Niche Introduction

The Health and Medical Technology niche is one of the twelve research niche areas that have been formed and developed in UKM to support the implementation of UKM’s status as a research university. The niche brings together researchers from the Faculty of Medicine, UKM Medical Centre, UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI), Faculty of Health Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science and Technology, Faculty of Engineering and also other institutions in the Bangi campus that conduct research related to health and medicine.

This niche was established in 2007 and has 7 research clusters and 32 research groups. The clusters are Cancer and Stem Cells, Mechanisms of Diseases, Antioxidants & Metabolism, Regenerative Medicine, Bioactive Natural Products, Health and Burden of Diseases, and Biomedical Engineering. This Niche-Cluster-Group approach aims to promote and strengthen collaborative and multi-disciplinary research. Collaborative research will also ensure that resources and expertise are used optimally and produce research with high impact output. The performance of each group is monitored and evaluated annually based on the input, process and output (including indexed publications and intellectual property). The cluster leaders have been instrumental in driving the research and coordinating the research groups. The group leaders themselves have showed tremendous effort and commitment. Each group has been successful in obtaining funding from various sources including local and international agencies. Publications in indexed journals with impact factor and patents remain as key performance indicators of each research group.