achievement

We have a good news to share!

The School of Technology along with Forensics and Security Research Center (FSEC), recently organized the CompTIA Partner Summit Awards in which Datuk Parmjit Singh, CEO of APIIT Education Group on behalf of APU, received the “Rising Star Award – Academy Sector in Asia Pacific Region” from the President and CEO of CompTIA, Mr Todd Thibodeaux.  It was a remarkable milestone and a very proud moment for the FSEC team.

Mr Todd gave us a talk on his valuable industrial experience on cyber security and digital forensics titled, “The Global Trends in IT industry” which was followed by John McGlinchey, the Vice President of CompTIA, who presented the CompTIA certification roadmap and its value in the industry. 

As part of the award ceremony, APU students who have been certified with CompTIA Project+ received their certificates directly from Mr Todd. A token of appreciation was awarded to Nehru Nagappan, Dr Meisam and Dr Maryam for their contributions to the training conducted for the certification programmes, student competitions and industry links in the project management, forensics and cyber security areas. In addition, APU has now entered into an initial agreement to launch its first official CompTIA student Branch. We look forward to hearing more success stories in the upcoming academic year of 2017-2018!

We are pleased to share that our student, Yelena Stepanenko from the BA (Hons) in Accounting & Finance with a specialism in Internal Audit programme excelled at the Maybank Go Ahead Challenge 2017. She was named the Campus Champion of APU, in which she successfully passed the National Finals and advanced to the Global Finals of the challenge.

Throughout her preparation for the challenges,  our team of lecturers, Mr. Ritzeraynn Rashid, Dr. Jugindar Singh, Ms. Rohizan Ahmad. Ms. Rozitaayu Binti Zulkifli, Mr. Kantharow Apparavu and Mr. Muzammir Ahmad helped her by grooming her presentation skills, in which she became more confident and well-prepared for the National Finals and Global Finals. Kudos to the team!

Coming up next, she will be representing APU and Malaysia at the Global Finals, which will take place next week. We wish her all the best for the upcoming challenges! 

Here’s another good news to share!

Team MD1337, comprising students from APU’s School of Computing & Technology (SCT), Ahmed Nabil Al-Eryani, Alexander Sukhamera and Marat Omaraliev, was announced as the champion of the F-Secure IT Security Competition Malaysia 2016. They were among the top ten semi-finalists who competed for the championship that was held at Bangsar South Nexus Mall on the 14th of April 2016. 

The competition was open to all full-time IT undergraduate students who are enrolled in Malaysian public and private universities. It was also a joint effort between F-Secure and the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) as part of their initiatives to transfer and empower high technology skills to the local labour force through education. As such, the competition had provided students with the platform to demonstrate their academic skills and express their interests in the IT security field.

This year’s championship revolved around the theme of “Protection against Advanced. Persistent. Threat (APT)”. Prior to their advancement into the grand finals that took place in the form of Jeopardy-style, the team excelled at the university-based qualifying test and the semi-finals, in which they were given IT security challenges in the forms of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) and Multistage Challenge. Participating students were required to be equipped with a wide range of knowledge in the IT Security field, such as news and current events related to cyber threats, security and targeted attacks, malware, forensics, programming, encryption, debugging, and more.

The team put in a lot of effort in preparing themselves for the competition the guidance of Yusnita Bt Yusof, Yogeswaran A/L Nathan and Sulaiman bin Harun. By demonstrating outstanding technical skills and excellent teamwork throughout the competition, their hard work paid off as they walked away with a MacBook Pro each, a 1-year license for F-Secure SAFE product, as well as a free Student Pass to the 19th Association of Anti-Virus Asia Researchers (AVAR) International Conference 2016, the largest Asia Pacific conference on anti-malware. 

Good job and thumbs up to the team and their mentors for making APU proud! 

Here comes another good news to share!

Our Software Engineering student, Lai Woon Siew, from the School of Computing (SoC), received the Bronze Award, in Category 2: Science and Technology, for his mobile application, 'I-cHeart' – Pill Time: Pill reminder system at the 1st Innovative Practices in Education and Industry Exhibition 2016 (I-PEINX '16), that was held on Monday, 14th March in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor. 

The innovative development of "Pill Time"- a medicine reminder application that reminds users to take every dose of medicine on time, which integrates the schedule function that notifies patients on the order of consumption of each medicine. The application also provides a few features like the ability to record appointments with the doctor, to save the patient’s own personal symptoms’ profile and to locate the nearest hospital for emergencies.

Congratulations to Woon Siew for he outstanding achievement! Special thanks and good job to Ms Aida Zamnah binti Zainal Abidin and Miss Vinothini Kasinathan, who mentored and guided Woon Siew throughout the competition. 

We are pleased to share another achievement recorded by our students from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) at the eGenting Programming Competition (EGPC) 2015! They successfully bagged one Distinction and one Merit Award, which were awarded at the prize presentation lunch on the 23rd of January 2016, at Hard Rock Café, Kuala Lumpur. 

A total of 14 students from APU participated in both competitions; 9 students participated in the Programming Competition and 5 of them participated in the Bug Hunt. Most of the students were trained by Ms. Mary Ting who took the effort to organize weekly workshops for the Bug Hunt and the Programming Competition.  A total of 155 participants from various local public and private colleges and universities who took part in the Programming Competition, 2 APU students, Cheong Gze Xie and Ali Asghar Hashemi stood out as the Distinction Award and the Merit Award recipients who bagged RM500 and RM200 cash respectively based on their performance at the handwritten competition, which was held on 14th of November 2015.

Congratulations and well done to all students and their mentors; let’s look forward for more achievements by our students in year 2016!

Our students made us proud again! 

Team YOLO, comprising Nicholas Ian Nonis, Choong Chih Xien and Goh Eu Gene, bagged the 1st Runner Up position of the UTP-HAX National Hacking Competition, which was organised by Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS on the 13th and 14th of November 2015. The competition saw participation from more than 40 teams, who came from local private and public universities.

3 teams of students represented APU in the competition: Team YOLO, Team EZ (Alexandr Suhameraa, Maray Omaraliev, Ahmed Nabil Al-Eryani) and Team NACHOS (Toong Chee Sheng, Syahmi Suleiman, Mohamed Siddiq Rahmat). The competition was intense – as students had to scan, test, hack, defend and use creative and constructive methods to secure their system. Throughout the competition, our students, who were from the APU Cyber Security & Forensic Club (CSFC), demonstrated outstanding effort and excellent teamwork; in which Team YOLO and Team NACHOS managed to enter the semi-finals, while Team YOLO eventually stood out as one of the finalists of the competition.

Other than securing remarkable positions at the competition, our students demonstrated their outstanding problem-solving ability – as Team YOLO attain 3 Bounty Awards (a special award given to the first team to solve a challenge), whereas Team EZ bagged 1 Bounty Award as well. 

Apart from the prizes and achievement they accomplished, these students were also exposed to memorable experiences of performing their best under pressure. The UTP-HAX was a good platform for them to seed creativity, foster innovation and stimulate teamwork among themselves. Congratulations to the teams and thumbs up to their coaches: Mr. Yogeswaran Nathan, Mr. Sulaiman bin Harun, Ms. Yusnita Yusof and Mr. Khoo Li Jing for their guidance and dedication in managing the teams.

As part of MDeC’s efforts to position Malaysia as a Big Data Hub in ASEAN, the National Big App Challenge 2.0 was organised to provide a platform for teams, start-ups, software companies and students to showcase their Big Data applications to the Malaysian market. As differed from the previous National Big App Challenge, MDeC provided “twice the fun” as they divided the challenge into two categories: the Cyberjaya City Hacks and the OpenGov Hacks. 
 
Our team of APU students excelled in both categories; as they were announced as the Top 5 Finalist of the Cyberjaya City Hacks and the Top 10 finalist of the OpenGov Hacks. Despite stiff competition from industry experts and software companies, our students impressed the judges with their outstanding skills, as they became the only student team selected into the finals of Cyberjaya City Hacks! Among all the universities and industry professionals that participated, APU team was the highest placed university / tertiary team.

The National Big App Challenge 2.0 was a platform up to industry standards, as it involved a series of selection and judging processes, which were catered for the participation of industry experts and software companies. Our team, who named themselves “Analytical System Solvers”, prepared for the Ideation & Validation, Hack & Pitch and Video Submission processes under the guidance of their mentor, Mr Manoj Jayabalan. At the finals, our students had the opportunity to meet the team of judges and VIPs, which was made up of industry experts such as Mr. Richard Stirling from Open Data Institute, UK, YBhg. Tan Sri Dr Ali Hamsa, Chief Secretary to the Government of Malaysia (Prime Minister’s Department) and YBhg. Dato’ Seri Zainal Rahim bin Seman, General Director of  The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU). 
 
Congratulations and well done to Wayne See Wei Earn, Azhar bin Anuar Veera, Chong Yeong Dee and Swee Tze Xiang for their dedicated effort over the three months of competition. Special thanks to their mentor, Mr Manoj Jayabalan, APCA group, Prof. Dr. Ir. Vinesh Thiruchelvam and Ms. Hema Latha Krishna Nair for guiding and monitoring the students’ progress! We are proud of the students’ achievements and delighted to see that they have gained more exposure towards the Big Data industry through this platform created by MDeC.

It is with great pride we announce that APU students from the Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology (FCET) excelled in the International Energy Innovation Competition (EiC), which was organised by the Institute of Engineers Singapore (IES). 3 of our APU teams qualified as the finalists of the competition; and stood above the rest, as all three teams were placed the First Runner Up, 4th Place and Finalist respectively. 

Held in Suntec Exhibition Centre in parallel with the 2015 World Engineers Summit, the Energy Innovation Challenge attracted participation of teams from Singapore, China, Australia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. Despite having stiff competition from their fellow competitors, the APU teams impressed the judges with their innovative ideas and outstanding presentation. APU Team A, which comprised Cleopatra Musa and Syed Abdullah, integrated fitness with eco-friendly technology to produce the “Eco-Friendly Weight Lifting Machine”. Their innovative prototype outstood other teams; as they bagged the First Runner Up position and walked away with a cash prize of S$ 5,000 and a trophy! 

Whether in a team or individually, our students performed marvelously, as Jasmine Kaur, who fought alone with strong determination in Team C, walked away as the 4th Place winner, with her innovative solution – “Eco-Friendly Ceiling Fan as an Alternative Approach to Air-Conditioners”. On the other hand, Breena Theseira and Choon Yun Lim, who were from Team B, qualified into the grand finals with their project, “Infinite Loop”.

All 3 teams were mentored by Prof Dr Ir Vinesh Thiruchelvam, Dean of Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Technology (FCET). These achievements have proven that our students are able to perform astonishing results, both locally and internationally. It was a great platform for the students to showcase their talents at the international level; moreover, they had the honourable opportunity to receive the prizes from Singaporean Minister for Education, Mr Heng Swee Keat!

Despite the punishing heat, humid weather and stiff competition from other colleges & universities, the APU Netball team secured a 2nd runner-up position at the 2015 Majlis Sukan Institusi Pengajian Tinggi (MASISWA) Netball Competition, held at the Lee Chong Wei Sports Arena, Bukit Serdang from 18 April to 19 April 2015.

In demonstrating fantastic teamwork and outstanding perseverance, the 12 member team fought through the preliminary rounds to the semi-finals before securing the 2nd runner-up position. Kudos to the team for their competitve spirit and and many thanks to the Club’s coach, Ms Zabedah and the Club’s advisor, Ms Audrey Linda Fernando who dedicated much effort in managing and training the APU team.