Putting discoveries on the market
Universiti Putra Malaysia has hundreds of products ready for commercialisation and a focus on agriculture

According to Nik Mustapha Abdullah, its Vice-Chancellor, Universiti Putra Malaysia can lay claim to more than 50 per cent of the products commercialised by the universities in Malaysia.

And with over 300 products ready for commercialisation, UPM is likely to maintain its position at the head of the field. Dr Nik Mustapha observes that the university is “quite aggressive” when it comes to putting its discoveries into the market.

UPM’s main campus is situated within Malaysia’s Multimedia Super Corridor, about a dozen miles from the capital Kuala Lumpur. It also has a branch campus in the Eastern Malaysia State of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, in a location surrounded by forest rich in flora and fauna.

The university started life 76 years ago as a college of agriculture and was raised to the status of a university in 1971. It acquired its present name in 1997 to indicate its by then multidisciplinary nature.

UPM has expanded its frontiers in various disciplines, such as engineering, medical sciences, pure sciences, economics, management, education, languages, communication and other fields. It boasts 16 faculties, nine institutes, two schools, eight centres and an academy that accommodates various study programmes and research.

Nik Mustapha Abdullah Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Putra Malaysia

With its long tradition of research, UPM was a natural choice for one of the four institutions designated as a research-intensive university under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Today, it has become an acclaimed international institution of higher learning in the region. As its Vice-Chancellor notes, however: “Agriculture is still the main thing, and accounts for 70 per cent of our research grant. Our focus is on agri-biotechnology because our strength lies in agriculture.”

He adds: “We are fortunate because we offer almost all disciplines. We have IT, engineering, chemical engineering, molecular biology, chemistry, etc. We support only research with multi-disciplinary efforts.”

UPM has helped companies to produce food supplements now sold in Europe and the US. One of its biggest products is a chemical used for enhancing growth in rice. There is also a big programme in herbal and natural products. This is spearheaded by the faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Institute of Bioscience, where most of UPM’s biological research is conducted.
Being located in tropical areas is an advantage. “Not many people understand tropical agriculture as well as we do,” says Dr Nik Mustapha.

	UPM was a natural choice to become one of Malaysia’s research-intensive universities

He stresses that the focus is on quality rather than quantity and that the process from laboratory to market is a long one. “Research takes a long gestation period. It requires a number of years before you can see substantial results. What I am happy about is that we come up with high quality products.”

UPM has garnered many international awards for its research, including UNESCO’s 2005 Carlos J. Finlay Prize for microbiology, which went to its Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Paduka Khatijah Yusoff. It helps that UPM has the highest number of doctorate degree holders of all the Malaysian universities.

Research is coordinated through the university’s Research Management Centre. An Innovation and Commercialisation Centre manages all aspects of commercialisation and protection of the university’s intellectual property (IP).

One of the largest and most popular universities in the country, UPM currently has capped its number of undergraduates at 20,000. The Vice-Chancellor would like to increase the post-graduate population – currently at 5,000 – to a point where the ratio of post-graduate students to undergraduates is one-to-one.

This will be achieved in part by boosting the intake of foreign students. UPM already has links with leading higher education institutions abroad, including John Hopkins University in the US, Cambridge and Sheffield universities and Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology, with which it runs a double degree programme.