Idris Jusoh: MyMentor initiative to help achieve developed nation status by 2020

KUALA LUMPUR: Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh is confident that Malaysia's aim of achieving a developed nation status by 2020 will be fulfilled, thanks to a latest initiative called MyMentor.
The MyMentor initiative is a six-year programme to develop post-doctoral research culture between private and public universities.
It is led by The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus in collaboration with University of Southampton Malaysia Campus and Monash University Malaysia with the support of the Education Ministry.
"One of the challenges facing Malaysia's higher education sector is a post-doctoral research culture whereby in many other countries, it is usual to undertake a period of research once you have obtained your PhD without any teaching or administration commitments.
"Thus the collaboration between the two sectors will provide a platform for innovative partnership between top ranking universities in the world and our local research universities to develop an independent research profile and high quality research papers," he said at the launch of the MyMentor programme.
The programme is expected to mentor 230 public university post-doctoral staff and produce 350 high quality research papers over the six-year period.
MyMentor will only accept 10 pairing of mentor/mentee this year with increasing number of pairings in the subsequent years, with each pairing lasting two years and producing a minimum of one research publication.