JOHOR BAHRU, 28 October 2014 – Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Civil Engineering students won the first and third place at the Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research in Schools (IDEERS) 2014 competition.
The competition was held at the National Centre for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) in Taipei, Taiwan from 17 to 21 September 2014.
Dean of the UTM Faculty of Civil Engineering, Prof. Dr. Shahrin Mohammad said 12 students,  headed by Mohd Nur Asmawisham Alel and Mohd Zamri Ramli, were sent to participate in this competition

“IDEERS is a competition where participants are required to design and build  building structures, and their work will be tested under earthquake loads. This competition is held annually in Taipei.”
“Besides Malaysia, this competition  also has participants from the United States, Britain, Japan, Singapore and others,” he said.
UTM has been participating in this competition for the past ten years, making the IDEERS 2014 UTM’s eleventh participation. This competition is divided in three categories, namely, the school, undergraduate and post-graduate level.
“Such competition like this can produce innovative, creative UTM students with the ability to utilise higher order thinking skills, in addition to providing students with the experience of competing at the global level.”
“The competing student groups were accompanied by Head of the Department of Structure and Material, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Arizu Sulaiman and Head of the Department of Environmental Engineering, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Azmi Aris,” said Prof. Shahrin.
The IDEERS 2014 competition was jointly organized by NCREE, the National Applied Research Laboratories (NARL), the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR) and the Asia-Pacific Network of Centers for Earthquake Engineering Research (ANCER).