By Nurul Nazihah Jamal
JOHOR BAHRU, 24 Nov. – “Follow these three things in this order: prayer, patience and hardwork. If you follow this, with God’s will, you will survive.” said Dr. Babangida Isyaku, the graduate of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of Computer Science.
As a PhD student back then, he believes that writing articles is difficult and challenging for postgraduate students. However, he managed face the hurdles and publish a total of seven articles indexed in both Scopus and Web of Science (WoS).
He was also the recipient of the Best Paper Award (BPA) winner for the IEEE Symposium on Computer Applications & Industrial Electronics (ISCAIE2020) Malaysia in 2020.
Besides successfully graduating today at 66th UTM Convocation Ceremony, Dr. Babangida, a father of one son, was announced as the Best Postgraduate Student Award (BPGA) recipient in his field. He completed his PhD within 36 months only. He expressed his gratitude to Allah SWT for His limitless blessings throughout his PhD journey.
He believed that if we can maintain the three keys as mentioned, the journey in earning a PhD will be smoother. Apart from that, he also believes that with great commitment, all challenges would transform into success.
He said that he was very grateful for his hardworking supervisors, Prof. Ts. Dr. Kamarulnizam Abu Bakar, as well as his most esteemed mentor, his co-supervisors, Dr. Fuad Abdulgaleel Abdoh Ghaleb and Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Mohd Soperi Mohd Zahid (External), for their continuous inspiration throughout the three years of studies.
Furthermore, there were also other outstanding accomplishments of him including being appointed as a member of two research grants with a total budget of RM102,000. One of the grants is aimed at converting his PhD work into a research book for other scholars to benefit from his research finding.
In the meantime, Dr. Babangida was asked for his thoughts on UTM’s limitless opportunities in research and development. He was very pleased with UTM services, especially when he successfully published his thesis and articles. Hence, Dr. Babangida is now a Postdoctoral Researcher at UTM and at the same time, a Lecturer at Sule Lamido University (SLU), Jigawa State, Nigeria.
