AFEO Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award 2007 Citation on Multimedia University

Multimedia University (formerly known as Universiti Telekom) started in June 1997 as the first private university in Malaysia. In 1997, the university was invited by the Malaysian Government to set up a campus in Cyberjaya, the hub of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project. The University is to play the important role of spearheading R&D activities and providing the needed human resources of the MSC. In July 1999, the Cyberjaya Campus started its operation and the university was renamed as Multimedia University (MMU). With a humble beginning of about 1300 students in 1997, the University now has a student population of 21,000.

MMU has spent a lot of effort in giving excellent education at an affordable cost to students not only in Malaysia but world wide. This is in line with the Government’s policy of making the country a regional hub for tertiary education. MMU currently has with more than 3500 international students coming from 81 different countries; and has or in the process of franchising its programmes in 10 foreign countries. In recognition of this achievement, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry awarded MMU the Excellent Export Award (Service Sector) in 2004.

Being the university chartered to play such important roles in ICT development of the country, MMU has set up two faculties to carry out the academic and R&D work in engineering and technology: The Faculty of Engineering (FOE) in Cyberjaya Campus and the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (FET) in Melaka Campus. The two faculties combined make up the largest group of academic staff and students in the university population. There are now more than 270 academic staff, 25% of whom are from overseas; and more than 5000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. The Faculties have graduated more than 4000 degree holders; 195 Master’s graduates and 26 PhD’s.

In a short span of 10 years, more than 12 innovative bachelor’s degree programmes in the areas of electrical and electronic and mechanical engineering are offered, some of which are introduced for the first time in Malaysia, such as Electronics majoring in Optical Engineering and Nanotechnology. These programmes are well supported by teaching laboratory facilities and IT and multimedia tools. Master’s and Doctorate level courses are offered. For example, 4 Master of Engineering programmes in Telecommunications, Photonics, Embedded Systems and Microelectronics are conducted for working engineers in Penang, Cyberjaya and Melaka, with the aim to increase the number of knowledge workers with postgraduate qualifications which is much needed when the nation moves towards innovation- and knowledge-based economy. MMU engineering graduates are well received by the industry. From the most recent tracer study by the Alumni Society, about 77% of the engineering graduates obtained jobs before or within the first 2 months after final examination; and 99.5% managed to get jobs within the first 6 months after final examination.

In addition to teaching, the Faculties also position themselves to conduct cutting-edge research in the areas of ICT. To-date, the Faculties of Engineering hosted 9 Research Centres covering specializations in Multimedia Communications to Cryptography, and Information Security to Image Processing and Tele-medicine; and one Institute of Photonics Research and Applications. Much effort and resources have been spent to create the infrastructure and conducive environment for research, both in basic engineering sciences and applied research. The effort has begun to show results: the number of international journal papers published per staff per year is now 0.7 in 2006, on par with many leading universities in the world. For the past 4 years, 23 patents have been filed. In recognition of this high achievement, MMU was awarded the 2005 Excellence in R&D Award (Private University Sector) by the Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia.

MMU is able to earn the confidence of the industry, both local and international. This allows for closer academia-industry collaboration including sponsorship of lab facilities, consultancy, R&D grant and internship. For example, Intel has selected MMU as her focus university; Nokia has donated a multi-million 3-G telecommunication test-bed; and Komag an industrial standard sputtering chamber; just to mention a few. The Penang State Government has sponsored the Penang State Government Professor of ICT which is currently held by the Dean of Engineering.

Throughout the years, the engineering students and staff participated in numerous competitions, both local and international. They managed to bag many excellent awards; such as the Champion for Malaysian Robocon 2006; the Best Engineering Award for Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2006; the Bronze Medal for 2006 Intel Cup for Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest in China; the IET (Malaysia Branch) Best Student Award for two consecutive years 2005 and 2006; the Outstanding Young Malaysian Award 2005, the 2004 IEM Young Engineer Award; the 2004 Asia Pacific ICT Award for Best Tertiary Project in Hong Kong and Gold Medal at the 32 nd International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva.

Based on these many achievements by MMU in engineering education, the AFEO Board unanimously agreed to confer upon MMU the AFEO Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award 2007 for its contributions towards providing quality engineering education and its distinction as being the first private university in Malaysia.