Inaugural IEEE student research conference backed by RM3.75 million grant
The IEEE Malaysia Section will fund the first Innovating the Future conference on 6 November with a RM3.75 million grant to cover travel, accommodation and publishing fees for student authors.
Source: IEEE Spectrum · August 26, 2026 at 9:46 PM · AI-assisted report
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KUALA LUMPUR, 27 AUGUST 2026 —
The IEEE Malaysia Section will fund the first Innovating the Future conference on 6 November with a RM3.75 million grant to cover travel, accommodation and publishing fees for student authors.
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The one-day in-person event at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia is open to undergraduate and graduate student authors whose abstracts were accepted before 1 May. Papers finalised by 1 August will be published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library after the conference, IEEE Life Fellow Manuel Castro said. Castro, the technical program chair and head of the IEEE-HKN program committee, said the governing council approved the grant in August.
“The conference is important because it lets student authors strengthen their skills and receive support turning technical work into publications,” Castro said. The mentorship program pairs each student with an IEEE volunteer who guides manuscript formatting, peer-review navigation and presentation techniques.
IEEE Member Wafa Elmannai, associate professor and electrical and computer engineering chair at Manhattan University and advisor to the IEEE-HKN Gamma Alpha chapter, volunteered as a mentor. “Research builds confidence and critical thinking,” Elmannai said. “Mentoring pushes students to try new approaches that benefit society.”
David Kwabi-Addo, an IEEE graduate student at MIT researching computational biology and president of the IEEE-HKN Beta Theta chapter, submitted an abstract to secure his first conference publication. “The event helps me present my work to a wider audience, get feedback from peers outside my university, and learn how to make my research more accessible,” Kwabi-Addo said.
Organisers will run public workshops on the IEEE-HKN YouTube channel to explain the publishing process. The next session, From Pen to Voice: Adapting a Paper Into a Compelling Conference Talk, is scheduled for 2 October and open to all.
For Malaysian business readers, the RM3.75 million commitment shows how professional bodies are investing directly in human-capital formation ahead of anticipated demand for digitally literate engineers and scientists in the next decade.
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