2015: New Hopes, New Targets and New Challenges

2015 is now into its second month already and UMBI is now in its 12th year of existence. How did we perform last year? Most people like measurable targets and hence are grants, students graduating and most important of all, the publications. There were no HICOE grant last year as the last payment by the Ministry of Education was in 2013. We secured FRGS funding for 3 projects and 3 grants from the research university funding. We have 6 postgraduate students who graduated. With only 6 full time fellows and 5 fellows on dual appointment this gives a good ratio of 0.55 graduate per researcher. UMBI’s graduates have a high employability rate (almost 100%). We have a number of our post-graduate students already working with companies dealing with life sciences, even when they are still writing their theses. The feedback from the companies and employers is that UMBI’s students are not only knowledgeable but as also skilful in various technology platforms. We set a new record for publications in 2014 with 44 publications in total (a ratio of 4 publications per researcher). We continue to engage the community via our national project, The Malaysian Cohort which is now in its follow-up phase. UMBI also celebrated the World DNA day by bringing in secondary students for a day in UMBI and giving them hands-on experience with molecular biology and the applications of DNA technology in various fields. Despite the economic slowdown and with less amount of research funding, I would like to call upon all of the researchers and staff in UMBI to strive harder in 2015 and improve further the quality of our research and publications. We however hope that the government would still allocate adequate funding for research. Asking researchers to achieve more with less just doesn’t make sense. We believe that by focusing on research in non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, UMBI can make a significant contribution to the academic community and the nation.