PUTRAJAYA: Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has received the highest amount of grants under the Higher Education Ministry’s Fundamental Research Grant Scheme. Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said the ministry had received 2,045 proposals from researchers in the country’s 18 public universities.

“After careful consideration, we decided to give grants worth RM67.9mil to 746 researchers,” he said when announcing the disbursement of funds at the ministry yesterday.

Mustapa said most of the grants would be used for research in technology and engineering.

The other categories include pure science, applied science, social science and humanities, and literature.

Universities in developed countries received most of their research funding from endowment funds and not from the government, the minister added.

“These grants for our public universities should be considered as seed money,” he said.

“Hopefully the spin-off effect from this is that they will prove themselves so that the private sector will come in with funding once it sees how beneficial the research is.”

Higher Education Management Department director-general Prof Datuk Dr Hassan Said said the researchers would have to submit progress reports every six months to the ministry.

When contacted, UPM vice-chancellor Prof Dr Nik Mustapha R. Abdullah said the university had received about RM16.8mil.

“Most of the grants will be used in science and technology areas, although some will be used for research into the social sciences too. We are very thankful to the ministry for these funds,” he said.

UPM has been named as one of the country’s four research universities under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Wednesday November 1, 2006: The Star : www.thestar.com.my
01 Nov 2006