“Commercialising innovative research is a great platform to help increase the country's wealth. Although a lot of effort has been put into encouraging commercialisation, thus far, the success rate has been less than encouraging.” Kalaivani says this is because of a lack of efficient integration. She says that in many developed countries, research centres are holistic. Different divisions, such as electrical engineering, mechan­ical engineering, social science and computer engineers, work together in an integrated manner. The centres also provide common areas for researchers to get together and discuss problems and come up with ideas for new solutions. “For the dental sensor project we have SilTerra, the solid-state electronics team, the Imaging team, computer scientists, dentists, physiologists and more. People need to accept that they need to collaborate to come up with a good solution.” “She could get more funding if she worked with foreign researchers. However, that is risky, says Kalaivani. Foreign researchers tend to hijack the entire research, taking most of the credit.” Cutting Edge: Innovating Across Discipline [Dr. Kalaivani Chellappan, Director of Program Pemerkasaan Kompetensi Akademik Siswa, UKM] Sources: The Edge August 2019, Page E16, By Khairani Afifi Noordin