22nd April 2015- Penang. UTM received a mandate to increase partnership with leading companies in the E&E sector. The event officiated by YB Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed, the Minister of International Trade and Industry, is a collaborative effort between Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad (TalentCorp) with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Malaysian Investment Authority (MIDA) which seeks to create and establish a platform to energize and encourage Industry-Academia collaboration. The engagement involved two companies, namely, Altera and Motorola, from the Electrical and Engineering Cluster (E&E) to collaboratively engage appropriate interventions leveraging on UTM’s expertise in addressing the companies’ differing business challenges and gaps. The planned engagement includes mapping the talent needs and interventions required by the industry. Other E&E industries that UTM will be prioritizing within the E&E cluster are OSRAM, National Instruments, and Intel which already have existing partnerships involving research and innovation, teaching and learning and services.
Through MIDA’s role in identifying priority economic clusters and engaging with lead companies, it aims to motivate industry participation by allowing them to gauge and select their participation in interventions to cater to different hiring strategies and towards addressing their specific talent needs. The aim of this collaboration is to motivate increased industry participation to cater for their different challenges and needs. In addition, UTM is in the pipeline through the newly established Centre for Community and Industry Network (CCIN), in collaboration with UTM’s Mechanical Engineering Professors and Lecturers, working on a more energized approach to push the partnership forward within the E&E cluster.
This is the first step to a pilot collaboration between MIDA, Talent Corp and MOE, in fulfilling the demands of the industry. In this process and collaboration, MIDA plays a vital role to map UTM’s leading experts to build a talent funnel addressing Altera and Motorola’s demand. TalentCorp has put in place initiatives which facilitate further allainces through curriculum embedment, like Adjunct Lecturers, TTT for lecturers, short courses, competitions, boot-camps, and Structured Internship Programmes (SIP). The engagement will enhance graduate employability (GE) levels as the initiatives as industry driven.
The E&E Cluster is divided into several categories encompassing integrated circuit design, embedded system, wireless communication (radio frequency), wafer fabrication, Opto/LED, as well as Solar and Advanced Manufacturing. The engagement involves the establishment of UTM’s E&E Academia Industry Collaborative Council (AICC) comprising selected top industry panels to boost interventions in E&E aligning to UTM Global Plan 2012-2020 (Phase II: 2015-2017) towards increasing top notch industry collaborations across the E&E sector.