Outstanding: Student-officers of SPE APU Student Chapter with their faculty advisor Dr Harvin Kaur Gurchran Singh (seventh from left).
THE Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Student Chapter at Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) has been accorded the “2022 Presidential Award for Outstanding Student Chapter” alongside its counterparts from 16 universities across the world.
Recipients of the award from all over the world will be feted on Oct 4, in Houston, Texas.
SPE president Kamel Ben-Naceur congratulated the APU Student Chapter, which has been recognised as the highest-ranked 5% of eligible chapters that stood out among some 400 student chapters globally.
The APU Student Chapter emerged as one of the Best-17 whose programmes, activities, professional development, operations, community involvement, member engagement and levels of participation, distinguished it from the rest.
A thrilled Abdallah El Badaoui, who led the SPE APU Student Chapter as the president for the term of 2020/2021, said, “I am very happy to have raised the bar higher with my team, resulting in us being selected as among the best chapters in the world and one of only two Malaysian student chapters that won the same award this year.”
Last year, Abdallah led the society to winning its first Student Chapter Excellence Award, which recognised it as among the top 20% of chapters in the world. “This year, we have gone even higher, winning the Presidential Award and making it into the top 5% of chapters in the world!” he enthused.
The year 2021 was marked by great growth for the SPE APU Student Chapter as it organised and participated in 28 events compared to 14 in the previous year.
This included initiating a charity movement to raise relief funds for flood victims and providing meals to the unprivileged during the Muslim fasting month.
Abdallah also attended The 2021 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Dubai, and was selected to take part in the International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) 2022 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
As a team, the APU Student Chapter had dynamic interactions with chapters from around the world, as well as industry players from the petroleum sector.
One flagship event that stood out was Saturday for SPE (S4SPE) – a collaboration with student chapters from Indonesia, Nigeria, India, Oman and the United Kingdom, and two sections – Kuala Lumpur and the North Emirates.
“Held on Saturdays, this online event featured 10 speakers in five workshops and five technical talks. We recorded over a thousand views,” said Abdallah, who is in his final year of studies.
