Throughout 2025, students from the Centre for Research and Development of IoT (CREDIT) at the Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) have secured an extraordinary 34 awards across four major national and international competitions, marking one of the institution’s most outstanding years in innovation excellence. 

This sweeping success spans diverse fields powered by IoT, robotics, automation and applied AI — from autonomous healthcare systems to sustainable waste management, industrial automation to precision agriculture, and underwater exploration to disaster response — demonstrating APU’s position as one of Malaysia’s most dynamic innovation ecosystems. 

Leading the centre’s achievements are Assistant Professor Dipl-Ing Inv Ir Narendran Ramasenderan, Head of CREDIT, and research mentor Mr Krishna Ravinchandra, whose hands-on, industry-driven guidance has transformed student creativity into globally recognised breakthroughs. 

The year’s achievements began with a strong showing at IBIEC 2025 in Sarawak, where APU teams secured seven awards across seven innovations. Projects ranged from next-generation athlete performance analytics to AI-powered waste management systems and industrial inspection rovers. Student teams impressed judges with solutions that reflected real-world applicability, user-centred design, and strong technical implementation. 

Their momentum carried into the Malaysia Startup Challenge 2025, where APU swept 16 awards, including seven Golds, six Silvers and three Bronzes. CREDIT’s emphasis on market readiness was evident, with many submissions demonstrating not only technical sophistication but also viable pathways toward commercialisation. Innovations included autonomous farm-management systems, UV-C hospital disinfection robots, flood-response AGVs, underwater drones for marine conservation, and cutting-edge reinforcement learning platforms.

The innovation streak continued internationally at iCAN Toronto 2025, where CREDIT teams collected seven awards across two flagship projects. Rumi Iqbal Sufi’s MediGuard AI Rover (a mobile healthcare security system capable of autonomous patrols, emergency intervention and LLM-assisted medical support) was named among the competition’s Top 10 Best Inventions. Meanwhile, Andrew Ng Chee Wei and his team impressed with the InteliSwarm Sentinel (a multi-unit swarm robotics inspection ecosystem that significantly reduces facility maintenance time through coordinated robotic intelligence). 

Malaysia’s innovation pride reached its peak on 16 September 2025, when APU students brought home four prestigious awards at Salt Lake City’s DAVINCI Expo—a symbolic victory achieved on Malaysia Day. The MediGuard AI Rover earned Gold as well as Special Awards from organisations in North America and Asia, underscoring its global relevance and strong potential for real-world deployment in healthcare environments. 

According to CREDIT’s founder and APU’s Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer, Professor Ir EUR ING Dr Vinesh Thiruchelvam, the 2025 achievements reflect the maturation of a long-term strategy that was to put AI at the frontier of human-centric design development. “These 34 awards across four major competitions aren’t just victories, but they’re a validation of a systematic approach to innovation. We focus on solving real complex problems, enforcing rigorous standards and compliance, and developing talents who can think critically and execute effectively.”

CREDIT’s work is built on a deliberate pedagogy anchored on six core working principles:

1. Starting with real stakeholder problems,
2. Driving interdisciplinary collaboration,
3. Using industry-level tools,
4. Enforcing iterative development,
5. Embedding sustainability considerations, and
6. Cultivating a global mindset while maintaining strong local relevance.
    

This framework has enabled CREDIT to produce solutions tailored to sectors critical to Malaysia’s development, from agriculture and healthcare to environmental sustainability and advanced manufacturing. It has also resulted in an innovation culture where students learn to build not just prototypes, but viable, scalable technologies with measurable impact. 

The centre’s emphasis on real-world deployment is already showing results. Several of 2025’s award-winning innovations, particularly MediGuard, Palm Vision, SecurePath and various industrial AGV systems, are undergoing discussions with local industry partners for pilot testing and technology transfer. “Competitions open doors, but commercialisation is the real destination,” notes Prof Vinesh. “We’re now working with NextGen Technologies, APU’s innovation commercialisation arm, to bring these technologies into real environments.” 

For students, the experience is nothing short of transformational. Many credit the CREDIT environment for instilling not only technical mastery, but also the confidence needed to articulate ideas, defend their work and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams. Students such as Rumi Iqbal Sufi, Andrew Ng, Darrick Aaron Untarman, and Samantha Koay have each emerged as ambassadors of innovation, demonstrating that undergraduates—when supported by the right ecosystem—can produce solutions of global significance. 

Asst Prof Ir Narendran emphasises that CREDIT’s role extends far beyond winning competitions. “Our goal is to prepare students for future industries that will rely on autonomous systems, AI-driven decision-making, sustainable technologies and robotics. What we are building is not just prototypes, but problem solvers.” 

With 2025 marking a watershed year, CREDIT is already gearing up for 2026, with plans for expanded research in swarm robotics, healthcare automation, AI-enhanced agriculture, and sustainability-driven IoT systems. Partnerships with ASEAN universities, IP protection initiatives, and industry collaborations are also being strengthened as part of CREDIT’s next phase of expansion. 

APU’s CREDIT Centre has not only demonstrated Malaysia’s capacity to innovate at a global level, but has also laid the groundwork for nurturing the next generation of homegrown inventors, technologists and entrepreneurs. As the centre continues to scale its impact, the 34 awards earned in 2025 serve as a launchpad for even greater breakthroughs ahead.