USM PENANG, 7 January 2022 – The ‘Professorial Appointment Public Lecture’ is a medium for a fully-appointed professor to highlight the knowledge and findings in his respective area of study to be disseminated to the general public.

This time around, the photonics specialist, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Professor Dato’ Dr. Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan was put in the limelight in a simple yet meaningful ceremony which took place at Dewan Budaya and was also shared online through the USM official Facebook and Youtube channels.

The public lecture was held on 23 December 2021, in conjunction with the appointment of a new Professor at the USM School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Faisal Rafiq is a Professor in Optoelectronics.

In his lecture entitled ‘SENSE AND FIBRELITY: MY FANTASTIC PHOTONICS JOURNEY’, Faisal Rafiq said that in his exploratory journey, he jumped onto a new learning curve, and worked on direct UV writing of optical devices onto planar glass substrates.

“I did not realise it at that time but the work would eventually span across several scopes – fabrication of substrates and devices, simulation work, and characterisation of optical devices and sensors,” he said.

Faisal Rafiq also added that direct UV writing involves making micron-sized optical channels – similar dimensions to optical fibres - that would form the basic building blocks for devices such as y-splitters (as the name suggest, these split light into two waveguides), x-couplers, and 1-by-n splitters, where n denotes the number of output branches from a single input channel, by exposing photosensitive glass to focused UV laser.

“These devices find application mainly in optical networks.  One of the advantages of the UV writing technique is the ability to also fabricate Bragg gratings. As elaborated earlier, these gratings make for excellent optical sensors.

“In short, my PhD journey was about making optical structures and devices, particularly Bragg gratings, on a piece of glass that is photosensitive, by exposing it to intense UV light,” he added.

Faisal Rafiq continued by saying that after 6 months into the Flat Fibre operations, his team received a few enquiries from researchers from other universities who were interested in making optical fibres, and adding them into their experimental set up.

“We gave away samples for free in exchange for joint publications and intellectual properties.When demand grew steadily and in order to sustain operations, we mooted the idea of nominal charges for our services and this was well-received.

‘‘This led to the formation of Flexilicate Sdn Bhd., founded by me and my dear friend, Dr. Ghafour Amouzad Mahdiraji. Flexilicate is a combination of flexible silicate – silicate being the scientific name for glass.

“We pitched the idea of setting up a spinoff company to the University of Malaya (UM) Research offices and business arm UM Holdings, where we received a RM50,000 seed funding, took over a dormant company under UM Holdings, and have been in business since,” he further said.

Faisal Rafiq then concluded by saying that none of the success achieved would be possible without the assistance, guidance provided and commitment of a great many individuals whose shoulders he stood on.

‘If you want to go fast, walk alone. If you want to go far, walk together. We want to go far, fast!’

Brief Biodata of Professor Dato’ Dr. Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan:

Professor Dato’ Dr. Faisal Rafiq Mahamd Adikan hails from Kuala Lumpur and was born on July 9, 1975 (46 years old). He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), United Kingdom in 1997 and furthered his Master's degree (MEngSc) at the University of Malaya in 1999. In 2007, he obtained a Doctorate (Integrated Optical Devices) from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

When he was part of Universiti Malaya (UM) Top Management, he was involved in enhancing UM's excellence and visibility globally, which has raised UM's position to 70th place in the world's top 100 rankings, based on the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking 2020. UM has also been ranked 10th among global universities in engineering. This success has been announced by the U.S. News in U.S. publications news 2018 Best Global Universities Ranking.

While holding the portfolio of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Development) at UM, among the innovations he had implemented were water and waste management, research and education for sustainable development to obtain the Most Sustainable (Greenest) City Center University in Asia, a recognition given by UI Green Metric in 2017 and 2018.

In addition, Faisal Rafiq has also successfully commercialised research products through his spin-off company, Flexilicate Sdn. Bhd.

Text: Mohamad Hafiz Asyraf Mohd Arop/Photo: Mohd Fairus Md. Isa