Myanmar American Science & Technology Alumni Association (MASTAA)

Updated as of 7/6/2023

Invitation to 5th Annual General Assembly of MASTAA

Dear All Members and Friends,

Please join us for our annual general assembly, the 5th Annual Gathering Meeting of Myanmar American Science and Technology Alumni Association (MASTAA).

Our first annual meeting was held in July 2019 at the NJ residence, and the last three meetings were held online due to Covid-19. In order to conduct in-person meetings this year, we plan the following schedule:

Date: 26 August 2023 (Rain Date: 2 September 2023)

Time: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Address: 7 De Hart Court, East Brunswick, NJ 08816

We’re looking forward to seeing you at this event so you can reunite with our teachers, old friends and classmates.  Among the teachers attending will be U San Hla Aung, U Ohn Myint, U Tun Aung Gyaw, U Maung Maung Htay, Mr. Fred Thetgyi, and U Maung Maung. By video conference, we will be joined by Saya Gyi U Aung Gyi and Saya U Soe Paing.

We will have plenty of food and drinks, sing karaoke with friends, and take-home souvenirs of our group MASTAA. There is also a chance to win raffle prizes. Detailed schedules will be released later.

We would appreciate it if you could send us a list of potluck dishes to the email below if you plan to bring them.  Please let us know if you would like to accommodate out-of-state guests.  For those who wish to find accommodation, please let us know the number of guests and the number of days they will stay.

Please confirm your participation and the number of people you will bring to “soe.myint@mastaa.org” by the 12 August at the latest.

Throughout 2019, we have been working to improve the livelihoods of our alumni members and friends, as well as people in Myanmar. Thank you for taking the time and effort to work with our Board of Directors.

Mr. Ivan Lee (Chairman) and Mr. Sein Myint (Vice Chairman).

Mr. Soe Myint (President) and Mr. Khin Zaw (Vice President).

Mr. San Myint (Treasurer) and Mr. Tint Kyu (Vice Treasurer).

Dr. Maung Htay, Mr. Peter Lee

Mr. Myo Myint, Mr. Hla Mine Pye

Dr. Padetha Tin, Mr. Myint Thein

Mr. Nyan Win, Ms. Lee Feng Wong

Thanks to those who donated to us so that we could carry out our activities. In order to expand our activities, we also need to add new members.

Annual Meeting Preparation Committee

MASTAA

Updated as of 1/14/2023

From the team of the MASTAA Board of Directors, wishing you all the best in the year of 2023!

During this year, our BOD monthly meetings will be started on 2/4/2023 (Saturday) followed by every first Saturday of the month.  We are planning to reconvene online programs related to education and technology.  Any interested ideas from the registered members are welcome and we will further communicate accordingly.

As MASTAA is a non-profit organization, membership fee is free.  For more information, please visit Member Registration | Myanmar American Science & Technology Alumni Association (MASTAA).

Updated as of 12/9/2021

REST IN PEACE

Dr. Nyi Nyi (December 1930-December 2021)

Dr. Nyi Nyi passed away this morning in New York at the age of 91. It is a sad and heavy day to announce his passing.

He was born in Myaungmya, Irrawaddy Division, in December 1930. Graduated from Rangoon University in 1951 with a Bachelor of Science Honors degree in Geology with First Class Honors and from London University, Imperial College of Science & Technology with a Ph.D. and D.I.C. from Imperial College.

After graduation and further studies, served as Lecturer at Rangoon University, Professor of Geology, Director General of Higher Education, Joint Secretary for Education, then Secretary for Education, Minister for Mines, and Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand.

Retired from government service in 1978, and joined the United Nations as a consultant to UNICEF’s Director of Programmes, UNDP’s Resident Representative in Indonesia, and UNICEF’s Director of Programmes. After retirement, taught at the School of Public Health for six years as a Professor of Public Health and served on the Board of Trustees in several non-governmental organizations.

In 2019 we were struggling to establish the Myanmar American Science & Technology Alumni Association, and he was very active and supportive.  He reviewed the MASTAA bylaws and offered his guidance.  MASTAA always asks for his advice when we can’t decide for ourselves, and he is never hesitant to offer it.  His departure will be a great loss to his family and MASTAA.

May he rest in peace.

Heartfelt condolences.

MASTAA

Codolence to Dr Nyi Nyi

Updated as of 10/15/2021

Dated: October 12, 2021
Dear members and friends of MASTAA,

As notified last month, effective early September, over 50 lecturers and professors on CDM are already starting on line creditable classes for Institute of Technologies and Computer Science students nationwide (Myanmar), in addition, some basic courses for high school level, initially total 12 Subject topics including required programming courses at collective efforts without proper and full funding support from governing bodies.  Some teachers and technicians are remotely contributing while being under CDM.  Total about 1200 students from various colleges nationwide in Myanmar enrolled.

The program needs support especially on funding due to lack of formal supports where some on line access for web-based session and document managing fees are required as mandatory. In order to support the program and development of students as well as basis coverage and wellbeing of the teachers and technical support persons nationwide, MASTAA has originally pledged to contribute $15,000 for initial three months period while expecting for overall stability.

As technical support-based organization and being under low budget, we are in URGENT need to fulfill required level to cover basic cost and TIMELY contribution as intended for good sake of education in Myanmar and bridging survival of teachers and support team under CDM without proper salary while they are scarifying their time and own funding to educate students in need.

Therefore, all are kindly requested to revisit the issue and make any level of good will contribution toward Myanmar technology students and teachers to avoid shutting down the program and mainly for the future of technical education in our homeland while instability still exists.

MASTAA can accept via Zelle or check or alternate route of contribution at https://mastaa.org/donate-us.

All collections will be immediately forwarded as relevant and we will share confirmations.
Many thanks for kind consideration to save the future of technical education while we all are trying and expecting to see stability and peace in Myanmar as well as other nations in similar condition.  All levels of kind and considerate contribution would be greatly appreciated.

Ivan Lee
CEO, MASTAA

c.c:  All brother and sister Alumni associations globally to share same views.

MASTAA Letter to all after AGA 2021 -12Oct2021

Updated as of 9/14/2021

Come and Join us Online Annual Gathering
this Saturday 18 September 2021!
Myanmar American Science & Technology Alumni Association (MASTAA)

Date:    Saturday, 18 September 2021
Time:   7:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST New York Time

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85279043738?pwd=TXBOOTc1d1RnVHI3L0tnbU9HeU9VZz09
Meeting ID: 852 7904 3738             Passcode: 300160

Registration: Welcome, registration and contribution collection

Photograph sessions: Group pictures will be taken by the host of the event.

The honorable keynote speakers include Dr Nyi Nyi, Dr. Aung Gyi, U Min Wun, Dr. San Hla Aung, Sayar U Soe Paing and many prominent teachers from RIT and UCC

Paying Homage to Teachers: The annual Alumni gathering is also meant to pay homage to our teachers and we care for one another as Science & Technology family, reflect our happy time in our mother Institutes and Universities, and share a great time now and then, here and there.

Those who want to contribute to our Alumni Association:     https://mastaa.org/donate-us/
Those who want to advise us on this event, please contact us. https://mastaa.org/contact-us/

Note: There will be rehearsal online Zoom sessions (same Zoom Meeting ID and passcode of Final Event mentioned above) on September 16^th and 17^th from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm for those who want to test and familiarize the Zoom sessions.

With best regards,

Sein Myint,
Vice CEO, MASTAA
sein.myint@mastaa.org
Mobile: (845)391-9888

MASTAA Annual Gathering
Program and Schedule
Date: Saturday, 18 September 2021
7:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Note:  Latest updates of the program at https://mastaa.org/
7:00 PM Registration/Naming/Contribution/Chatting with class mate in Breakout Room
7:30 PM        Opening Keynote speech by CEO, Ivan Lee
7:45 PM        Annual Progress Report by President, U Soe Myint and Treasurer, U Myo Myint
8:00 PM        Keynote speech by Dr Nyi Nyi, NY, USA
8:05 PM        Keynote speech by Dr Aung Gyi, Canada
8:10 PM        Keynote speech by U Min Wun, LA, USA
8:15 PM        Keynote speech by Dr San Lin, LA, USA
8:20 PM        Keynote speech by U Maung Maung, NJ, USA
8:25 PM        Keynote speech by Dr San Hla Aung, NY,USA
8:30 PM        Keynote speech by U Soe Paing, UK
8:35 PM        Keynote speech by U Ohn Myint, Washington, USA
8:40 PM        Keynote speech by U Hla Min, SF, USA
8:50 PM        New Changes of Bylaw to be approved by a majority of members attended on this Annual Gathering
– Extending the members of Board of Director
– Opening up to accept membership to anyone interested in our cause
– Any other business
9:10 PM        Vote to approve the changes on MASTAA Bylaw
9:30 PM        Recruiting new BOD Members, Board of Directors announcement
9:45 PM        Discuss and Decide the new Objectives for 2021-2022
10:00 PM      Photographic Session & Closing of Annual Meeting
– – – – –

Updated as of 7/30/2021

To: All Friends of MASTAA

Subject: Update of Fundraiser launched for humanitarian needs in Myanmar

Date: 1st May 2021

Dear All Friends & Members,

I would like to thanks all friends and members of MASTAA for their support and donation for CDM Support in Myanmar. I am very proud to inform all of you that up to 4/24/2021 we had raised 11,093.90 funds during the fundraiser launched for humanitarian needs in Myanmar since February 2021.

We had successfully donated $5,000 for CDM Support in Myanmar. Here I am glad to share with you a receipt from CRPH about our donation.

We are still looking forward to making the rest of the donation, i.e., $6,093.90 to Myanmar as soon as possible. We will keep you informed of any progress made in this regard.

We really appreciate your support and thanks for helping people of Myanmar get back to peaceful democratic status with true justice system and full access to standard human rights including freedom of expression and freedom of rights.
Chairman
MASTAA

Note:
MASTAA is legally registered as Non-Profit Organization 501 (c)3 in New York, your donations are tax deductible. We will send your receipt with Tax exemption ID by email or postal mail.

Updated as of 2/25/2021

To:                   All Friends of MASTAA

Subject:          Fundraiser launched for humanitarian needs  in Myanmar

Date:              22 February 2021

Dear All Friends & Members,

As you all know, due to countrywide strike for democracy and freedom, people are not getting their salaries; banks and businesses are closed. Nobody knows when this crisis will end. During this unrest time, our friends and families in Myanmar are in dire need of food and shelter.

To help the humanitarian needs, MASTAA initially set up the seed money of $2,600 among the board of directors on 20 February 2021. We set the target to raise the fund of $10,000 to support Myanmar families.

Please help our Myanmar-American families in this extremely difficult time. Let’s together show our support to the surviving families during this campaign. Please visit https://mastaa.org/donate-us  and make a donation of onetime contribution or monthly.

We really appreciate your support and thanks for helping Myanmar get back to its democratic government and human rights.

Chairman
MASTAA

Note:
MASTAA is legally registered as Non-Profit Organization 501 (c)3 in New York, your donations are tax deductible.  We will send your receipt with Tax exemption ID by email or postal mail.

Updated as of 2/10/2021

Condemnation of the Myanmar Military Coup
and
Demanding to Return Power back to Duly Elected Government led by President U Win Myint Immediately
Dated 6th February 2021

1.           Without the consent of the democratically elected President, U Win Myint, and breaking the Constitution of 2008, the 3 pillars of Government of Myanmar have been unconstitutionally overtaken by Military Coup on 1st February 2021. We strongly condemn the arbitrary detention of the President, U Win Myint, the National State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, elected members of parliament, elected government officials, activists, members of various political parties including National League for Democracy (NLD) and journalists.

2.           We demand an unconditional release of all those detained by the Military, and immediately return the power back to the government led by the President U Win Myint, officially elected by the People of Myanmar.

3.           The Myanmar American Science and Technology Alumni Association is committed to a peaceful and fair settlement in accordance with the real aspirations of the people and to stand with the people.

Myanmar American Science and Technology Alumni Association

စစ်တပ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှု ကို ပြင်းထန်စွာ ရှုတ်ချခြင်းနှင့်
အာဏာကို ပြည်သူများတရားမျှတစွာရွေးကောက်တင်မြောက် ထားသော သမ္မတကြီး ဦးဝင်းမြင့် ခေါင်းဆောင်သော အစိုးရအား အမြန်ဆုံးလွှဲအပ်ရန် တောင်းဆိုချက်
နေ့စွဲ – ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၆) ရက်။

၁။         ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁) ရက်နေ့ တွင် နိုင်ငံတော် အချုပ်အခြာအာဏာ (၃) ရပ်ကို ပြည်သူ လူထု ဒီမိုကရေစီနည်းလမ်း နှင့် အညီ ရွေးချယ်တင်မြောက်ထားသော နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတကြီး ဦးဝင်းမြင့် ၏ သဘောဆန္ဒမပါဘဲ၊ ၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံဥပဒေ နှင့် မညီဘဲ၊ တပ်မတော်က စစ်အာဏာသိမ်း ခဲ့ပါသည်။  သမ္မတကြီးဦးဝင်းမြင့်၊ နိုင်ငံတော် အတိုင်ပင်ခံ ပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၊ ပြည်သူများ ရွေးချယ် တင်မြောက်ထားသော လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလည်များ၊ ပြည်သူ့ အစိုးရအရာထမ်းအမှုထမ်းများ၊ တက်ကြွ လှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (NLD) အပါအ၀င် နိုင်ငံရေးပါတီများမှ အဖွဲ့ဝင်များ၊ နှင့် အချို့သတင်း မီဒီယာတို့အား မတရားဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းထားခြင်း တို့ကို ပြင်းထန်စွာ ရှုတ်ချ အပ်ပါသည်။

၂။         တပ်မတော်မှ ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းထားသော ပုဂ္ဂိုလ်များ အားလုံးကို ခြွင်းချက်မရှိ ပြန်လွှတ် ပေးရန်၊ နှင့် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုက ဥပဒေနှင့်အညီ ရွေးချယ်တင်မြောက်ထားသော သမ္မတကြီး ဦးဝင်းမြင့် ဦးဆောင်သည့် အစိုးရအား အာဏာကို ချက်ချင်း ပြန်လည်လွှဲပြောင်းပေးရန် တောင်းဆို အပ်ပါသည်။

၃။         မြန်မာ အမေရိကန် သိပ္ပံနှင့်အတတ်ပညာ ကျောင်းသား ကျောင်းသူဟောင်း များ အသင်း အနေ ဖြင့် အများပြည်သူတို့၏ ဆန္ဒအစစ်အမှန်နှင့်အညီ ငြိမ်းချမ်းမျှတစွာဖြေရှင်း ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးရန်နှင့် ပြည်သူ များ  နှင့် အတူ တသားတည်း ရပ်တည်သွားမည် ဖြစ်ပါကြောင်း ကြေညာ အပ် ပါသည်။
မြန်မာ အမေရိကန် သိပ္ပံနှင့်အတတ်ပညာ ကျောင်းသားကျောင်းသူဟောင်း များ အသင်း

Posted as of 1/14/2021

Myanmar American Science & Technology Alumni Association (MASTAA) is based in Queens Borough of New York State.

It has been registered on January 15, 2019 as Not-for-profit organization.  First annual meeting was held on 7/6/2019 in New Jersey.   Only on that day, elected 12 members became Board of Directors (BOD) of MASTAA.  Although it is in its infant stage with a very little funds available, we are proud to announce that we have supported three major humanitarian assistance – two in Myanmar (Burma) and another one in New York, USA.

Rest In Peace

Dr. Kendrick Kyaw Than Aung Ph.D. (Aged-59)

Our combination of sadness and annoying to announce at the loss of one of our MASTAA ‘s Board of Directors (BOD) on Wednesday, January 13, 2021.

Professor Dr. Kendrick Aung passed away at his residence address of
3417 Ocean Ridge Cir,
Seabrook, TX 77586, Texas USA.

He graduated in 1983 at RIT with Mechanical Engineering Bachelor Degree, standing class top and worked as lecturer at RIT Mechanical Dept., before immigration aboard.
Currently his post is

Interim Department Chair, Dept. of Mech. Engineering
Professor of
Lamar University,
Beaumont, Texas 77710 USA

Education:
Ph.D. (Aerospace) University of Michigan
M. Eng. (Energy Technology), Asian Institute of Technology
B. Eng. (M83), Rangoon Institute of Technology

Awards & Honors
Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Lamar University, 2015
Presidential Fellowship in Teaching Innovation, Lamar University, 2015
Presidential Fellowship in Teaching Innovation, Lamar University, 2014
Presidential Fellowship in Research, Lamar University, 2014
Tim Kendall Memorial Prize, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand, 1991
Pi Tau Sigma, Honors Society of Mechanical Engineers

He had been with MASTAA, USA since June 2019. Kendrick was more than just a valued member of our team.

He was the heart and soul of our team in promoting Myanmar students who want to study abroad. His information is vital in our organization’s Students Info page. His contribution to MASTAA can be seen on Students Info page at https://MASTAA.ORG
website.

He had left his beloved wife Ms. Khin Khin Hla and two adult sons. The funeral service to be announced later date.

Our condolences for this tragic loss and wish Dr. Kendrick Aung rest in peace.

Best regards
Ivan Lee
CEO
And members of MASTAA

Posted as of 11/5/2020

Recently Myanmar has been hit by Covid-19 Second Wave harder than before.  As of today, Myanmar has been dealing with 57,935 CCOVID-19 infected patients and reached the total death to 1,352.  Myanmar is in need for more assistance than before, hence MASTAA and its members launched a donation drive and donated $5,000 to the National Level Central Committee for Prevention, Containment and Treatment of Covid-19 of the Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar on November 4, 2020 through the office of the Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the United Nations in New York.

New York has been hit by Covid-19 the hardest with its death toll being the highest not only in the United States but also the world.  MASTAA supports the fundraising lead by National Humanitarian Fundraising for Myanmar (NHFMM), a coalition of New York City based Myanmar-Americans groups to provide free consultations on various issues including limited medical and legal questions; financial assistance to the community members whose families are directly affected by Covid-19. Their support will prioritize for those who lost a family member due to Covid-19.

On 5/16/2020, MASTAA donated US$2,000 to NHFMM.

During our initial setup phase of MASTAA, Myanmar (Burma) was hit by severe Monsoon rainfall started on June 25, 2019.  As of August 2019, it was reported that widespread flooding and landslides in 12 out of 14 states and regions, and one union territory.  Due to massive flooding and landslide, approximately a total of 0.2 million people were affected while 201,133 people from 43,759 households were evacuated to 400 evacuation sites in affected area.  As of August 16, 2019, the total death tolls were 82 and 49 were injured.  Board of Directors of MASTAA called for an emergency meeting and decided to make assistance to ongoing needs of recovery phase.  On 10/2/2019, MASTAA has donated US$1,000 to support Myanmar Flood Relief through Daw Khin Kyi Foundation that was chaired by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.