanyang Technological University, Engineering Dean and Professor Chen Tsuhan
Staff	1
Website	http://www.aotule.eng.titech.ac.jp/index.htm

The Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering (abbreviated AOTULE, pronounced "our tool") is a league consisting of 13 engineering faculties within Asia and Oceania universities. AOTULE's mission is to improve the quality of its member's educational programs and research activity primarily through exchange of information between deans, faculty members and administration staff at its annual meeting. It also organizes graduate student exchange programs and conferences where graduate students present their latest research results in an interdisciplinary format.

The seeds for forming AOTULE began in 2006 with discussions between senior engineering faculty at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Monash University. in order to promote graduate engineering student mobility within Asia and Oceania universities similar to the ERASMUS+ program offered by EU universities that is funded by the European commission. AOTULE was subsequently founded in 2007 at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, by holding its inaugural meeting where participating Engineering Deans signed a memorandum of understanding. Each Fall since 2007, a member engineering faculty organizes and hosts the annual AOTULE student conference, administration staff and Dean's meeting as noted below. In March 2014, AOTULE was registered as a non-profit organization in Malaysia under the name of AOTULE-KL, with the Malaysia Registrar of Societies.

The annual Deans', administrative staff meeting and student conference is held annually in October or November. Attendance at the annual conference varies between 130 - 180 participants. The Deans' meeting brings together Deans for discussions on educational programs related to the annual Deans meeting theme as well as joint educational, degree programs, accreditation, and study-abroad programming. At the administration staff meeting, staff discuss issues related to administering student exchanges and share best practices. The student conference provides students an international forum to discuss their research with a multidisciplinary student audience. The 2013 AOTULE meeting and conference was held at Chulalongkorn in October 17–19, 2013, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of Chulalongkorn university. The 2016 AOTULE annual meeting and conference will be held at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in Hong Kong on Nov. 23-25, 2016.

To promote student mobility, AOTULE members organize intra-AOTULE student short stays and research exchanges varying in length from one week at Chulalongkorn University to three months at Tokyo Institute of Technology. These exchanges facilitate global engineering, cross-cultural competencies, foreign language learning, and research experiences by students since the majority of AOTULE members' students live in countries where English is not the native language. AOTULE members such as Tokyo Tech's School of Engineering have used AOTULE as a test bed for creating new research exchange programs that are later broaden to university-wide programs with research university partners in the USA and EU