On of the focus of the Horizon 2020 is on the investment in research and innovation, which is foreseen as essential for Europe’s society aiming to produce Europe as world-class science and technology community that drives economic growth not only in the European geographical area. As part of this effort it is of the foremost importance to bring together European scientists with those from around the world. Building research and innovation capacities is a challenging task and the current project will address this task within the cooperation network of Asian and European partners. The research capacities will be developed at partner higher education institutions in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand through the creation and implementation of the System of the Assessment of Quality and Impact of Research and the development and the introduction of self-contained transferable research skill training modules. Though individual partner universities are at different levels of the research capacities development, all of them strive to embrace the ways towards their improved research performance. The diversity of partner higher education institutions involved in the project (public vs. private, research vs. teaching focused, traditional vs. new, located in the capital city vs. in rural areas, focused on social vs. technical sciences, located in high income vs. medium/lower income countries) allows for addressing the research capacity building goal from diverse perspectives and for achieving necessary synergies in the partnership. The transfer of the best practice and knowledge in the area of research capacities in both ways will provide additional value added for European partners.