Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) and the Tallinn University of Technology (TTU)
Tallinn, 27 September 2017 - Contacts between UNIMAS and TTU was first established back in 2015, when one of UNIMAS faculty members, Dr. Cheah spent two months as a postdoctoral at TTU. In 2016, Prof Kuldar Taveter, professor and the Head of the Sociotechnical Systems Lab at the Departments of Software Science, TTU was invited by Dr Cheah Wai Shiang to visit UNIMAS and conduct several activities during the three-days visit from 11th to 13th May 2017.
In 2017, Prof Taveter was invited as the keynote speaker for the Conference on IT in Asia 2017 (CITA’17) which was organized from 23rd to 24th of May 2017. The timing of his visit as keynote speaker coincided well with the Digital Economy initiative, mooted by the Right Honorable Chief Minister of Sarawak when he was appointed as the Chief Minister in April 2017. Since Estonia is one of the successful models for Digital Economy and E-Government initiatives, a sharing session was suggested by FCSIT/UNIMAS to the state government for a sharing session by Prof Taveter, and agreed by the state government of Sarawak. The sharing session conducted was attended by the top management and the heads of department of the state government and civil service of Sarawak.
To further pursue the collaboration between UNIMAS and TTU, and in light of the Digital Economy initiative at the state level, the faculty had several discussions on the potential of having an MOU between UNIMAS and TTU to formalize on the previous collaboration through Prof Taveter.
In general, the MOU will cover the following areas of collaboration:
- Collaborative research activities;
- Student project and internship;
- Invited talk sessions for students and/or faculty members;
- Collaborative development of curriculum and syllabus;
- Exchange of academic staff/faculty members for research and teaching;
- Participation in seminars and academic meetings by academic staff/faculty members;
- Short term academic programs/study visits for students/participants/faculty members;
- Exchange of materials and information relating to those scientific areas in which the Parties have mutual interests;
- Cooperation within European Union programs, and
- Any other areas of co-operation to be mutually agreed upon by the Parties.
Currently, three technical areas of interest for immediate collaboration between UNIMAS and TTU:
- Research related to E-government (including using requirement engineering to model and evaluate the effectiveness of Digital Economy imitative for Sarawak).
- Research related to Cybersecurity and Blockchain technology
- Research related to Big Data and Analytics
It is hoped that with the MOU between UNIMAS and TTU, will further strengthen the relationship between both institutions of higher learning in areas of interest to both parties, and provide support to the state’s Digital Economy initiative.
