Context
Laboratory classes at USTH
At the end of the 2000s, Viet Nam decided to reach high international standards of education and research by creating 4 leading excellent universities. Among them, USTH - University of Science and Technology of Hanoi (also called Viet Nam France University) aims to develop research and education programs using state-of-the-art high technologies, with a focus on environmental sciences as well as satellite applications. USTH represents in Viet Nam a unique collaborative platform : it provides work facilities gathering researchers from different countries, institutes and scientific fields, favoring the emergence of multidisciplinary research actions. Interdisciplinary collaborative approaches are indeed fundamental for environmental studies and strongly need to be developed.
Field practical training
From 2009, the first phase of USTH construction was devoted to educational programs. Since 2015, a strong effort is done to develop research teams connected with those programs, and IRD significantly contribute to this objective. HILO (Hanoi International Laboratory of Oceanography, Dir. M. Herrmann) was created at USTH in 2015, and REMOSAT (Laboratory of Remote sEnsing and Modelling of Surface and Atmosphere, Dir. N.D. Thanh) in 2016 . Both teams focus respectively on the oceanic and continental parts of the ocean-atmosphere-continent regional coupled system and work in close collaboration, building partnerships with Vietnamese and French teams. IRD and USTH moreover developed over the last 10 years partnerships with Vietnamese institutes in environmental and marine sciences and satellite earth observation.
Numerical modeling classes
Building at USTH a state-of-the art laboratory for environmental studies gathering scientists from different fields and teams, in strong connection with education programs, will contribute to answer to Viet Nam demand and needs for a sustainable development.
The project of the LOTUS joint laboratory was elaborated with this purpose. It gathers HILO and REMOSAT and is driven by LEGOS and USTH and based with srong cooperation with French (LAERO, LOG and MIO) and Vietnamese (IMER, IO, STI) partners. It is supported by four institutions: IRD, UFTMiP, ULCO and VAST.
