THE number three must be a lucky digit for Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) tutor Dr Mohamad Sabri Sinal who was recently awarded the President’s Award by Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan.
Completing his postgraduate studies within three years while publishing three journal articles and presenting three conference papers proved fruitful for this academician from UUM’s School of Computing.
He also received the Functional Control System Award.
“I am deeply honoured to receive these two major awards symbolic of the success of young Malaysians who are able to compete abroad, thus elevating the country to the highest level.”
His published journal articles and conference paper proceedings focused on a combination of artificial intelligence, statistics and algorithm programming to generate high-performance computer mechanisms to detect early signs of stroke and uncertain heart activity done continuously through ECG data recorded for to 12 hours.
Through a study, 12-hour ECG data used together with the created mechanisms enabled the detection of early signs of heart disease in under a minute.
“In addition to carrying out main duties as a postgraduate student, I embarked on many of my initiatives to facilitate collaboration between Malaysian universities such as UUM, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Perlis and Shibaura Institute of Technology.
“Although the schedule was packed with studies, I managed to balance it to ensure that everything that I planned went well because as a Malaysian student overseas, I am an ambassador for the country.”
He was given the opportunity to teach, assist in supervision and conduct research with the support of Japanese professors and university administration.
“Nothing is easy in life and I began from scratch to reach this level. Hopefully it becomes an inspiration to others to continue to work hard,” he added.
The President’s Award is the university’s highest recognition presented to a student with the best overall academic achievement involving a few stringent screenings to select the final candidates.
Meanwhile, the Functional Control System award is awarded by the university and Department of Functional Control System to the best overall postgraduate student in accordance with the merit of academic achievement, best research publication and best thesis.