National Competition on Nanotechnology Research & Innovation 2016 (PIN 2016) was organized by MOSTI in conjunction with the National Nano Program 2016 (NanoKEB 2016) which was held from 10^th to 12^th October 2016 at Technology Park Malaysia (TPM), Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur. The competition aims to provide opportunities for students of Master and Doctor of Philosophy from public and private universities to presents their creative and innovative ideas on research and development of nanotechnology that include the production of nanomaterials, technology and applications of nanotechnology in various sectors.

Ho Kah Chun, a Masters degree candidate Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment (FKAB), UKM who is a Yayasan Sime Darby scholarship recipient participated in the competition and was chosen as the first runner-up in the PIN 2016 under Master category. He presented his research work on sustainable palm oil mill effluent (POME) treatment using carbon based nanocomposite hybrid membrane. Ho Kah Chun is supervised by Prof. Dato Ir. Dr. Abdul Wahab Mohammad, the Dean of FKAB, UKM and Dr Teow Yeit Haan.

Prof Ir. Dr. Dato Wahab and his  team successfully reclaimed clean water from POME that could be used as utility or boiler feed water. The project successfully conducted by Ho Kah Chun demonstrated that the nanocomposite membrane had outperformed the pure membrane due to the synergistic effect between the carbon nanomaterials additive and the membrane materials. The research group also had resolved the membrane fouling problem which is a major issue in membrane applications. Besides, the carbon nanomaterials additives can be retrieved from the waste POME as enriched carbon source. Future work will be conducted to integrate biological and membrane treatment in a single hybrid system to provide cost effective and easy-to-operate solution for POME treatment.