FRGS 2013 Evaluation

The Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) represents one of the biggest research grants provided by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) for all researchers in Malaysia.  A total of 115 assessors who are professors in specific research areas have been appointed by by the Ministry to validate the final proposals submitted by institutions of higher learning.  The final evaluation was held for four days in Port Dickson.  The 2013 FRGS assessment had gone through very stringent evaluation process.  At the institution level, each submission must undergo at least two levels of content evaluations.  With respect technical processes, the Research Management Centres (RMC) of each institution will ensure researchers submit their proposals using the correct submission forms.  Each respective department or responsibility centre is also expected to do a pre-submission workshop to explain the "do's" and "dont's" of proposal submissions.  Once ready, the universities would invite  MOHE-appointed assessors to validate the final approved proposals.  If the assessors are not satisfied with the evaluation process, the whole stack of proposals from that university would be rejected.  As such, only "Highly Recommended"  approved proposals are submitted to MOHE for the final assessments.  The evaluation process was very thorough.  FRGS proposals are expected to highlight (i) "novelty" of the proposed project; (ii) Quality and intensity of collaborations; (iii) Technology transfer or commercialization potential; (iv) Quality of sectoral/national impacts; (v) Quality of organisational outcomes; (vi) Achievement viability of project objectives; (vii) Overall assessment of benefits. 

Research Ethics Committee

Essentially, a university's research ethics committee (REC) examines ethical issues in research proposals and ensures that research projects conducted at the university are in compliance with the national and international conditions and guidelines.  Traditionally, only medical-related research proposals are subjected to stringent review of the REC.  In essence, all proposals must therefore comply to the requirements stipulated in the Good Clinical Practice Guideline, Ministry of Health (MOH), Malaysia and the Declaration of Helsinki, World Medical Association (WMA). The responsibilities of REC are to protect the rights and wellbeing of human subjects, ensure no intentional harm inflicted on them and protect the rights of the researchers and the university. Safeguarding human subjects in research is an international requirement in the best interest of the public.  Increasingly, other non-medical related proposals are also implicated with ethical issues.  As such, they are also submitted for REC review.  The Accounting Research Institute (ARI) is also requiring some of its research proposals to obtain REC approval.  Today, UiTM REC had just completed its document audit by assessors from the Ministry of Health.....

Publication Workshops

The university's Institute of Leadership & Quality Management (iLQAM) recently organized two publication workshops in two state campuses - UiTM Perak on 16th July and UiTM Perlis on 19th July 2012.  Professor Dr Normah Omar, Director of the Accounting Research Institute was tasked to conduct the workshops.  As a pre-requisite, participants had to bring at least one draft article which they would have to submit by the end of the workshop. Basically, the workshops were attended mostly by relatively junior researchers.  The two-fold objectives of the publication workshops were firstly to expose or familiarize the researchers to journals that are indexed by ISI Thomson, SCOPUS and Excellence Research of Australia (ERA).  Once the participants were familiar with the journals and their respective requirements, the second objective was to get them to submit their article to their selected journal via the online submission mode.  During the workshops, participants had to identify at least five indexed journals in their respective fields. Then, they had to identify one journal to which they plan to submit their articles. A total of fifty participants attended the workshops at the two state campuses.  At the end of the workshops, several papers were successfully submitted to various indexed journals.

AML/CFT Research Retreat

Researchers from the Anti Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) research cluster recently organized a three-day research retreat in Putrajaya.  Basically the two aims of the retreat were (i) to update the group on research progress & to resolve research issues (ii) to come out with at least two concept papers from their research projects.  Research update have included among others, discussions on Financial Action Task Force (FATF) "40 + 9 Recommendations", "New 40 Recommendations" and "Asia-Pacific Group Mutual Evaluation Report on Malaysia".  Currently, the research cluster reviews ML/CFT initiatives and program in financial institutions, and other reporting institutions such as the Royal Malaysia Custom (RMC), Tabung Haji, the Government's Auditor General Office.  The Accounting Research Institute (ARI) has recently appointed two visiting professors from Australia to facilitate the cluster members with the research projects. The retreat was facilitated by Cluster head, Associate Professor  Dr Pok Wee Ching.

Understanding AMLATFA 2001

Today, post graduate students of AFC 713 (a course on money laundering and financial criminology) who are undertaking the Master in Forensic Accounting and Financial Criminology presented their case studies involving money laundering offences. Selected cases presented by the groups today included those that have been committed in countries such as Canada, United States of America, Australia, Malaysia and Columbia. In Malaysia, the jurisdiction covering money laundering offences is covered by the Anti Money Laundering and Anti Terrorism Financing Act (AMLATFA) 2001. Money Laundering is a process to disguise illegal proceeds from their criminal origin so as to avoid suspicion of law so as to avoid suspicion of law enforcement and to prevent leaving a trail of incriminating evidence. It is a process to make dirty money to appear ´clean´. The three stages of money laundering are namely Placement (i.e. the placement of money into financial institution); Layering (creating complex layers of financial transactions designed to disguise illegal proceeds from their original source) and Integration (turning of illegal proceeds into legitimate economy and to make them appear as ordinary and legitimate earnings). Among the issues highlighted in the presentations included the multi-layering of illegal proceeds that makes the whole process looks very complex and complicated. Further, the involvement of transnational and cross-border crimes also necessitate our anti money laundering investigators to involve their global counterparts into the investigation process.