In 1935, a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was made for a doctor born in Penang. His name was Dr Wu Lien-teh. W.W. Cadbury put him forward, and it’s the…
The first Nobel Prize to be awarded to anyone born in the Asia-Pacific region went to a British army doctor. Ronald Ross won the 1902 prize in physiology or medicine for his work on…
When the call from Stockholm came on 7 October, Professor Emeritus Kenso Soai was at his neighbourhood supermarket. By that evening, one of Japan’s biggest newspapers had printed an extra edition with his name…
Less than three weeks before the budget, Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Chang Lih Kang spoke at Universiti Malaya and named the part of the research pipeline he wanted more money for. Getting…
Four Malaysian ministries are each running national plans for the same set of years, mostly writing them in isolation from one another. Put the Dasar TVET Negara 2030 (National Technical and Vocational Education and Training,…
Two ministries. Two documents, drafted five years apart. Both landed on the same two words. The Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint 2026-2035 (MHEB 2026-2035), from the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE), names “global prominence” as the…
When Putrajaya published the National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (NSTIP) 2021–2030, then-Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Khairy Jamaluddin wrote in its foreword that Malaysia should “aspire to be a country that innovates, creates…
A research policy is only as good as the people trained to carry it out, and the National Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (NSTIP) 2021–2030 spends an entire thrust on exactly that problem. Thrust 4,…
Before Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) gets spent on Malaysian research, someone has to decide what’s worth funding in the first place. The National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (NSTIP) 2021–2030 answers that question under Technology Development…
Walk into a lab at Universiti Malaya or Universiti Sains Malaysia, and you’re standing in one of five buildings that carry an outsized share of the country’s research weight. Malaysia doesn’t spread its research ambitions…
