Saturday, June 21, 2008

Team up with varsities in R&D, private firms urged

JOHOR BARU: Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin has called for private corporations to collaborate with local universities in carrying out research and development (R&D) programmes.

He said such partnership was common in foreign countries.

"We do have it here but it is not satisfying. The companies should be more involved in forming such collaborations with the universities,” he said.

"Through R&D we would be able to come out with products of higher quality for us to compete in the international arena," he said.

He said there are four research universities in the country, namely Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Malaya, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia.

"I hope to see more of such cooperation in the future," Mohamed Khaled told reporters at the UTM campus in Skudai here on Friday.

He was there to witness the signing of Memorandum of Understanding between UTM, University of Cambridge (UC) and Rolls Royce Plc, the manufacturer of the Trent engine of Airbus A380 airliners.

The three institutions will conduct a collaborative research to explore the possibility of using biofuel for gas turbine combustion.

The £220,163 (over RM1.4mil) project, to be conducted in three years, is fully funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

It is part of the nearly RM5mil Science Fund research given to UTM’s “Development of A Database for Biofuel Combustion Properties” programme.

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