BAYAN LEPAS, PENANG, 17 August 2020 – Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) intends to revise its curriculum to reduce the mismatch of skills required for industries and enhance employability of its graduates.

Recently, its Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dr. Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan has taken the initiative to visit two more prominent industries, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (M) Sdn. Bhd. and National Instruments (NI) Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., to gain more insights and bridge the gaps between theoretical training and physical learning in a real-life environment.

“NI is always committed in developing these young engineers by giving them the skills and experience that they need to have in the engineering industry.

“Robotic competitions specifically were designed to address the readiness of students to apply their knowledge and provide them with the understanding on how to solve common problems,” said NI Managing Director, Rajesh Purushothaman.

Rajesh added that NI Penang is currently doing product support for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and engineers who are capable of speaking Korean and Japanese languages have an advantage in the company.

NI is one of the providers of an open software-defined platform that helps to accelerate the development and performance of automated test and automated measurement systems.

NI and USM have a long-standing collaboration through internship programmes, research projects and Robotic Competition since 2010.

In 2019, USM had signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with NI in setting up and operating the first NI Embedded System Laboratory, located at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the USM Engineering Campus. The lab has been a great collaborative effort, being utilised by USM lecturers, researchers and students.

Meanwhile, Faisal Rafiq said that USM is gearing towards more changes and intend to employ people from the industry on secondment basis to lead industry-based research centres.

He also said that USM will be changing the curriculum in order to ensure that the students will remain relevant with industry needs.

“Beginning next year, every USM student will be required to sit for computational and design thinking courses from the First year, regardless from which field of study they have enrolled in,” said Faisal Rafiq.

“As for OSRAM, the current challenge is in upskilling the R&D efforts and to bring OSRAM Malaysia towards becoming more independent in the next few years,” said the Managing Director, Glen Brownlie.

Dr. David Lacey from Osram’s Advanced Development stressed that OTH is a good programme offered by the company.

“With continued promotions, it would be an added bonus if the programme will have Malaysian students joining in at the facility,” he said.

He added that OSRAM also provides an opportunity for USM students to undergo industrial training at OSRAM as a preparatory step before they apply the acquired knowledge when they begin their career at a later time.

OSRAM Opto Semiconductors has a broad network of partners in the scientific community, with connections at universities and USM is one of the universities having collaborations with the leading global LED company.

The company contributed RM1.33 million to USM through a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) in 2013 for the research and development programmes in the university, provision of laboratory equipment, scholarships and industrial training opportunities with OSRAM.

Accompanying the Vice-Chancellor were the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research and Innovation, Professor Dato’ Ir. Dr. Abdul Rahman Mohamed; Director of Industry Network, Associate Professor Dr. Yeoh Fei Yee, and several officers.

Text: Sharifah Darweena Syed Ahmad Amir Feisal (Coordinator of USM Alumni Development Centre)/Editing: Mazlan Hanafi Basharudin