Amid our rejoicing of being ranked among the top 300 universities in Asia by QS Asian University Rankings 2012 and Tier 5 (Excellent) status by SETARA 2011, it is heartening to know that the entire University continues to forge ahead for excellence in creating, preserving and disseminating knowledge towards realising UTAR’s vision to be a premier university of teaching and research excellence.  Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I write this foreword in the UTAR R&D Annual Report 2012.

The University’s continuous growth in student population from 411 to about 21,000 since 2002, an alumni base of over 30,000 and the continuous high graduate employability of over 97 percent have reinforced the fact that UTAR is recognised by the Malaysian populace as a university of teaching excellence. 

Moving forward to achieve our vision to be a premier university, we continue our efforts in R&D and commercialisation.  Our continuous efforts, coupled with the well-established comprehensive framework and infrastructure in the University which facilitate the advancement of R&D output into eventual implementation and commercialisation stages, have propelled us further in attaining new heights in R&D and commercialisation as evident in this annual report.

I am delighted to provide the following highlights.

• Five Master and one PhD degree programmes were added in 2012 making a total of 28 Master‘s and 12 PhD programmes.

• The Centre for Applied Psychology was added in 2012 making a total of 25 research centres.

• Cumulative internal research funds awarded totalled RM17.39 million as at 31 December 2012, an increase of 30 percent since 2011

• Cumulative external research funds solicited as at 31 December 2012 amounted to RM23.93 million, an increase of 23 percent since 2011.

• Scopus steadily grew from 167 in 2009 to 229 in 2010, 267 in 2011 and 275 in 2012.

• Scholastic articles cited in Scopus rose from 684 in 2011 to 1037 in 2012 and consequently the cumulative number of citations increased from 1394 in 2011 to 2431 in 2012.

• The cumulative number of publications accepted by the Thomson Reuters Web of Science databases increased from 490 in 2011 to 653 in 2012.

• Citations in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science increased from 463 in 2011 to 717 in 2012.

• A total of 173 consultancy works were secured in 2012 with a total award value of RM1,067,571.62 which was a significant increase from 2008 when the initiative first started.

• Five patents were filed in 2012, compared to only three in 2011 and one in 2008, making a total of nine patents filed.

• Awards received by staff in 2012 include: a deputy dean being conferment Emeritus Professor, two faculty members awarded Malaysia Toray Science Foundation research grants, two research teams won three awards at the International Invention, Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) 2012, a faculty member received the IEM Young Engineers Award 2012, and a professor received the Chuanxin Chinese literature award.