July 8, 2013, by Graham Kendall

Postgraduate Colloquium for Environmental Research 2013 (POCER 2013)

This post was submitted by Dr Denny Ng

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The last weekend saw the second installment of our very own Postgraduate Colloquium for Environmental Research (POCER), as it is affectionately known, held successfully at Awana Hotels & Resorts, Genting Highlands, Malaysia from 28^th to 29^th June. This colloquium was jointly organised by the Centre of Excellence for Green Technologies (CEGT) and the Environment Research Division of the Faculty of Engineering.

The opening ceremony was graced by Vice-Provost for Research and Knowledge Transfer, The University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, Prof Graham Kendall. He mentioned that he was very pleased to see the participation from several countries, moving away from the first POCER in 2011, which was attended by predominantly Malaysian researchers. Sponsors of the event – PerkinElmer, Solution Bioforce Sdn Bhd and Arachem (M) Sdn Bhd and Palm Oleo Sdn Bhd, were also recognised by a presentation of token of appreciation to their representatives. The highlight of the opening ceremony was the much awaited plenary talk by Prof Raymond Tan, University Fellow and current Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation at De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. His presentation emphasised the role of postgraduate students in addressing pressing environmental issues which he termed as the grand challenges.

All parallel sessions were well attended by the participants, covering areas from renewable energy to materials for environmental application, and wastewater treatment to applied environmental catalyst. In addition, in conjunction of POCER 2013, 1^st Process Integration Forum is also held as one of the parallel sessions. Many active international and national professors and researchers attended and chaired the parallel sessions. These include Prof. Raymond Girard R. Tan, De La Salle University, Manila; Prof. Santanu Bandyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India; Prof. Cheng-Liang Chen, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; Dr. Yasuki Kansha, The University of Tokyo, Japan; Dr. Chong Nyuk Min, Da-Yeh University, Taiwan;  Dr. Suzana Yusup, University Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia; Dr. Lee Jui Yuan, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; Dr. Lau Ee Von                   Monash University Sunway Campus, Malaysia and Dr. Tan Yin Ling, Curtin University Sarawak Campus, Malaysia.   Other than the technical session, social events were held the following day organised by the ever enthusiastic student committee members where participants were treated to dosages of team activities such as tug of war.

The biennial colloquium was first successfully held on campus in 2011 with some participants from several local universities. This year’s event saw a sharp hike of more than 80 submissions and the acceptance of 70 technical papers. Selected papers would be published in the special edition of indexed journal Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy.

At the closing ceremony, conference chair Dr Denny Ng thanked all participants, event sponsors, committee members for their kind support ensuring the astounding success of POCER 2013. Dr Ng has also announced that POCER 2015 will be held in Kuching, Sarawak in conjunction with a well-established international conference, 18^th International Conference on Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction (PRES 2015)!  For more information about the event, please visit our facebook at http://www.facebook.com/umncpocer.

 

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