The 'sandwich programme' is the latest in a series of cooperative activities between ICTP and Mongolia's scientific community that date back the Centre's earliest days.

From Here To Mongolia

It's a long way from Trieste, Italy, to Ulanbataar, Mongolia--some 8000 kilometers. But the ICTP 'sandwich programme,' which enables promising young students to spend a year of study in Trieste and then return home to complete their doctorate degrees, is bringing the scientific communities in both places closer together. At the same time, it's helping to build a strong foundation for the future of science in Mongolia.
"I'm likely to become the first laser optics specialist in Mongolia," says Tuvshintugs Damdinsuren, who arrived in Trieste last September from the Mongolia University of Science and Technology with his master's degree in physics already in hand and eager to take the next steps he will need to earn a doctorate.

Tuvshintugs Damdinsuren

To reach his ultimate goal, Damdinsuren will spend a year in Italy devoting much of his time studying and attending courses at ICTP while conducting laser experiments at the Elettra synchrotron light facility's laser and fibre optics laboratory, located on the campus of Area Science Park less than 15 kilometers northeast of the Centre. "Because my university does not have a programme in laser physics and nonlinear optics," he notes, "it would be extremely difficult for me to pursue my research interests if I remained in Mongolia."
The 'sandwich' programme, which is sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, is just one of several Centre-based activities that have benefitted Mongolia's scientific community for nearly four decades.
For example, since the Centre's inception in 1964, some 50 Mongolian scientists have attended ICTP research and training activities, ranging from cosmology to condensed matter physics to the mathematics of economics. The knowledge and skills that they have acquired by participating in the Centre's conferences, seminars, schools and workshops have served them well when they returned to their universities to resume their teaching and research responsibilities.
At the same time, a total of eight young Mongolian scientists have received a certificate from ICTP's year-long Diploma Course programme, which was launched in 1991.
Horgolkhuu Odbadrakh, for example, attended the Diploma Course in condensed matter physics in 1994-1995 and Agvaanluvsan Undraa was a member of the Diploma Course class of 1996-1997 in high energy physics. Odbadrakh went on to receive a masters degree at the University of South Wales in Sydney in Australia and has returned to the National University of Mongolia to teach physics and to continue his research in the classical states of matter and thermodynamics. Undraa, meanwhile, is currently studying for her Ph.D. in physics at North Carolina State University, USA, where she was awarded an international graduate student fellowship in 2000.

Oidov Lhagva

"For more than 40 years," notes Oidov Lhagva, distinguished professor of theoretical physics at the National University of Mongolia who last visited the Centre in February, "ICTP has provided Mongolian scientists with a link to the outside world." The President of Mongolia, Natsagyn Bagabandi, warmly acknowledged the role that ICTP has played in the development of his nation's scientific community when he visited the Centre in summer 2000.

Natsagyn Bagabandi, President of Mongolia, at ICTP in 2000

That role may be more important than ever as Mongolia's universities continue to make a slow but steady shift from a Soviet-style system of higher education to a Western-style system of higher education.
Today the National University of Mongolia has about 20 professors and lecturers in its physics department, half of whom were trained at Moscow State University or Dubna Joint Institute for Nuclear Research before the collapse of communism in the late 1980s. These instructors are responsible for teaching physics to some 800 undergraduate and 70 graduate students.
"The university is increasingly shedding its Soviet dress for more Western attire," explains Lhagva, "but sometimes the substantive changes have been slower than the stylistic ones. Faculty and student visits to Trieste-and specifically to ICTP-have helped facilitate the transition by enabling us to keep in close contact with the global scientific community."
"Mongolia is a remote country," Lhagva continues, "and even under the best of circumstances it is not easy for scientists to develop meaningful and lasting contacts with colleagues in other countries. The Centre has provided a sturdy bridge of communication during this dramatic period of transition."
Another challenge facing Mongolia's scientific community is that it has yet to train a sufficient number of physicists to ensure that all basic fields of study can be offered to students.
For example, the National University of Mongolia has an ample number of professors and lecturers trained in nuclear and condensed matter physics, but its faculty in high energy physics remains slim and its faculty in quantum physics and nonlinear optics is too small to even offer an undergraduate degree in these subfields, which are currently among the most vigorous in physics.
ICTP helps Mongolia's physics community meet these shortcomings in two important ways.
First, the Centre's research and training activities, which number about 40 each year in a variety of subjects related to physics and mathematics, fill an important void for scientists from Mongolia and other nations that face the same set of problems. Although the Centre's activities will never compensate for the lack of a degree-granting subfield at a national university, they nevertheless enable scientists to be introduced to subjects that they would not have an opportunity to learn about if their classroom work and studies were restricted to institutions within their home countries.
Second, the Centre's Diploma Course and sandwich programmes provide more in-depth knowledge in research areas that students may subsequently choose as the focal point of their scientific careers. If these students return home--as Damdinsuren plans to do after his year of study in Trieste--then people like him could become the first in a long line of teachers and researchers in these fields. In the process, subjects once absent would be added to the curriculum and subdisciplines once weak would become strong. That, in essence, is how the long-discussed desire for capacity building could become a reality.
While in Trieste, Damdinsuren has devoted his time to the study of fundamental laser-optics theories and to basic experiments involving ultrashort laser-pulse generation and measurements. Such efforts could lead to a better understanding of the complex nature of protein behaviour. In fact, deciphering a protein's behavioural patterns--and, more importantly, how such behaviour affects a protein's structure and function--requires both textbook theoretical knowledge as well as an ability to manipulate the diamond tips found on atomographic micromachines. Put more simply, it requires both intellectual insight and manual dexterity.
The classroom experience at ICTP, complemented by the laboratory experiments conducted at Elettra, is enabling Damdinsuren to meet his goals by deepening both his scientific understanding and honing his experimental techniques--a blending of knowledge and know-how that should prove valuable throughout his entire career.
As for the future, Damdinsuren hopes that his acquired skills will help convince funding agencies that the construction of a small educational and research laser laboratory at the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. He estimates such a facility would cost about US$100,000 (if it was built largely with equipment and parts salvaged from existing laboratories in Europe or the United States).
"Providing access to such a machine in Mongolia," Lhagva notes, "would bring both ICTP's and Mongolia's scientific community one step nearer their shared goal: To create a self-sustaining community of homegrown scholars with the knowledge and experience necessary to interact with like-minded colleagues from around the world."

SANDWICHING FOR SUCCESS

The ICTP 'sandwich' programme, launched in 1995 with funding from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna (IAEA remains the programme's major benefactor), has provided fellowships to about 10 young researchers each year, mostly in the field of laser and atomic physics. The primary aim of the programme, which requires participants to remain enrolled in their home universities while taking a one-year course of study in Trieste, is to encourage students to pursue their careers in their home countries once they have earned their doctorates. The programme seeks to promote state-of-the-art training without encouraging multi-year visits abroad, a factor that many experts believe has contributed to the 'brain-drain' problem in the past. For additional information about the ICTP 'sandwich programme,' contact the Office of External Activities at oea@ictp.trieste.it.

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