Innovate UK, Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Malaysia Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT) are investing in collaborative research and development projects to stimulate innovation in response to Malaysia’s urbanisation challenges within different sectors cognising Malaysia as the principal market. It requires a project consortium comprising a minimum of one UK business, one UK research organisation, one Malaysian business and one Malaysian research organisation. The goal of this competition is to find innovative solutions, through a collaborative consortium-driven approach.
UTM’s project consortium includes the Green Data Center LLP (Malaysian Business organisation), Harriot Watt University (UK research organisation) and Dearman Engine (UK business organisation) besides UTM itself.
UTM together with consortium members prepared and submitted the project titled “Next generation green data centres for environmental and business sustainability” in the sector of “improving environmental resilience and energy security”. The innovation of this project named Eco2 is a next generation green data centre cooling technology that features the world’s only renewable, biodegradable, sustainable and non-toxic ICT specific coolant that reduces data centres’ energy consumption and carbon footprint by half.
The UTM team includes Dr Zuhaib Haider (PI), Prof Dr. Jalil Ali (Co-Investigator), Dr. Kashif Tufail, Dr. Safwan Aziz, Dr. Mahdi Bahadoran, Dr. Lleuvelyn Cacha and Prof. Dr. Roman Poznanski.
Project application is a two phase process: 1st Phase is EOI (Expression of Interest), which we have successfully gone through and have proceeded for the 2nd Phase that calls for full length proposal.
The UTM team (Dr. Zuhaib, Prof Jalil, Dr. Kashif, Dr. Safwan, Dr. Mahdi, Dr. Cacha and Prof Roman) are participating in the implementation of this project as a research team to ensure successful development of Green Data Centers and dissemination of the project within and outside Malaysia. GDC submitted this EOI to the United Nations under the title “Asia Pacific Green Data Center Farm” and won the prestigious World Summit Information Systems (WSIS) Award in the category of E-Environment. Malaysia emerged as winner of this prestigious award for the first time. CEO and Founder of GDC Matthew Rajendra received this award from ITU Secretary General Houlin Zhao at the Centre of International Conferences in Geneva on 3rd May, 2016. Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia YB. Dato’ Jailani Johari was also present at the occasion who headed the Malaysian delegation to the WSIS Forum. UTM is proud to be part of this consortium and we look forward to extend our partnership not only in the implementation of this project but in upcoming green environment projects in the future. Dr. Kavitheran of MIGHT has played a crucial role in building up university-industrial ties, and we acknowledge his efforts.