By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin
Pix Shahiddan Saidi

BANGI, 3 August 2015 – Young students from Malaysia’s National Centre for  gifted children (PermataPintar) at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and prodigies from other secondary schools may be able to produce research worthy of indexing in Google  Scholar, and even Scopus.

The students who are taking part in a conference on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics have the potential to do serious research that would rival those of university academics, said UKM Deputy  Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International Affairs) Prof Datuk Ir Dr Riza Atiq Abdullah OK Rahmat.

The research papers with merit should be indexed with internationally-renowned databases as a platform for young scientists, Prof Riza Atiq said when opening the three-day 2015 International Future Scientists Conference (IFSC) for the Gifted and Talented Students organised by PermataPintar, here today.

The deputy vice-chancellor expressed confidence that there are brilliant youths in this country who just might rival academics in their work.

“Just imagine if the names of PermataPintar students would appear in Google Scholar, he remarked, which was greeted with loud applause from the participants.

He added that the conference would open new portals to the sharing of research knowledge between budding scientists exploring new technologies.

Some 60 papers were expected to be submitted in abstract and thesis form from almost 90 students having done the research.

In her welcoming remarks, PermataPintar Director Prof Datuk Dr Noriah Mohd Ishak said the students at the academy are naturally talented and are always fond of exploring new things.

She said it is imperative to identify and fulfill the needs of these youth because they are an invaluable workforce.

She added that failure to identify these characteristics could result in Malaysia losing some of its invaluable human resource either because they have dropped out from school, or they have migrated to other countries that offer better educational experiences.

This conference was first held in 2012 at PERMATApintar and all  schools are invited to participate.

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature, while Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings.

Delivering a comprehensive overview of the world’s research output in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities, Scopus features smart tools to track, analyse and visualise research.