Members of the Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL) took part in the second Engineering Alumni Reunion, held by the School of Engineering, University of Phayao on 3 September 2026 at the shrine courtyard. The gathering brought graduates back together with current students, teaching staff and support staff.
At its centre was the offering ceremony to Phra Wisanukam — Vishvakarman, the deity of craft and construction whose shrine stands in the courtyard — together with the guardian deities of the School. Trays of fruit and flowers were arranged before the shrine beneath a tiered umbrella, and alumni, students and staff made their offerings in turn. The observance is long-standing in Thai engineering practice, and marks the profession as something handed down rather than simply taught.
That idea of handing down is not ceremonial for this laboratory. ISL keeps an Alumni section on its members page alongside the current faculty and students, and when member accounts were set up they were registered deliberately against personal e-mail addresses rather than university ones — so that graduating does not quietly cut a member off from the lab’s work. A reunion is the social form of the same decision.
The practical value is plain enough. Graduates know where the work went after they left it, and where it went wrong; students about to enter the profession meet people a few years ahead of them who have already made those choices. Neither conversation happens in a classroom.
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