School of Computing & Technology

Here’s another good news to share! 

Our team of APU students, Team Unique, comprising Chin Jess Nny, Lim Chu Sheng and Daryl Ong Wi Hsien, stood out among other participants in the 2015 Gamification Hackathon, which was jointly organised by Nettium and SelfDrvn Enterprise recently.

The team worked on an application called City Life, in which they applied the gamification concept into workplace applications. After demonstrating outstanding creativity and skills throughout the 30 hours of programme development, the team was crowned as champions of the competition. They walked away with a cash prize of RM4,000 and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3. 

The competition was an eye opener for the team, as they had the opportunity to meet IT professionals and participate in special workshops and talks; in which enabled them to gain more exposure towards the industry and its requirements to excel in this field. Congratulations and thumbs up to the team; special thanks to Ms Vinothini Kasinathan, the mentor of the team for the dedication and effort. We shall look forward to hear more success stories in the future!

A total of 33 students and 4 lecturers from the School of Computing & Technology (SCT) conducted an educational visit to the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) Museum and Art Gallery at Sasaran Kijang on Tuesday, 19 May 2015. The objectives of this trip were to expose students to the vast knowledge of  Art and Design preview of Bank Negara Heritage with supporting multimedia appliances.

The tour at the museum was assisted by Pn. Noreen, curator of BNM Museum Art Gallery, who also conducted a talk on the architecture and elements of the museum. The tour consisted of 5 parts, namely the Bank Negara Malaysia Gallery, Islamic Finance Gallery, Economics Gallery, Numismatic Gallery and the Art Gallery. 

It was an eye-opening experience for the students, who were given the opportunity to elevate their financial literacy and they were able to appreciate Malaysia’s cultural distinctiveness further. 

On Tuesday, May 26, 2015, APU School of Computing and Technology in collaboration with National Kidney Foundation Malaysia (NKF) and GO Communications Sdn Bhd organized a competition to develop a mobile game application to educate young people on the importance of caring for their kidneys in order to prevent Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), a condition that damages one’s kidneys, decreasing the organ’s ability to remove harmful waste from body. CKD is a common, life-threatening illness that often goes undetected at a very advanced stage. 
                                                                                           
Three teams which consisted of students from APU’s Mobile Multimedia and Gaming module, participated in the competition. It took four months of brainstorming and coding under the guidance and supervision of lecturer Mr. Jacob Sow, but the results were well worth the effort put in. Each of the three teams produced their own mobile game application. They all featured entertaining and interactive ways to innovatively drill into users’ minds the symptoms and effects of Chronic Kidney Disease, as well as measures that can be taken to prevent the disease.  However, it was “Kidney Rescue” designed by Lee Chee Yan and Amatullah Ashfaq that ultimately stood above the rest to win the competition. The panel of judges for the competition consisted of Ms. Shobana, Head of Branding, Communications & Fundraising, NKF and Mr Muhammad Ehsan Rana, Head of School of Computing, APU. Mr Gurpardeep Singh, Vice President, Operations at APU presented tokens of appreciation to the representatives of both organizations.
 
NKF also announced “Kidney Rescue” as its first-ever mobile game application right after it emerged the winning entry in the competition.

 
Message of Mr. Chua Hong Wee, CEO of NKF
“There is a dire need to educate young people on the importance of looking after their kidneys. CKD has serious implications on the quality of one’s life. However, many people, especially young ones, underestimate the severity of kidney disease. Education is key here. This is why we have collaborated with Asia Pacific University, to creatively yet effectively utilize technology to open young minds to the growing prevalence, seriousness and prevention of kidney disease.”
 
National Kidney Foundation of Malaysia
The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) Malaysia is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to helping Malaysians suffering from end stage kidney failure who lack access to or cannot afford dialysis treatment. NKF currently has over 1,600 dialysis patients receiving subsidized dialysis treatment in our 28 dialysis centres nationwide. For more information on CKD and National Kidney Foundation Malaysia (NKF), please visit http://www.nkf.org.my or call 03-7954 9048.

Data Science and Analytics has become the most vibrant field significantly influencing many domains mainly business, healthcare, manufacturing, and automobile and more. To expose our students to the potentials of Data Science and its capabilities, an industrial visit was organized for the students of MSc Data Science & Business Analytics and BSc Computer Science specialized in Data Analytics, School of Computing to FUSIONEX SDN BHD – A well renowned and established multi-award winning data technology provider that specializes in Analytics, Big Data, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

A total of 30 students along with their lecturers from School of Computing, Dr. Kadhar Batcha Nowshath and Mr. Raheem Mafas visited the company to witness the dynamic experience that the students gained from the professionals who worked on their clients’ projects. During the visit, the students were also given a company tour where they were mesmerized by the futuristic office. A sharing session on “How to become a Data Hero” took place, where FusionEx personnel shared details of career and internship opportunities at the company. The entire visit provided a good insight onto the Data Science career prospects and the skills needed to become a Data Analyst / Data Scientist in the future. 

Overall, students had positive feedback about the visit, expanding their horizons on Data Science and Analytics in their preferred domain. They enjoyed the visit, while a few of them have expressed great interest in applying to work with the company in the future.

Our Cyber Heroes did it again! 

At the recently concluded Cyber Heroes Competition (CHC) 2019 that was jointly organized by Cyber Security Malaysia (CSM), Standard Chartered Bank and APU, our Year 2 Cyber Security students, Imran Esack Dawoodjee, Sritaran Doraisamy and Nicholas Leow Yung Jian (Team Shellhound) achieved the highest score and were crowned champions of the challenge. The challenge was hosted at APU’s Cyber Security Talent Zone, where it saw the participation from 13 local private and public universities.

Our teams, FetchOrbis and Shellhound demonstrated extra confidence throughout the competition, in which team Shellhound performed excellently by demonstration skills and talents in forensic analysis and outstanding teamwork. At the prize giving ceremony that was held in Putrajaya Mariott Hotel, apart from attaining the championship, Imran, who was the member of team Shellhound, was also announced as the Most Valuable Player (MVP) for contributing the most points for his team. They receive their prizes from  YB Tuan Gobind Singh Deo, Minister of Communications and Multimedia who was also the guest of honour at the closing ceremony.

Apart from taking part in the competition, teams FetchOrbis and Shellhound also had the opportunity to be a part of the Safer Internet Day (SID) 2019  forum, to hear and discuss about youth initiatives in making the internet a safer place. Congratulations and well done to team Shellhound, as their mentor, Ms. Nor Azlina ffor their success!

3 days are all we need, for our students to demonstrate their outstanding coding skills!

At the recently concluded “3 Days of Code” Hackathon organized by Multimedia University (MMU), we are proud to share that 2 of our student teams – team ‘KarmaPoints’ and team ‘VRoomFor2’ walked away as the Champion and 1st Runner Up teams, earning 2 awards at once!

The “3 Days of Code” Hackathon is an event that combines coding competition and hackathon to gauge students’ programming and problem solving skills. Organised annually by the IT Society of MMU Cyberjaya, this competition was open to all undergraduate students from Malaysian private and public universities. At the competition, students were expected to demonstrate teamwork to propose solutions for systems in the fields of Transport, Education or Finance.

Team ‘KarmaPoints’ developed an innovative mobile app that allows users to collect loyalty points via services and to donate them to charity organisations, whereas team ‘VRoomFor2’ invented a matchmaking and ride-hailing platform that combines the concepts of organizing dates without worrying on the issues of mobility.

Both teams walked away with cash prizes of RM1,000 and RM750 respectively. CONGRATULATIONS to team ‘KarmaPoints’ and team ‘VRoomFor2’!

Under the coordination of our colleagues, Muhammad Ehsan Rana, Kamalanathan, Palvinderjit Kaur and Vijayaraj from the School of Computing & Technology (SoCT), a Salesforce Trailhead Superbadge workshop was conducted for a group of our students, in order to familiarize themselves with the latest programming knowledge and equip them with necessary technical skills.
 
45 of our students attained the “Superbadge” credential after the completion of the 8-hours workshop and the necessary modules; this becomes an added advantage for them to enrich their resume and to be exposed to more career opportunities in the future.

Salesforce is the innovative company behind the world’s #1 cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform – with the knowledge sharing session being conducted by Salesforce experts, students broadened their knowledge in the fields of cloud computing and programming. These are necessary skills for them to secure good career opportunities as they graduate as IT Professionals of the future.

Apart from Engineering students, our Computing & Technology students had an opportunity to explore more about robotics & sensors as well!
 
Under the guidance of our lecturers, Umapathy Eganathan, Booma Poolan Marikannan and Vijayalaxmi Amuthan from School of Computing & Technology (SoCT), 80 students visited the Gardenia Bakery as part of their out-of-classroom experience.
 
At the visit, technical officers from Gardenia conducted a briefing followed by an exclusive tour, in which our students learnt about establishment of a Gardenia products and its history. At the bakery, our students explored more on the functionalities of robotic arms and sensors, while learning about the important roles played by these components under a manufacturing environment. Their knowledge of supply chain and logistics management broadened as well, while they were guided through the entire manufacturing process of Gardenia’s products.
 
The visit provided our students with a new realm of experience, particularly in the use of robotics and the technological applications within the manufacturing industry.