Today, as many industries struggle to remain competitive, academia plays a growing role in supporting the industries’ needs through joint undertakings in R&D activities.
Datuk Azman Mahmud, Chief Executive Officer of MIDA said it is important that research carried out in universities finds its way into companies to enable job creation, company expansion and diversification, and spur the economic growth.
He was speaking at the opening of the Research Funding and Powering the Innovation Engine Conference in Kuala Lumpur on August 23 and 24, 2017.
The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) and The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) collaborated to organise the conference which aimed at increasing industry-academia collaboration.
“As much as we want to ensure research excellence delivers benefit to the economy and society, we need to ensure that research funding and grants are made available too. MIDA is offering tax incentives for R&D that can be enjoyed by manufacturers with in-house R&D facility or research service providers. These are some of the resources the government has introduced to encourage innovation, in addition to government assistance given to industries in the promoted areas,” he added.
As at 2016, MIDA has awarded five university-linked companies R&D Status, which is a tax efficient way to invest in R&D activity. The five universities are Management and Science University (MSU), University Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC), University Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) and Monash University Malaysia.
According to UNMC CEO and Provost Professor Graham Kendall, “As a world class research university, we are well placed to facilitate knowledge sharing and dialogue around leading issues in research and capability building. We are optimistic that the conference will engage leading innovators, research thought leaders and experts, entrepreneurial spirits and resources from the research and the business world.”
The conference, held at MIDA’s headquarters in KL Sentral, also aimed to present research funding opportunities and grants from leading funding bodies.
The two-day conference was built upon the key focus areas from the 11thMalaysian Education Blueprint, namely research, development, commercialisation and innovation.
The conference also strived to combine key areas of the Malaysian Government’s initiative, known as the Malaysian Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 is a name for the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things, cloud computing and cognitive computing. Industry 4.0 creates what has been called smart industrial systems.
While the conference was mainly a platform to provide information to researchers, it also highlighted the sharing of experiences about national and international funding opportunities for fundamental and applied research.
The conference facilitated knowledge sharing of research collaborations between universities and industry. The conference also focused on how universities might work with industry in ‘powering the innovation engine’ with respect to Industry 4.0.