3rd, HONORARY DOCTORAL DEGREE RECIPIENTS IN 2007
HONORARY DOCTORAL DEGREE RECIPIENTS IN 2007
His Excellency Tea Banh
His Excellency Tea Banh was born on 5 November 1945, in Koh Kong Province, where he grew up. After joining the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, he was rapidly promoted, becoming a Commander of a platoon in Koh Kong Province in 1962, and then Commander of a company in 1969. In 1973, he was appointed Military Commander of Koh Kong Province and also Director of Training.
Thereafter, he rose to become Deputy Chief of the General Staff in charge of Telecommunications and the Air Force in 1979; and then Deputy-Minister of National Defense in charge of Telecommunications and the Air Force in 1980. In 1982, he was appointed Minister of Communications, Transport and Posts, a position which he retained when he was appointed Vice Chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1984, although he subsequently moved to become Minister of National Defense in 1987.
In 1988, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Siem Reap Province, a seat he has held ever since. He also served as Deputy Minister of National Defense in the Provisional Government and, thereafter, as Co-Minister of National Defense. During the period 1994-1995, he also held the post of Co-Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the National Armed Forces.
He continued to serve as Co-Minister of National Defense after the 1998 elections, and was also appointed as a Senior Minister. He retained his Defense portfolio after the 2003 elections, when he was also given the post of Deputy Prime Minister. He still holds these two positions in the Royal Government of Cambodia.
H.E. Tea Banh is being conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Military Science by the University of Cambodia. His citation reads:
o He has made significant contributions to the functioning of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.
o He has thus helped to foster the development of peace and security, and thereby to set Cambodia on the road to law and order and economic development.
o He has contributed positively to military reform and the promotion of civil-military relations in Cambodia.
o He has also helped Cambodia to maintain its territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty.
His Excellency Cham Prasidh
His Excellency Cham Prasidh was born on May 15, 1951 in Phnom Penh. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce, and another in Economics, from the University of Phnom Penh in 1973. Over the period 1980-1985, he held various posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before becoming a Vice Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office in 1987.
He was appointed Minister of Commerce in 1994 and a Member of the Central Committee of the Cambodian People\'s Party, posts which he has retained ever since. He was elected as a Member of Parliament for Siem Reap Constituency in 1998, and re-elected in 2003. After his re-election, he was also appointed as a Senior Minister in 2004.
As Minister of Commerce, he played a key role as Chief Negotiator for Cambodia\'s Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the period 1995-2004. He is also Cambodia\'s Economic Minister to ASEAN (since July 1999) and to ASEM (since August 2005). Other positions include being Vice-Chairman of the Cambodian Steering Committee for the Ayeyawadee-Chao Praya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) programs; Minister in charge of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) programs; Minister in charge of both the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam (CLV) and the Cambodia-Laos-Thailand (CLT) Development Triangle programs; Chairman of the Cambodia-Thailand Joint Trade Committee; Chairman of the Public-Private Sector Working Group on Export Processing and Trade Facilitation; Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee on the Integrated Framework for Trade-related Technical Assistance and Mainstreaming Trade Strategy for Poverty Alleviation; Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Intellectual Property Rights; Chairman of the Export Quotas Management Committee; Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Quality Control of Goods and Services; Chairman of the Committee for the Reception and Distribution of Foreign Assistance; Vice Chairman of the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) in charge of Foreign Direct Investments; Chairman of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the Organization and Participation of Cambodia to International Fairs; Vice Chairman of the Steering Committee for Private Sector
Development cum Chairman of the Sub-Steering Committee on Trade Facilitation.
H.E. Cham Prasidh is being conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Trade and Economic Integration by the University of Cambodia. His citation reads:
o He has promoted commercial and economic ties between Cambodia and the region, and also the rest of the world.
o He has facilitated the influx of investments into Cambodia from elsewhere, including from the region.
o He has substantially contributed to the economic development of Cambodia and thus to poverty reduction and the well-being of the Cambodian people.
o He has led Cambodia to become a member of the World Trade Organization.
His Excellency Koji Omi
His Excellency Koji Omi was born on December 14, 1932, in Gunma Prefecture. He graduated in 1956 with a degree in Commerce from Hitotsubashi University, and proceeded to join the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). During his time at MITI, he served as Consul at the Consulate General of Japan in New York between 1970 and 1974; and, after his return to Japan, as Director of the General Affairs Division of the Director-General\'s Secretariat of the Science and Technology Agency between 1979 and 1981 and, the following year, Director-General of the Guidance Department of MITI\'s Small and Medium Enterprise Agency.
He left MITI in 1982 to enter politics, and was elected to the House of Representatives for the Kita Kanto proportional representation bloc at the end of 1983, a seat he has retained ever since. He served as Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Finance between February and December 1990; Director-General of the Research Bureau of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), November 1991 until December 1992; Director of the LDP Commerce and Industry Division, December 1992 until August 1993; Director of the LDP Science and Technology Policy Division, August 1993 until July 1994; LDP Deputy Secretary-General, July 1994 until January 1995; Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Finance, January 1995 until September 1995; Director of the House of Representatives Special Committee on Financial Issues and Related Matters, April 1996 until
October 1996; and Deputy Chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council, November 1996 until September 1997.
In September 1997, he was appointed Minister of State for Economic Planning in the Second Hashimoto Cabinet, a position which he held until July 1998. Thereafter, he was appointed in August 1998 as Director-General of the LDP Election Bureau (a post he held until October 1999) and as Acting Chairman of the LDP Research Commission to Promote Research and Establish a Nation of Innovative Science and Technology and to Promote Research and Development on Information and Telecommunications. In September 1998, he was appointed as Deputy Chairman of the LDP Research Commission on the Tax System. He became Acting Chairman of the LDP Party Organization Headquarters and Director of the Interest Group Policy Division in October 1999, before taking up the post of LDP Acting Secretary-General in June 2000.
With the formation of the First Koizumi Cabinet in April 2001, he was appointed Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs and Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy, posts which he held until September 2002. Thereafter, he moved to become Chairman of the LDP Research Commission to Promote Research and Establish a Nation of Innovative Science and Technology in October 2002; Deputy Chairman of the LDP General Council in October 2004; and Chairman of the LDP Research Commission on Oil, Resources and Energy in November 2005.
In the Abe Cabinet, he held the post of Minister of Finance from September 2006 until August 2007.
H.E. Omi is Founder and Chairman of the Science and Technology in Society Forum, which has held annual meetings since 2004 to promote discussion about issues related to the accelerating evolution of scientific and technological developments and their applications.
H.E. Koji Omi is being conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service by the University of Cambodia. His citation reads:
o He has promoted international trade between Japan and the rest of the world
o He has promoted an international dialogue on the changing roles of science and technology and their impacts on social development
o He has thus helped to ease the stresses and strains of regional and global development.
Mr. Yohei Sasakawa
Mr. Yohei Sasakawa was born in Tokyo in 1939. After graduating in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from Meiji University, he spent two decades managing a pioneering information technology company.
Then, in 1981, he moved to become a Trustee of the Nippon Foundation, founded by his father in 1962 as the Japan Shipbuilding Industry Promotion Foundation. After a period in 1988 as Acting President, he became President of the Foundation between 1989 and 2005. Since 2005, he has served as Chairman of the Nippon Foundation.
Funded by 3.3% of the proceeds of betting on Japanese motorboat racing, the Nippon Foundation has had an annual budget of between 35 billion yen to 86 billion yen in recent years. Its activities can be divided into three basic areas: Overseas Cooperative Assistance, Maritime Development, and Domestic Social Welfare and Volunteer Support.
Through the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation, the Foundation has worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) to cure leprosy and its social ills. The Foundation’s support from 1996 on has allowed the free ministration of needed drugs world-wide, so that more than 14 million people have been cured: whereas leprosy affected 122 nations in 1985, it is found in only nine today. In recognition of his dedicated efforts, the WHO has appointed Yohei Sasakawa as its Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination.
Another offshoot of the Nippon Foundation, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, was established in 1986 for the promotion of international cooperation and understanding. One of its projects is the Sasakawa Pan-Asia Fund (including the Sasakawa Southeast Asia Cooperation Fund), which was created in 1992 to provide financial assistance for education, agriculture, policy-making and human networking in the region, and thereby promote adjustment to rapid social change. There are many projects in Cambodia which have received funds, including Primary School Building Projects since 1993, enhancing distance learning in rural schools, scholarship programmes for teacher trainees, the purchase of an ultrasonic echo scanner for the maternity ward and other drugs and equipment for the Municipal Hospital in Phnom Penh, the Cambodia School of Prosthetics and Orthotics, the Disability Action Council, the Association of the Blind and the Overbrook School for the
Blind, programmes to improve the livelihoods of smallholder upland farmers, media development assistance, the compilation of legal textbooks and the promotion of political dialogue.
An important global project of the Nippon Foundation has been the Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (SYLFF): a program to encourage the development of tomorrow’s intellectual leaders by giving outstanding graduate students fellowships to do a Master’s or doctoral degree at a selected university. Since it was started in 1987, it has given $1 million endowments to more than 60 universities in about 40 countries. The aim is to help the best and brightest students with strong leadership potential, and regardless of their background, so that they can better develop as responsible citizens who can consider social issues analytically but fairly, devise solutions for local and regional problems, and participate effectively in their country’s efforts to engage the global community.
Mr. Yohei Sasakawa has received many honours, including honorary degrees and professorships, as a result of his philanthropic work: these include the award, in 2003, of the National Construction Medal and the Officier de l’Ordre Royal du Monisaraphon by Cambodia.
Mr. Yohei Sasakawa is being conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Humanity by the University of Cambodia. His citation reads:
o He has sought to improve the lives of many of the poor and disadvantaged in the developing world.
o He has sought to prepare potential leaders of society in the developing world for their future roles as guides and trend-setters.
o He has been a good friend of the people of Cambodia in their time of need.
Dr. Richard E. Dyck
Dr. Richard E. Dyck was born in California in April, 1945. He received his B.A. from California State University at Fresno in 1967; after studies at various Japanese universities, he completed his Master\'s (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) degrees at Harvard University on regional studies related to Japan and research and development in the Japanese electronics industry. He stayed on at Harvard for a brief period as an Assistant Professor, before going on to a similar position at Ohio State University for brief period in 1976.
Thereafter, he moved out of academia to become Director of Far East Trade and Development of the State of Ohio in Japan until 1978, before doing a four-year stint as Director of East Asian Operations for the Specialty Materials Division of General Electric.
In 1982, he moved to Teradyne, Inc., a US manufacturer of automatic test equipment systems and high-speed connectors for the electronics industry, as Chairman and Representative Director of Teradyne-Japan. In 1988, he was also appointed as a Vice President and Officer of Teradyne, Inc. Then, in 1999, after acquiring the Japanese operations of the backplane high-speed connection systems business from Teradyne, he co-founded and became President of TCS-Japan KK and East Asia Connector Services, Ltd. (Shanghai), positions he has retained ever since. Since their inception, TCS-Japan and East Asia Connector Services, Ltd. have seen their product lines expand to include a wide variety of connectors and backplanes, with state-of-the art factories in Yokohama (Japan) and Shanghai (China), and procurement networks which span the globe. Applications include telecommunications equipment, data communications equipment, medical equipment, industrial controllers and automatic test equipment, with customers including Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi, Matsushita, Yokogawa Denki, Teradyne, Shibasoku, Mitsubishi Electric, and Fujitsu.
Dr. Dyck has been a member of both the Japanese Prime Minister\'s Council on De-regulation and Foreign Investment and the Advisory Committee of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) since 1999. He has played a role as an advisor to US ambassadors in Japan and, in 2001, he was appointed by the President of the United States as a member of the Japan-US Friendship Commission, an independent federal agency which supports programs of training, education and information management to help prepare Americans to meet the challenges and opportunities in the their relations with Japan. He is also a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Pacific Relations of Waseda University. In addition, he has held various posts with the Semiconductor Equipment and Material Industry Association (SEMI; a global trade association in the semiconductor industry); and serves on several corporate and non-profit boards, including Laser Front Technologies KK, Starbridge KK, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Nishimachi International School and Children’s Express – Japan. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
Furthermore, Dr. Dyck frequently comes to Cambodia where he helps support orphanages, schools and other projects, including a
telemedicine program that connects rural doctors in Cambodia with physicians in the United States
In recognition of his contributions to the facilitating of greater cultural awareness and business relationships between the Japanese and US, Dr. Dyck has received several awards: in 1999, he received a citation from Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan for his contributions to international business relations; whilst, in 2006, he was the eighth annual recipient of the Bob Graham Award for outstanding contributions to the semiconductor industry.
Dr. Dyck is being conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Humanity by the University of Cambodia. His citation reads:
o He has helped to boost the economic development of the region as a developer and manufacturer of advanced electronics systems.
o He has sought to build up economic and other ties between Japan and the United States, which are essential for regional and global stability
o He has generously contributed his time and resources to the aid of the poor in Cambodia.
