The Department of Higher Education and University of Malaya have jointly-organized the inaugural UNIMAKER (University Maker) 2018 National Competition on the 24th and 25th November 2018 at Damansara City Mall, in heeding the call of the Maker Movement to empower the creator, producer or maker in order for them to establish their own market ecosystem. The event was graced by YBhg. Datin Paduka Ir. Dr. Siti Hamisah Binti Tapsir (Director General, Department of Higher Education).
UNIMAKER is an innovation competition run by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education Malaysia as a platform to nurture and cultivate Maker’s Movement in Malaysia. This innovation challenge is open to all university students; public and private universities from diploma holders to PhD.
The theme for this year’s challenge is Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0). The competition has been organised earlier in stages, involving four regions: northern, southern, eastern and central, with the top 20 teams from all the regions battling for the top prize at the national level.
The program featured UNIMAKER UNIVERSE PAVILION which consists of the innovation pocket talks and performances, Innovation Space (Recruit Me station, where visitors can drop their CVs and learn how to write a good CV), Makers Expo, Gig Economy Pavilion by MDEC, AR / VR Learning Lab by WARISCAN and MyCRO, Showcases of Malaysia Innovation Ecosystem, UNIMAKER top 20 finalists showcase and Corporate partners showcase.
A total of RM300,000 has been allocated to all winners of UNIMAKER this year. Two teams from USM have bagged the first and second places, while UTM won the third place. The champion team ‘Whatever’ won with their innovation “Precision Farming with Deep Learning and IoT” which aims to use deep learning technique to assist farmers achieve precision farming by its innovative plant diseases classification and IoT data analytics. Users can use phone or drone camera to capture the plants images for real time disease prediction, thus helping the farmers to manage their yield more efficiently.
The program is funded by the Higher Education Department Ministry of Education with main sponsor from Hong Leong Bank and other sponsors such as Exxon Mobil, Symphony Restaurant by Chef Jo, Starbucks Malaysia, DC Mall and media partners, e-fm and Asia Research News.
