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R&D TOP OF VARSITY'S GOALS [New Straits Time (Malaysia)](New Straits Time (Malaysia) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) UNIVERSITI Teknologi PETRONAS' (UTP) continuing quest to become a research focused university has seen it ramp up its research and development (R&D) activities. "These include collaborating with several distinguished institutions worldwide in key areas of research," said Deputy Vice Chancellor Research & Innovation, Prof Dr Abdul Rashid Abd Aziz. One of the collaborations is with Lehigh University in a combination of two technologies, Unbonded Post Tension (UPT) wall created by Lehigh and Ductile Self Compaction Concrete (DSCC) which was established at UTP. This collaboration culminates with a joint supervision between Prof Steve Pessiki of Lehigh and Prof Ir Dr Muhd Fadhil Nuruddin and Dr Ibrisam Akbar of UTP. The main objective of the research is to improve the performance of UPT using DSCC. It is still at its infancy stage but the collaboration is extremely important for both institutions as it is related to the industry and is very useful for construction areas exposed to seismic. UTP is also working with Lehigh on the surface properties of black shales to enhance the production of oil and gas. This research is important as Lehigh has advanced technologies that are generally not available in Southeast Asia. With the University of Melbourne, UTP is collaborating in a number of research areas including gas purification, fracking technology, water purification as well as neuroscience and neural engineering. The gas purification research aims to enhance upstream and downstream productivity in shale gas. Both universities are expected to jointly work on a neuroscience and neural engineering related research project given that both institutions have a neuroscience institute and have been given a mandate from their respective governments to work on related projects. UTP is in the preliminary stages of a research collaboration with Monash University to evaluate the performance of materials during shale gas production and to investigate corrosion in pipelines. UTP will also be collaborating with Monash in the area of biomedical signal and imaging to work on a joint brain related project. With the Chinese University Petroleum, Beijing (CUPB), UTP is involved in the exchange of expertise relating to enhanced oil recovery, petroleum geoscience and drilling engineering. CUPB is one of the world renowned research institutions in these areas and has partnered with many oil and gas majors. The Baker Hughes on Petroleum Exhibition Centre will be offering support for the enhancement of academic delivery on petroleum engineering. Case Western Reserve University is working with U TP on the development of lightweight structures for automotive applications and materials with directionally controlled properties. The university is known for its research facilities in polymer compounding and injection moulding. UTP is also involved in a large-scale collaboration with Hitachi Japan in Green Computing, Green High-Performance Computing and High- Performance Seismic Cloud Service projects. The Green Computing project was completed in 2012 and focused primarily on greening the UTP campus grid, a grid of desktop computers interlinked through the campus Local Area Network. The Green High-Performance Computing project was completed last year and investigated methods to improve efficiency and greenness of machines and applications available at UTP's High Performance Computing Service Centre (HPC). The High-Performance Seismic Cloud Service project commences at end 2014 to develop the first known seismic cloud service which is expected to impact the way computation for seismic imaging is currently done. UTP's Centre for Automotive Research and Electrical Mobility (Carem) is working together with the University of Brighton and Libertine FPE Ltd in renewable energy and fuels, novel engine design and technology and novel electrical machine design. Among others, this collaboration aims to study the performance and control aspects of a free piston expander prototype as well as explore the potential application of this technology in the UK, Malaysia and Europe. Libertine granted funding to modify a free piston linear machine at UTP. A research officer is based on attachment at the University of Brighton to expedite the transfer of technology between the two institutions. This programme enables UTP to share the expertise and experience for free piston linear generator. A group of researchers from the Department of Computer and Information Science were awarded the National Intellectual Property Award 2014 in the category for Copyright for the design of an Automatic Accident Location Detection System (AALDS). UTP was also the recipient of Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation's Techno Fund amounting to RM1.13 million for a single project -the 'Rescue-I Monitoring System' led by the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Information Technology Associate Professor Dr Ahmad Kamil Mahmood. UTP has been granted its first overseas patent application in the United States for the invention titled 'Methodology and Apparatus for Objective, Non-Invasive and In Vivo Assessment and Rating of Psoriasis Lesion Scaliness using Digital Imaging'. These successes are a few of the many research projects that are in the pipeline as the university strives to increase and improve its research efforts leading to more commercialisation activities to bring about new and more innovative ideas to the world market. (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |