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A professor from UiTM in the faculty of chemical engineering has informed us of an opportunity for students looking to pursue their PhD in the field. We are publishing this notice as a public service for interested students, and this should not be taken as an endorsement of the programme. The details: Ph.D. studentship opportunities Master's degree holders interested to pursue Ph.D. in any of the following research themes at Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA are invited to forward their CVs to yinyang@salam.uitm.edu.my and yinyang@streamyx.com. A stipend will be provided for the suitable candidate to support his/her study. The research themes are: 1) Hazardous waste treatment (e-waste; soil, water and air decontamination). 2) Synthesis and application of nanoporous materials. 3) Life cycle assessment 4) Clean technologies 5) Brownfield management Candidates that show excellent progress during their study shall be considered for paid short-term research ...

If you missed the DECC info session on top US institutions this past Saturday, Yeoh Chen Chow (Cornell '05) is organising a three-day workshop to walk students through the exact process of applying to the best schools in the US. All eight Ivy Leagues will be represented by alumni or current students at the workshop -- I'll be there for Dartmouth -- in addition to 11 other prestigious institutions (if you haven't heard of schools like Brandeis or Mt. Holyoke, look them up on Wikipedia). Interviewers for Harvard, UPenn, MIT, and Cornell will be there as well. This Saturday a lot of us were talking about how we wished this sort of resource had been available when we applied, so if you're thinking about the US for your undergraduate studies, we really hope you'll attend this workshop. Details: Date:- 1st Aug 2009 (Sat), 2nd Aug 2009 (Sun), 15th August 2009 (Sat). Time:- 10am to around 5pm/6pm for each day. Venue:- Taylor's University College, Subang Jaya Cost:- RM2...

The Malaysian Students Leaders Summit 09 is taking place on the 8th and 9th of August in KL. Click here for further details. I'd encourage all our readers who are students and are back in Malaysia to attend this for 2 reasons. Firstly, it's a great opportunity for you to hear directly and possibly meet many prominent Malaysian business and political leaders. Who knows, you may even hear them say things which are not 'on the record' and show a side which you've not seen before. Secondly and more importantly, it's a good chance for you to meet other students who share similar interests be it in politics, business, the environment, education etc... For those who have already signed up, I just have 2 pieces of advice for you. Firstly, keep an open mind. Try to interact with as many people as possible including other students. Don't try to just hobnob with the politicians or students who are from Oxford or Cambridge or one of the Ivy league schools. Cast your ne...

Some on this blog has called for my comments on this issue. Some have even emailed me privately to "declare my stand". Well, I wrote on my Facebook early today a short note on my position, which I copy below. I've also taken the liberty to also include some of the 40+ comments on this issue so far in this post. "Tony Pua hopes that schools in urban areas where the students, teachers and parents are keen to retain English as the medium for Maths and Science will be given a choice to opt out of the switch back to BM/BC, especially in secondary schools." I've also made the following short comment to another Facebook friend who had asked the same: "My stand is that PIBG should have a say/choice in the language use, particularly in urban areas where competency in English is already fairly high and in demand. You/we should push for this. Rural areas can't help it, especially with teachers who can't even string a sentence together in English....

Thank you to the anonymous commenter who brought this to our attention ; I am sure Tony and Kian Ming will have a lot to say about this. Here is the story from The Malaysian Insider , and here are some graphs from The Star . My take is as follows: This is horrible. But anything which had a realistic chance of happening would be almost as bad. In a perfect world, students would be learning all subjects in the best language for them individually, and also learning Malay and English perfectly fine regardless. But we do not live in that perfect world. In the next best world, we would have a consistent policy (sticking to either English or Malay for Science and Maths, if not all subjects) and competent teachers able to implement this policy. This being Malaysia, and our politics being our politics, what we got was a silly compromise that made nobody very happy, and a paralysed bureaucracy uninterested in making this policy work. One of the most telling graphs in the link to The Star above i...

Descartes Education Counselling Centre (DECC), a non-profit organisation will be organising a talk by former and current students from some of the top universities in the United States on getting into these schools. The panelists will comprise alumni and students from Ivy League universities such as Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Cornell, as well as other top liberal arts colleges such as Swarthmore, Middlebury, Bates and Colby. Therefore all students interested in top universities and colleges in the US for undergraduate study or those who are still figuring out what to do for their tertiary studies, come join us for the talk at: Introducing Top US Universities & Colleges Date : 25th July 2009 (Saturday) Time : 11am-4pm Venue : Auditorium, Sunway University College Confirmed panelists include: Nathaniel Tan, Harvard University ‘03 Yeoh Chen Chow, Cornell University ‘05 Hwa Yang Jerng, Bates College ‘03 Emily Chan, Colby College ‘11 Ng Eng Han, Dartmouth College ‘10 John Lee, Dart...

Richard Feynman was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He was an eccentric figure, and quite a few books have been written by him and or about him on the subject of his life. One of the most famous, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is now available for reading online, absolutely free . (If reading online gives you eyestrain, there's always Amazon .) The book deals with a wide range of fascinating topics, from sex to business to art, but because Feynman spent most of his life in academia, it focuses on education. The book is primarily a collection of loosely-related essays, so you can skip the irrelevant parts if you don't find them interesting, but I recommend you read the whole book anyway. The following essays are especially relevant to education: Lucky Numbers O Americana, Outra Vez! Judging Books by Their Covers Lucky Numbers has a very interesting twist on the standard litany about the evils of rote memorisation. F...

Hot off the press . The following opposition MPs have been put on the cabinet committee for the Education portfolio: Yusmadi Yusoff (PKR), Che Uda Che Nik (PAS), Chong Eng (DAP) and for the Higher Education portfolio: Zulkifli Nordin (PKR), Salahuddin Ayub (PAS), Tony Pua (DAP). I think it's high time that the Pakatan coalition formed its own version of a shadow 'cabinet'. Hopefully this will mean a more structured focus on the part of these MPs, especially those which have been allocated the Education and Higher Education portfolios. These six MPs are an interesting and mixed bunch. Yusmadi Yusoff is a young, idealistic PKR MP for Balik Pulau in Penang and I've had the opportunity to interact with him a few times. He was a Hubert Humphrey fellow for a year here in the US and is a lawyer by vocation. I'm sure he'll bring fresh ideas and perspectives to his portfolio. Chong Eng, an experienced MP from Bukit Mertajam, is a fiery and passionate DAP MP. She's b...