6th MiCE Exhibition

Figure 1: The Proceeding of MiCE Exhibition

Alhamdulillah, the 6th MiCE Exhibition was successfully held on 4th and 5th April 2007. This year event is more meaningful, extensive participation, and achieved many objectives.

The first MiCE Exhibition was done sometime around end of March 2000. At the time, I was a new lecturer and as the most junior lecturer, I was responsible to organize the event. It was a small event though, which was meant just to show the final year student projects. If I am not mistaken, there was only 18 participants. Sadly, out of 18, there was only three booths belong to Malay students.

The second MiCE exhibition was done in 2001. During the exhibition, several Mimos Berhad's staffs was also at the faculty to attend a meeting. Subsequently, they payed a visit to the exhibition.

The third MiCe exhibition was done in 2002.

Then, the exhibition was not held until 2004 when the current head department was taking over the department. In order to make the department to be pro-active, I was asked to revive the exhibition. However, I was no longer the most junior lecturer. Mr. Izam Kamisian was asked to be the chairman of the event. Since, I was the most experience staff in handling event management due to the fact that I was the chairman for all previous exhibition and my involvement in Belia 4B, I was appointed as the advisor to the exhibition comittee.

The revival of MiCE Exhibition was not only marked the resurface of the event but also the improvement of the event activities. 6 industrial participants attended the event. They are Altera Sdn. Bhd., Intel Sdn. Bhd, Telekom Bhd., Motorola, 5, and 6. They participate as Technical Talk panels, and judging the competition. Although there were only 6 participants, it was a success considering that a UTM event named INATEX 2005 has less than 6 industrial participants!

The 5th MiCE Exhibition was held in 2006 with better activities and results. There were more Malay students participation, industrial representatives, other learning institution representative (KUTKM - Electronic), and lecturers involvement. Due to the problem arose in previous event, I asked the head department to chair the comittee which he accepted. But, the acceptance was with the condition that I became the vice chairman. We produced better booklet for the event, separating contestants into four categories. One of the categories prizes was sponsopred by Altera Sdn. Bhd.: 1st RM500, 2nd. RM250, and 3rd RM100. The event was improved further by adding curriculum review by indusry representative mainly from Altera and Intel. In addition to the both, the industry participants were Telekom R&D, RF Comm, Wise Path, Avago, and MIMOS. In fact, we have to limit their request to participate in the technical talk!

The 6th MiCE Exhibition was improved further by making the booklet into a proceeding, complete with ISBN number. Exhibitors were required to write technical papers in addition to demonstrating their final design. The proceeding format and ISBN number are very important so that students and lecturers involvement can be accepted in academic world. There are several lecturers who had never write any technical paper. This event was their chance to do so which they did. I managed to increase my technical papers to 17 papers from 10 papers. This mean this event alone, I managed to write 7 technical papers.
Altera had increase their sponsorship by providing prizes: 1st RM3,000, 2nd 2,000, and 3rd 1,000. Altera also gave RM150 each to all Altera FPGA participants (13) by just exhibiting their designs! In addition, Altera had donated RM2,000 for the event administration. We exploited the fund by producing better proceeding quality.

Figure 2: Altera Bhd advertisement at the back page of the proceeding

The Altera FPGA was won by UTM student related to Palm Print technology. The second prize was won by MMU student. While the 3rd prize was won by UTM student also. Another good news is Malay students participants has increased to 16 students out of 38 exhibitors excluding master or phd level. It is good to know that the faculty Dean appreciated the event by inviting TNC(P) to officiate the event. Well, actually, this is the first time ever the Dean himself had attend the event.

This event is one of the proof I mention to my friends regarding my area of specialization: The Electronic and Computer engineering especially IC design, DSP, Networking, and Embedded system are really HOT! All of my last year students had a job already. Some of this year students already have job offer although they have not graduated yet.