Home > News & Events > News Archive 2008> Invention & New product Exposition 2008
UTP EMERGED AS THE BEST AMONG 13 MALAYSIAN UNIVERSITIES AT INPEX 2008
11 - 14 JUNE 2008
HELD IN DAVID L.LAWRENCE CONVENTION CENTRE, PITTSBURGH, USA
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) proved its mettle once again when it emerged as the best among 13 Malaysian universities, by winning 5 golds, 3 silvers and 1 bronze in the ‘24 th Invention & New Product Exposition 2008 (INPEX 2008)’ held in Pittsburgh, USA from 11- 14 June 2008 based on 6 products submitted. Malaysia sent the largest delegation apart from the USA, for the exhibition .
INPEX 2008 is a resource for inventions, new products and new technology from around the world. It is a platform for inventors to find support, share experiences and gather information as they pursue their new product ideas .
Prof. Dr. P.A. Venkatachalam of UTP was awarded a special award - ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by the professional jury based on the attractive and creative ideas imbedded in his projects. He also won 2 gold medals and 2 silver medals for 2 inventions entitled ‘STETH-ECG’ (Stethoscope- ElectroCardioGram) and ‘Fuzzy DSS (Decision Support System)” to diagnose Heart Problem by RST’ in 3 different categories i.e. Health/Fitness, Computer Software and Specialised Technology .
‘STETH-ECG’ uses low cost technology to stimulate electrocardiogram (ECG) using auscultation data with diagnosis capability of ECG. With this technology, it is not a necessity for an ECG machine to be used during emergency situations only, as it is a convenient portable tool to detect major heart problems immediately even at home .
‘Fuzzy DSS (Decision Support System) to diagnose Heart Problem by RST’ is used to diagnose coronary artery disease by predicting missing data and discovering the knowledge directly from data set by generating most important rules using ANN (Artificial Neural Network) supported RST based on Fuzzy Decision Support System .
There is no direct method currently available to determine exactly the percentage of blockage in artery due to plaque and blood clots. But through this system, we can estimate the percentage of the blockage within few minutes under normal or emergency situation without the assistance of Angiogram or human experts who may not be available immediately, since the system can impute the missing data and then make a decision .
Another project, ‘Synthesis and Characterisation of Modified Polymer for EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery)’ led by Assoc. Prof. Dr Isa Mohd Tan had also won 1 gold for Industrial Equipment category. This is a conventional polyacrylamide polymers used to enhance oil production by mobilising trapped and by passed oil.
UTP also won gold medals through Assoc. Prof. Dr Suzana Yusup’s project entitled ‘ Direct Route of Synthesizing Graphitic Nanofibers’ under manufacturing and chemicals categories. The synthesis of graphitic nanofibers is a one step process using developed catalyst in the absence of substrate or support and the graphitic nanofibers are produced at lower operating temperature with less formation of byproducts with higher surface area.
Two other projects which also participated in this exposition are ‘Video Mining for Extracting Human Activity’ by Dr Vijanth Sagayan Asirvadam and ‘Free Space Points Detector (FSPD)’ by Mr. Low Tan Jung .
The exposition attracted participations of more than 300 research products from 14 different countries amongst others USA, Germany, Russia, France, China and Taiwan.
