UNIMY boosts student prospects through 6 MOUs to enhance industry partnerships

• Partnerships in the form of training, certification and datasets
• UNIMY partners with six companies ranging from electric vehicle to fintech

University Malaysia of Computer Science and Engineering (UNIMY), an ICT-focused digital technology university, on Sat, Aug 16, announced partnerships with several tech-based companies to provide their students with more relevant industrial experience in their courses.

Memorandums of Collaboration (MOC) were signed between the university and six companies, which include electric-vehicle maker Eclimo Sdn Bhd – known for creating Malaysia’s first two-wheeled electric vehicle – as well as LE Global Services Sdn Bhd (LGMS), a cyber-security company with a focus on penetration testing.

LGMS in particular will be providing IT security training and certification programmes for the students. 

“We are very excited to team up with these two innovative and fast-rising technology startups in Malaysia,” says UNIMY vice chancellor Prof Dr Mokhtar Abdullah.

“As you know, the technology world is increasingly dominated by new players with ideas that disrupt industries. Our students will benefit from the collaborations that will provide them an advantage in securing internships and jobs.”

It should be noted that UNIMY students, according to Mokhtar, already enjoy 100% employment so far. Besides greater internship opportunities, Mokhtar also highlights the new opportunities for workshops and bootcamps.

The other four companies that UNIMY will be collaborating similarly aim to provide students with real life lab experience. In return, the companies will be able to tap into a pool of talent for their own projects.

These companies include Teamwork AllGain, which specialises in automotive and TVET education development; IT solutions provider Knowledge Link Sdn Bhd; IoT company Time Brain Sdn Bhd; and fintech company Invinity Group.

Mutual benefits

Of UNIMY’s new partners, Eclimo appears to be the most fascinating as the electric vehicle company seems a little out of place when compared to UNIMY’s six core focus areas which relate to cloud computing, AI and big data, IoT, coding, business technology and IT security.

Its founder Dennis Chuah tells Digital News Asia that the collaboration is in two areas. Firstly, UNIMY students will be the first to experience Eclimo’s electric scooter system as part of the company’s RideNOW pilot project, which aims to place their first batch of vehicles in Cyberjaya for leasing. The company has brought in seven vehicles for UNIMY, with plans for more.

The second aspect in collaboration involves data analytics. Eclimo’s vehicles have GPS tracking, which feeds data back to Eclimo. “With this, we are able to collect data on the vehicles – where they stop, how they are used, etcetera,” Chuah says. These datasets serve as exposure and knowledge for students as part of their studies – in return, Eclimo is able to make sense of the data and use it to improve their vehicles.

“We’re collecting data every second – what are we going to do with the data? By collaborating with UNIMY’s students, we are able to compile and analyse it – and subsequently improve our vehicles and benefit our customers. With UNIMY’s background [in data analytics], I believe we can better expand our IoT development.”

This essentially provides students with real-world datasets to analyse, especially in the area of electric vehicles. “With many countries focusing on electric vehicles, I believe that this knowledge they the students gain, will help them access and unlock opportunities with many companies globally.”

Add Eclimo to that list as well as it hopes to engage with students when they complete their studies, as possible future employees.

Boosting students through training

For LGMS, the collaboration comes in the form of the company introducing international, world-class processes – courses that are more commonly used by professionals in the IT security industry – to students.

LGMS chief operating officer Gilbert Chu highlights the hands-on experiences, certification and training programmes. “We have been working with a lot of educational institutions for the past few years and the feedback among students is that they expect a lot more hands-on and technical experience in university.

“That is why we are working with a few international [IT security] training providers. We got their blessings to use their courses and adopt it to suit local student levels.”

Chu says that LGMS is certainly open to industrial training opportunities with UNIMY students (in a form of internships), and adds that there are successful instances of interns that transition into permanent staff.

Invinity, which provides AI-enabled solutions to the financial industry, is setting up an incubation centre as well as working closely with the university in the development of some of their projects. The company’s executive director Jeremy Mah says that they are also looking at working with the university as industry partners, and is certainly open to on-board graduating students as full-time employees.

He believes that the UNIMY partnership is a good initiative. “I would say that one thing lacking in education is industry exposure. No doubt you can provide academics, but when you go into the corporate world and working environment, things are different altogether.”

Through this programme, UNIMY hopes to start making a dent in the still too large gap in the numbers of students who have industry experience.

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