The 16th Malaysian Chemical Congress (16MCC) 2010 which was held at Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC), Kuala Lumpur on October 12-14, 2010 was organized by Institut Kimia Malaysia (IKM) and Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) in collaboration with Department of Chemistry Malaysia (Kimia Malaysia), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Malaysia Section and some of local universities including UTM. This event is a special medium of scientific meeting for Malaysian scientists, academics and professionals in Chemistry to present their research findings, technology innovation and latest developments in all areas of Chemistry. The world including Malaysia is confronting a lot of serious problems such as the issues of sustainable development, climate change, food safety and security as well as water and energy crisis. Therefore, it is hoped that chemical research and development, technology innovation, commercialisation and entrepreneurship will help to provide solutions to these problems.
There were six major areas in Chemistry which were presented; Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry (IBC), Environmental Green Chemistry (EGC), Material and Polymer Chemistry (MPC), Food and Medicinal Chemistry (FMC), Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry (OBC) and Physical, Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (PTC). The 16th MCC was not only participated by researchers from local institutes and universities, but from abroad universities too like from United Kingdom, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, India, Denmark and mostly from Japan universities.
There are several new experiences, inputs and knowledge I acquired from this 16th MCC. Since this is the first time I attend a big educational congress, I have the pictures of the real atmosphere how a Chemical Congress is carried out. The presentations were as similar as the symposium for Final Year Project of Bachelor of Science except that in the Chemical Congress, the presentations were divided into Plenary, Special Sessions, Oral, Keynote and Poster. From what I have seen, the professors were not only present their researches, but they also use this chance to have a short discussion with one another.
Apart from that, I got the chance to learn new knowledge even a little about some of the researches carried out by the presenters. Although some researches were quite complicated and hard for me to understand especially the Inorganic and Bioorganic Chemistry (IBC), there were still other researches from other areas that can be understandable. One of the researches that caught my attention was the research on Heterogeneous Catalysts for the Preparation of Methyl Esters from Chicken Fat. Instead of using BF3 as catalyst which is expensive, the study proposed to use crab and cockle shells whereby upon thermal activation both shells transformed into CaO, the active ingredient that catalyzes the transesterification reaction. Some of the researches focus on finding and studying the potential of natural resources for safer and more environmental friendly usage. For example, the research as I have mentioned above, the research on Oil Absorption by Chemically Modified Sago Waste which use sago waste to overcome oil pollution, the research on Textile Dyes Removal from Aqueous Solution by Adsorption on Pretreated Mangrove Bark, an Agricultural Waste which used mangrove bark as eco-friendly adsorbents to remove synthetic dyes from wastewater.
Apart of getting valuable knowledge from the contents and findings of the researches, I also learnt that a good presentation skill is very important and crucial if we want to make people understand what our research is all about. Voice clarity, rate of delivery and volume, body gestures and eye-contact are some of the imperative aspects need to be considered in order to keep the audiences engaging with our presentation until the end.
In future, I suggest the Faculty of Science continues to give other students the chance of attending any educational events so that they will be inspired and build up their interests towards research. I am looking forward to be one of the people who will stand in front to present and share my research in MCC or other related events.
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