By UOW Malaysia KDU

Recently, two lecturers within the UOW Malaysia KDU School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts (SHTCA) celebrated winning both a Gold Award and Best Video Award in the Penang International Invention, Innovation, and Design Competition (PIID 2021). The PIID 2021 is a virtual competition organized by the Research Management Unit, UiTM Penang (supported by KPM Jabatan Kementerian Pendidikan Pulau Pinang). It serves as a platform for academics, industry and students to highlight innovation, invention and design in their respective fields. The competition focuses on product commercialization, idea, invention and design that has high-quality innovation. This year’s competition attracted more than 400 teams representing various universities and colleges in Penang. The participants’ products were judged by juries drawn from both industry and academia. 

In the competition held on the 21^st and 22^nd March 2021, Ms. Suguna Migeemanathan and Mr. Joshua Fabiane Johnson from UOW Malaysia KDU, George Town Campus triumphed with their product concept ‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers’ and were awarded a Gold Medal and the Best Video Award for their efforts.

Showcasing the ‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers Project

‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers is a product concept that focuses on establishing catfish (one of the local whitefish species) and communicating its nutritional value to humans. ‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers are regular-sized pieces of catfish flesh, seasoned and crumbed before being blast frozen. Migeemanathan and Fabiane’s video revealed how their idea has a potential market value because it utilizes locally sourced catfish. It will also ensure the raw ingredient’s high quality is continually monitored, making the local source in Malaysia a better choice than imported fish. It is envisioned that, ‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers will attract more young entrepreneurs to be involved in local fish farming and product development in the future.

Migeemanathan was very surprised with their big wins, “We feel very honored and happy to have been awarded a Gold Medal and Best Video Award for our product. We did not expect this as there were over 300 participants.”

Research Management Unit, UiTM Penang, has been organizing PIID (formerly known as Penang Invention, Innovation and Research Design Platform) events since 2015. They hope that through these competitions, that our nation will discover some of the best innovations– and participants will create outstanding products that can keep up with the rise of automation and artificial intelligence innovations. For more information on PIID, please visit: http://www.penangiid.com/

‘NutriLele’ Catfish Fingers certified gold and won the Best Video category.