The 1st Tropical School of Nanostructured Materials: Fundamental and Applications will be held in the second and third weeks of September 2022 and aims to bring together a group of around 100 undergraduate, postgraduate students and research fellows from various research institutions. This short course is designed to cover a series of important scientific aspects regarding the development, characterizations and applications of nanomaterials and to provide in-depth review of their corresponding fundamentals and will be held in hybrid mode. It aims to offer a skill set relevant to the participants research project and future career.
This course is an initiative of Nanotechnology and Catalysis Research Centre (NANOCAT), Universiti Malaya in order to leverage the academic and research man-power owned by the Centre. As one of Universiti Malaya Centre of Excellence, NANOCAT is fortunate to have 17 academicians and researchers, 4 affiliated members and 4 academic icons that are among world renowned Professors. NANOCAT was given a status of Potential Higher Institution Centers of Excellence (HiCOE) in 2013 in catalysis. The center has strived to attain a national status for HiCOE (MOHE) as well as Nanocenter (NNC, MOSTI) with strong support and commitment from Universiti Malaya. In the last 6 years, it witnessed a pronounced explosion in its productivity in all aspects including numbers of postgraduate students, grants received consultancy, publication, pattern/copyright, etc. Thus, this Tropical School is another effort to deploy NANOCAT capacities to the maximum.
The core objectives of this course is to help students and researchers to strategize their research to meet their core research aims and sharpen their skills and to improve their academic and research foundations and help them develop new skills sets for the future career.
This course will be organized in 9 days as 9 modules and a special sharing session by industry speakers. The Tropical School will consist of talks by lecturers and researchers who are experts in a particular field. The first day will be a session to tighten up the participants' fundamental knowledge on the synthesis and characterization of inorganic nanoparticles that will be intensively covered in morning and evening sessions.
The second day are designated to cover on the module of nano-biotechnology, which will be cover on the physicochemical and biological properties of nanostructured materials and their applications in various areas such as medicine and agriculture, and will be follows by nanomedicine module that will be cover on the use of nanomaterials for diagnosis, monitoring, control, prevention and treatment of diseases.
The third day is designed to focus on the big-data and AI of nanomaterials and computational modelling for the prediction of nanomaterials topics. This is in-line with the increasing use of artificial intelligence tools in nanotechnology research and these modules will generally encompass the classification of material properties of nanoscale, designing, simulation, nanocomputing etc.
On the fourth and fifth days, the participants will be provide with intensive sharing and discussion on the analytical techniques of nanomaterials includes Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM), Tunneling Electron Microscope (TEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), etc, in objectives that the participants can understand the capabilities of nanotechnology analytical instruments, able to analyse the data from related equipment and develop an awareness on which tools are suitable for their research scope and objectives.
The other consecutive days will focus more on nano-toxicological measurements, regulatory aspects for medical and pharmaceutical nanomaterials. The last module will encompass commercialization challenges of nano-products in many aspects and follows by sharing by industry speakers on the last day.
This Tropical School is planned to be organized as NANOCAT’s annual program under the NANOCAT Training Unit headed by Dr. Nor Aliya Hamizi. For 2022, it is expected to attract around 100 local and international participants with a reasonable fee structure that starts from RM 400 to RM 600 for local participants and 150 USD for international participants. In-campus accommodation is also offered as an option at a minimal lodging rate imposed. NANOCAT warmly invites all students, researchers, industry personnel, etc, to join the 1st Tropical School of Nanostructured Materials: Fundamental and Applications that will be the best platform to experience fun and valuable learning in Universiti Malaya. For those who are interested, kindly reach the secretariat at [email protected].
