PENANG Friday, May 10, 2002 (The Star) - It was a smashing success forUniversiti Sains Malaysia (USM), which swept five gold awards and a silveraward for its inventions, at the 30th International Exhibition ofInventions, New Techniques and Products 2002 in Geneva, Switzerland lastweek.USM won for all six inventions submitted at the exhibition, the largest ofits kind in the world, displaying over 1,000 inventions by 645 exhibitorsfrom 38 countries. The exhibition, organised by the World IntellectualProperty Organisation, was held from May 1 to 5.“We are very proud of the achievement by our researchers and their teammembers. We hope this will inspire more researchers to strive forexcellence in their research and development efforts,” USM vice-chancellorProf Datuk Dzulkifli Abdul Razak told a press conference to recognise theaward recipients at USM yesterday.The gold haul is the largest won by USM at an international competition.USM’s gold award winners are Assoc Prof Zulfigar Yassin (for his researchon “Fast growth oyster culture process for the food industry’’), AssocProf Mohd Noor Ahmad (for “AkuaSens – disposable artificial tongue foreasy mineral water verification), Assoc Prof Mas Rosemal Hakim Mas Haris(for “RubberFloc – water soluble rubber’’), Assoc Prof Razip Samian (for “Production of Liquid Bioplastic, PHA from palm oil’’) and Dr Suzina SheikhHamid (for “COROGRAF – sea coral for bone grafting’’).The university’s silver award winner was Assoc Prof Hanafi Ismail for hisresearch on “Palm Oil Fatty Acid (Pofa) – a new and novel multi-functionalrubber additive based on palm oil fatty acid’’.Prof Dzulkifli said the university was also looking for venture-capitalistclients from Malaysia and abroad to help commercialise some of theproducts.Apart from USM, Universiti Putra Malaysia received two gold and threesilver awards, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (2 gold, 2 silver, 1bronze), Universiti Teknologi Mara (2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze),Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (1 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze) and UniversitiMalaya (1 gold).Earlier, state Education Committee chairman Datuk Dr Toh Kin Woon said thestate government would help USM set up a RM300,000 “resource collaborativecentre” at USM’s Eureka Complex.With USM’s world-class researchers in hand, he said, it was now importantto look at how their products could be further developed to create newproducts for the commercial market.“There must be a proper mechanism to convert these findings into newproducts as we should look at ways of improving our product innovation andinnovation processes,” he added.

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