The NICHE ecosystem: Encouraging collaboration and interdisciplinary research

alt I would like to welcome everyone to the official website for the Nic Teknologi Kesihatan dan Perubatan (Health and Medical Technology Niche). The TKP niche has been performing rather well over the years since the niche ecosystem was established about 7 years ago. This is a niche made up of researchers mainly from the Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Pharmacy and the UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI). There are some researchers from the Faculty of Engineering and also other faculties too but these are small in number.Lecturers and researchers from our niche often lament about the burden of clinical services which they have to shoulder and hence affecting their time to conduct quality research or to write papers. This is a real issue and there are many efforts at the faculty level to help them especially in bringing them into the research groups so that research becomes a ‘group work’ rather than an ‘individual burden’. Research as we know requires teamwork and hence the current UKM research ecosystem consisting of research clusters and research groups will help accommodate the needs of lecturers who feel they are much burdened by teaching and service loads. Cluster and group leaders must help bring in more young lecturers to become associate researchers within each group and then help nurture them.
The role of the niche chairperson over the years, at best it has been rather ceremonial, has not been clear except for chairing the assessment of proposals as well as the research groups. Leaders of the clusters and groups have been empowered to provide leadership to the researchers in the group and consolidate their research output. I believe this model has worked well, however, I personally hope that the niche chairpersons would be further utilised by the top management to help provide direction and strategic vision for the university.
Last year the heads of clusters met and discussed about consolidating the Nic TKP and there were suggestions on one new cluster and a few new groups. The criteria for the formation of a new research group under the Niche includes having at least 3 full time researchers (or full time equivalent – FTE), at least one research grant from outside UKM, and attaining a KPPU rating of at least 3. The proposal plus the KPPU form (this can be obtained from CRIM) need to be submitted to the chairperson of the Niche and it will be then endorsed by the Niche committee before submitting to CRIM. Each research group will then be entitled to get a seed funding from CRIM. All research groups which attain a rating of 3 and above will continue to get annual funding from CRIM and those with ratings of 4 and 5 have previously been invited to apply for the Arus Perdana grant.As we move into 2014 and knowing that UKM has retained the Research University (RU) status, we have tough challenges ahead. The RU allocation has been much reduced to just RM50 million for this year and we have asked to ‘do more with less’. This is not easy and for some research disciplines, in my opinion, it is rather impossible as the cost of reagents and consumables increase every year.It is encouraging to see many of our researchers in the niche are applying for LRGS, FRGS and now the TRGS funding schemes. This is a good sign. Let us hope and pray there will be more funding coming in for research. If not, let us challenge ourselves to work with the NGOs, industries, other ministries, and perhaps also bid for international grants. Good luck to all.