Higher Education Institute Thriving in the 4IR Space

AIMST University looks to attract collaboration with worldwide top universities and work towards developing solutions for real-world problems.

The global pandemic has posed a lot of challenges in various industries, including the education sector due to a series of lockdowns to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. This prevented most higher education institutions (HEIs) from operating as usual. With the closure of borders due to the pandemic across the globe, the international student count plummeted significantly. This also resulted in lesser funding available for research, while extended closures of research laboratories during lockdowns slowed down research progress in universities. 

However, AIMST remains resilient despite the unprecedented times. Being in the industry for 20 years, we have secured increases in grants. We produced high-impact scholarly publication with high citation numbers, intellectual properties and coveted international innovation awards like PECIPTA'19, ITEX'19, ASIA INVENT, Singapore and Falling Wall Labs, Germany. Also, in line with the changing trends, all our faculties have incorporated Industry 4.0 related courses such as data analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), coding and Internet of Things (IoT). 

Additionally, AIMST has secured more than RM5 million of national and international grants in the last three years, out of which half was secured in 2020. The major portion of these grants is funded by the industry and the rest by the Ministry of Education of Malaysia. Aside from national grants, we also managed to secure international grants from the UK Research Council. This establishes us as a research-driven university that researches to solve industry and global problems.  

Our cutting-edge research has attracted collaboration with worldwide top universities. These include Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School (US), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), University of Leicester (the UK), Deakin University (Australia), Technical University of Denmark, and Karolinska Institutet of Sweden. We expect to see a spike in the number of research collaborations in the near future considering that we have embarked on niche research areas like precision agriculture, CRISPR technology, drug formulation, cancer research, application of AI in rainforest conservation, digital healthcare, IoT surveillance device for smart cities, and drone-based applications. All these research areas are in line with the 4th Industrial Revolution and National Priority Areas (NPA) as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. 

The Ministry of Education recently awarded a grant worth RM500,000 to one of our centres of excellence – the Centre of Excellence for Omics-Driven Computational Biodiscovery (COMBio) and recognised the centre as a Consortium of Research Excellence in the thrust area of AI. AIMST heads this consortium with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Universiti Tun Hussein Onn as partners in the project. This recognition would further enhance our chances to be considered as the Ministry of Education’s Higher Institution Centre of Excellence (HICoE) in the future.

AIMST have developed a first-of-its-kind cold chain-free vaccine formulation.

In the frontiers of commercialisation, we have developed a first-of-its-kind cold chain-free vaccine formulation. The Ministry of Education funded this project through three continuous grants worth close to RM1 million. This project would benefit the global patients who suffer from cholera. Our technology would be able to reduce the cost of vaccination packages significantly as the major cost for vaccination is its storage at cold temperatures. Therefore, making it cold chain-free means that the vaccine will be stable at any temperature, thus eliminating the need to store it at cold temperatures. 

Currently, the Malaysian Institute of Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals (IPHARM) is working on ICH GLP-Compliant Pre-Clinical Safety Studies to validate our technology. This validation is a prerequisite before we can license it for clinical studies. Once this validation is complete, we shall arrive at a licensing dossier that will attract industries to take up our technology. This is very timely as Malaysia is now focused on becoming a vaccine-producing nation as mentioned by our Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) Minister, YB Tuan Khairy Jamaluddin in a recent press statement. 

Also, based on some of our recent studies, we found that the aforementioned vaccine could also cross protect humans from traveller’s diarrhoea. It also has the potential to be used to deliver vaccines DNA like the ones developed for COVID-19. These will open up a world of possibilities for the formulated vaccine and will contribute new knowledge in science. 

Besides this, our researchers are also working on an intelligent and automated ovitrap for mosquito surveillance. This technology seeks to curb dengue outbreaks in Malaysia. This is a Collaborative Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (CREST) funded project. The patent has been filed and the field trial is ongoing. We are also in the process of taking this to the market.  

 "AIMST strongly believes that universities need to carry out applied research and be a centre for learning new technologies. Only then we would be able to produce graduates who are ready for the Industry 4.0 era. "

AIMST strongly believes that universities need to carry out applied research and be a centre for learning new technologies. Only then we would be able to produce graduates who are ready for the Industry 4.0 era. Industries are anticipating graduates to be skilled and to have the ability to think critically. They also demand that graduates have strong practical exposure to Industry 4.0 technologies. Our student job placement rate is close to 100 per cent upon graduation. This is a testament to the University’s ability to produce industry-relevant graduates. 

We believe that the University’s dedication to quality research and teaching would enable its graduates to chart promising careers beyond the shores of Malaysia. The international acceptance of our graduates in top-notch universities such as the National University of Singapore (NUS), University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, Ontario University, and John Hopkins University is emblematic of that commitment.