By Nastura Nasir
Pix By SERI

BANGI, 9 August 2016 – Two PhD students from the National University of Malaysia’s Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI), Mohd Farriz Basar and Azher M. Abed made history as they emerged as winners of the “1st World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies (WSSET) Innovation Awards 2016” which was held in Singapore, recently.

Farriz Mohd Basar, won the award in the category of renewable energy systems (hydro) while Azher M. Abed won in the category of energy efficiency (cooling system).

These two students are among eight winners who were chosen from around the world to receive this prestigious award.

“I am grateful for the award and for being able to bring honour to UKM and Malaysia,” said Mohd Farriz.

He added that this award will also provide a challenge and inspire him to actively generate innovations that can protect the environment, which can be used by the community and the country.

Both of them are supervised by Prof. Dato’ Dr Kamaruzzaman Zaman, Prof Dr Mohd Hafiz Ruslan and Prof Dr Sohif Mat.

Prof. Dato’ Dr. Kamaruzzaman Zaman, who is also the director of SERI, said that the Awards that were won by these students is a big achievement by the institute and the university.

“This recognition also proves researches done by students in local universities are also on a par with the research results at the international level,” he said.

In addition, he said, their success will certainly motivate other students to excel and achieve greater success in the future.

WSSET’s Innovation Award is an initiative to give recognition to researchers from around the globe who are active in the area of Green Technology and managed to produce research and innovation that has commercial value and recognized by the community and the academic world.

This prestigious award was presented by WSSET President, Prof. Dr. Saffa Riffat in a dinner held in Hotel Shangri-La’s Rasa Sentosa, recently.