AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
Over the years, CISIR has been awarded and recognized by various agencies at national and international level.
With the established national and international linkages, CISIR has given trust to host renowned international
congress, become research hub and reference in neurotechnology research.
Winner of the Mountbatten Medal 2020
The Mountbatten Medal is awarded to Associate Professor Dr Tong Boon Tang BEng(Hons) PhD SMIEEE for his outstanding
contribution to the advance and promotion of neurotechnology and its applications in mental healthcare. He is
instrumental in creating a closed-loop system of cognitive training for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease
which has no known cure at present.
He is recognised for his pioneering work on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in Malaysia. Funded by
HITACHI Japan, he set up OT- HUB, an international collaboration platform to promote fNIRS- related research. He
led the development of EEG-fNIRS bimodal system and the application to mental stress studies. The work has recently
been translated into a fatigue management system for oil rig workforce. Source: theiet.org
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CISIR OT-Hub
Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Hitachi Ltd. (Hitachi) and Hitachi Asia Ltd. (HAS) has recently announced that
they have entered an agreement for UTP Centre for Intelligent Signal and Imaging Research (CISIR) to establish the
first Optical Topography-Hub (OT-Hub) located outside of Japan to drive international joint research related to
Optical Topography (OT) with technical support from Hitachi
The CISIR OT-Hub will serve as the hub for an open innovation network - promoting joint research among universities,
hospitals and companies to accelerate research in Applied Brain Science. UTP, Hitachi and HAS will collaborate with
partners of the OT-Hub to solve a range of societal challenges related to medicine, education and other areas.
CISIR as INCF Malaysia Node
In February 2015 , the Centre for Intelligent Signal and Imaging Research (CISIR), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
(UTP) became the Malaysian Node for International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF). INCF is an
international non-profit organization devoted to advancing the field of neuroinformatics consisting of 18
member countries and associated research groups, consortia, funding agencies and publishers in the field.
The Secretariat, located in Stockholm Sweden, is the central office of INCF and is responsible for overall
scientific and administrative activities. It assists the National Nodes and plays an active role in furthering
neuroinformatics through outreach.
As a National Node, CISIR will coordinate INCF neuroinformatics activity within Malaysia and to provide a connection
with the Secretariat. CISIR will play an active role in formulating and implementing INCF Programs. For this year,
CISIR will focus on community building activities such as starting collaborations within clinical neurosciences.
INCF Congress Host 2017
In 2016, INCF-Malaysia Node based in CISIR, has won the bidding to host the prestigious annual 2017 INCF Congress in
Kuala Lumpur. The annual INCF Congress provides a meeting place for researchers in all fields related to neuroinformatics.
The congress features keynotes from top neuroscientists, community sessions and poster- and demo sessions. This meeting
is especially useful for anyone who is developing neuroscience tools and methods, working on better ways to handle
neuroscience data, and looking for cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Merdeka Award Grant 2018
We proud of Ms. Aishah Ismail who recently won the prestigious Merdeka Award Grant 2018 for International Attachment.
The grant certificate was presented by Deputy Yang Dipertuan Agung, DYMM Sultan Nazrin Muizzudin Shah, who is also
the royal patron of the Merdeka Trust Award. With the grant, she embark on a research attachment at McGoven Institute
for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA for her research on identifying stroke biomarker
through examining the eyes and ocular blood flow for early signs of stroke.
Merdeka Award Grant 2019
We are delighted to announce that Feng Ying Xing, a PhD candidate from CISIR has been awarded the 2019 Merdeka Award
Grant for International Attachment. He was one of the five exceptional young Malaysians to receive the award from
the Sultan of Perak and Royal Patron of the Merdeka Award Trust Sultan Nazri Muizzuddin Shah at a ceremony recently.
His research focused on how to predict cognitive performance at work, under the influence of workload and situational
stress through fNIRS (a non-invasive neuroimaging modality) haemodynamic measurements and physiological body signals.
With the results of his research, he hopes to develop a deep-learning model that could help to identify the nature of
stress, as an early preventive measure for costly mental illnesses, and subsequently improve cognitive performance.
