UTM-Led OTEC team with 3 other RUs & JICA Senior Rep & IOESagaUni counterpart, after having successfully defended our OTEC Projects under SATREPS Program @HED MOE.
Razak Faculty of Technology and Informatics, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia has organized the Research Week 2018 on 15th – 19th October 2018 at the UTM Kuala Lumpur Campus, Malaysia. The primary objective of Razak Faculty Research Week is to provide a platform to integrate research and education in the vital field of engineering and technology, management, science and design, informatics and policy studies. Razak Faculty Research Week aims to create an interdisciplinary platform to showcase our academic talents and aspiring postgraduate’s student’s research discovery and innovation. This annual event comprises a series of programmes from research talks from renowned speakers, research workshops, postgraduate’s student seminar and poster competition. Razak Faculty Research Week shall be an excellent podium geared towards ensuring passion, dedication and commitment for research activities in supporting the UTM theme “Innovative, Entrepreneurial and Global”
How to get started
Creating a research agenda should be a major goal for all graduate students — regardless of theoretical interests, methodological preferences, or career aspirations. A research agenda helps you orient yourself toward both short- and long-term goals; it will guide your selection of classes, help you decide which academic conferences (and within those, which specific divisions) to engage in, and steer you in recruiting mentors and research collaborators.
What is a research agenda? It’s a plan and a focus on issues and ideas in a subset of your field. You cannot study everything in your field during your time in graduate school, so decide what to focus on now, and what to defer until another day.
To optimize your concentration levels, it is important that you create an atmosphere that suits you. Jennifer: “Make use of everything that helps you to get into the writing mood; coffee, ginseng, special music – personally, I benefit from listening to Simeon ten Holt – or aromatherapy, it doesn’t matter. You could, for example, create your own CD with background music to work to. There’s one condition, however; don’t use it as a way to postpone sitting down to work.”
Work with a timer at hand. Jennifer: “I’m a competitive person and I especially like competing with myself. Therefore, when I sit down to write, I set myself a time limit. In twenty-five minutes I must write as many words as I can. After a five minute break, I write for another twenty-five minutes, in which I aim to write even more words than before. This technique, which is called the pomodoro technique (handy apps are available!), is all about dividing your workload in manageable time slots, with five minute breaks in between.”
Your relationship with your colleagues, that is. Once you have established a bond with your colleagues, you can read each other’s work and exchange feedback. Jennifer: “I have learned a lot from reading the work of others. And every day, to practice writing, you can write about what you have read. Even if these are only short pieces, you will find that you will get better at it.”
Why not make your daily coffee break with your colleagues into a support group moment by not only discussing your plans for the weekend, but by also sharing your thoughts on your research.
Jennifer: “Regular contact with your voluntary support group allows you to further your research. Discussing the progress you are making means that you prioritize your research more, which, in turn, increases productivity.”
Exactly; one bite at a time.
Jennifer: “The same applies to writing. Writing is a process of one step at a time, but also of starting over and over again – the famous shitty first draft or draft zero. Dividing long pieces into small doable components is an enormous help. Consistently write for twenty-five minutes a day, and you will see that by the end of the month you will have eaten a large portion of your elephant! Another advantage of this way of working is that it is very effective. Because you keep on top of things, you need less warm-up time.”
One of the pitfalls of working from home is that you easily get distracted by your surroundings. Jennifer: “This is certainly the case when you are completing a difficult and mentally demanding task. Suddenly it seems vital that you tidy your room, clean your bathroom or answer your emails. Yet, don’t do it! What you should do, is write these thoughts down on a notepad, every time you get distracted. You will find that you will have made good progress by the end of the day, and that what you have written down on your notepad no longer seems important.”
innovation
/ɪnəˈveɪʃ(ə)n/Submit
noun
the action or process of innovating.
“innovation is crucial to the continuing success of any organization”
synonyms: change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, transformation, metamorphosis, reorganization, restructuring, rearrangement, recasting, remodelling, renovation, restyling, variation; More
a new method, idea, product, etc.
plural noun: innovations
“technological innovations designed to save energy”
