PENANG, 9 August 2016 - Innovate Malaysia Design Competition 2016 is one of the platforms that brings together the most ambitious, creative and smart undergraduate students in engineering or computer science, for them to work with each other in turning imagination into reality.

Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has garnered a number of awards in this year's competition, in addition to the DreamCatcher Best Demo Video Award for creative work on a video. The video needed to have elements of a background idea on the project, features/functions, innovations, project demonstration, benefits, impacts or significance. The winner would be selected from the top 5 with the highest number of 'likes' for the demo video posted on Facebook.

USM won 2nd place for the Altera Track project entitled "Low Cost Solution of Embedded Real-Time Control Communication System for Robotics", and 3rd place for the Intel Track project with the title "Development of Flexible Platform Based on IoT for TeleMedicine".

USM obtained 1st, 2nd and 3rd placings for the Matlab Track projects with the titles "Dendritic Cell Detection Kit,” “Development of Network Based Surveillance Module (NBSM) for the Wild” and “Optimizing Surveillance Protocols Using Unmanned Aerial System in Forest” respectively.

For the National Instrument (NI) Track, USM was placed 3rd with the project entitled "Upcycling Coffee Grounds & Tea Leaves with Automated Mushroom Cultivation System (AMCS)" and for the ViTrox track, USM also obtained 3rd placing with the project "Automatic Bird's Nest Inspection and Grading System Using Machine Vision".

Apart from that, USM has won other awards through the School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, winning the TM Design Challenge, Best Wildlife Award, IEM Best Thesis Award and Startup accelerators award in this year’s competition.

The Innovate Malaysia Design Competition is a multi-discipline engineering design competition for engineering and computer science students and is open to all final-year undergraduates in engineering and computer science in Malaysia.

The goal of the competition is to promote the innovation culture and mindset among university graduates, to enhance knowledge and skillsets in practical engineering, to promote greater interests in engineering design and also to promote more industry-university collaborations.

More than 550 Malaysian undergraduates in engineering and computer science took part in this multi-disciplinary competition that was officiated by the Deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Datuk Dr. Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah.

Industry leaders such as Altera, Intel, Keysight, Mathworks, Microsoft, National Instruments and Silterra also assisted in creating a learning environment through the innovations and a positive sense of competitiveness in this competition.

This event which was held at the Penang Equatorial Hotel from 8-9 August 2016 was organised by TalentCorp Malaysia, and supported by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education (KPT), MDEC, terasIC, the Institute of Engineers Malaysia and with Dreamcatcher as the secretariat.

Text: Hafiz Meah Ghouse Meah