KUCHING – Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus has been awarded a three-star rating for its research endeavours by the Malaysia Research Assessment Instrument (MyRA), recently.
This was announced by Higher Education Minister Dato’ Seri Idris Jusoh who conferred the awards to participating universities at a ceremony in Kuala Lumpur.
“As a young university, we are pleased to have been awarded for our research. This makes us the first private university in East Malaysia to receive three stars, and we could not have done this without our researchers,” said Professor Janet Gregory, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive Officer of Swinburne Sarawak.
Based on the United Kingdom’s Research Assessment Exercise, MyRA evaluates the performance of universities in research, development and commercialisation for their research grant applications, and determines whether they can be a research university or institute.
In the evaluation process, Swinburne Sarawak set up in 2000, was subjected to the same performance indicators as any full-fledged university in the country.
“Some of the indicators such as citations and professorial appointments were to our disadvantage as they need time to grow, but our staff and postgraduates achievements made up for this,” said Associate Professor Wallace Wong, Director of the university’s Research and Consultancy Office.
He said that the university hopes to achieve a four-star rating for its 2017 research efforts.
“This is a tall order but with the high calibre of our staff, our close links to industry and collaborative efforts, I strongly believe we will get there.”
Saying that collaboration is the key for continuous quality in research, Wong thanked and attributed the university’s three-star rating to its many partnerships with industry and international universities.
MyRA was introduced to boost achievements in research, development and commercialisation among universities in 2007.