Congratulations: Hum, Yap, Kwan and Tee (from left) secured an international grant for their research project.
A TEAM of Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) researchers, led by Assoc Prof Dr Hum Yan Chai, has been awarded an international grant worth USD$13,682 (RM60,337) for their novel engineering project.
The grant, awarded by the Engineering Information Foundation (EiF), is for one year.
Together with the varsity’s Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science (LKC FES) dean Assoc Prof Dr Yap Wun She, mechatronics and biomedical engineering department head Dr Kwan Ban Hoe and LKC FES PhD (English) and MEngSc programmes head Assoc Prof Dr Tee Yee Kai, Dr Hum secured the award for their research project titled “Bridging the gap between engineering students and non-engineering audience by instilling data storytelling skills through training programmes with industrial use cases and professional certification”.
The project aims to equip future engineers with effective data storytelling skills to enable them to advance their data, ideas and results into insights using visualisation techniques, tools and presentation.
Dr Hum said, “As engineering educators, we find that engineering students can hardly communicate with their non-engineering counterparts effectively, especially in delivering insights from a dataset using narratives and visualisations, as this skill is invariably not the main focus in formal engineering training.”
He noted that the majority of engineering graduates are not well-versed in the tools and skills of creating charts, dashboards and visualisations.
According to Dr Hum, even with a well-constructed dashboard, engineering students lack practical approaches to engage the audience, deliver insights and generate effective narratives that resonate with the audience, especially when the audience belong to non-engineering fields.
These inabilities persist as a barrier for future engineers to effectively communicate with their non-engineering colleagues, superiors and business counterparts in a multidisciplinary working environment, he said.
“This project entails two awareness talk sessions, a one-day workshop, three-day training, and four coaching sessions, co-organised by Quandatics Academy and UTAR.
“Upon completing the project, we hope that the students would have developed the abilities to design effective visualisations, create effective dashboards using tableau, and deliver engaging pitching,” he said, adding that selected participants would be certified as Tableau Desktop Specialists.
Thanking the EiF for selecting the team’s project, Dr Hum described the application process as “highly competitive”.
The EiF is an independent private foundation, chartered in New York, the United States.
Its mission is to improve worldwide engineering education and practice through information technology and the recruitment of women by providing grants to qualified not-for-profit organisations.
The EiF’s grant activity supports developmental projects, instructional projects and training programmes in engineering education and research that fit their fields of interest – enhancing communication and the use of information in engineering.
“What excited us the most is the anticipated benefits that some of the UTAR engineering students will be receiving: lifelong and transferable data storytelling skillset.
“We are confident that the skills we equip the students with will offer them a substantial edge in their future career development,” Dr Hum said in a press release.
