Dear ACS Malaysia Chapter members,
2022 has been a refreshing year for most of us including the ACS Malaysia Chapter as we try to get past the Covid-19 restrictions and slowly move everything back to normal. In doing so, we managed to plan our activities and successfully conducted them both physically and virtually throughout the year.
With our vision to be a professional society excelling across chemistry boundaries and our mission to lead in transforming professional talents and improving people’s lives, we managed to conduct activities in line with our strategic goals:
(1) To provide contextualized information, we leveraged face-to-face together with the combination of digital connections to disseminate information and engage with our members. We conducted our 7th Annual General Meeting (AGM) on the 16th of July 2022 in a hybrid manner where 19 members attended physically at Kuala Lumpur, while another 19 members joined via Zoom, with a total of 38 attendees. For communication and dissemination of information, the Chapter’s webpage, WhatsApp group, Facebook and Twitter accounts are also very active and well-updated.
(2) To advance member’s professional careers, together with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), we co-organized the IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast 2022 online forum on “Empowering Diversity in Science”, supported another IUPAC Global Women’s Breakfast 2022 online talk with the topic of “Don’t suffer in silence. It’s okay to talk” together with UKM International Student Chapter, Monash International Health Science and Technology (INITIATE) Conference 2022 on the 27th and 28th of September 2022, Next-In-Chemistry-Challenge (NICC) 2.0 in conjunction with the annual National Chemistry Week (NCW) 2022 and commemoration of 25th anniversary of UTP on the 22nd October 2022, Joint Symposium between ACS Malaysia Chapter and the Colorado Local Chapter of the American Chemical Society (COACS) on the 27th of October 2022 and Chemistry World in the 21st Century-Open Forum@UM2022 on the 3rd of December 2022, which was supported by the Corporate Association Grant.
(3) To improve education, we organized a series of virtual academic talks/webinars – Virtual Talk for the Earth Day: Invest in Our Planet 2022 on the 21st of April 2022, a panel discussion entitled “Single Use Plastics: The Way Forward” on the 22nd of April 2022, co-organizing two talks with Malaysian Young Chemistry Network (MYCN), IKM during the virtual Karnival Kemahiran dan Kerjaya Kimia Malaysia (K4M) 2022 entitled “Impactful Careers in Chemistry” and “Making Great First Impressions for a job interview”. We also organized the Southeast Asia Global Innovation Challenge (SEA-GIC) with the ACS University Malaysia Pahang Student Chapter. Two new competitions centered around “Combating the Spread of Misinformation and Disinformation with Chemistry Values” and “Unravelling the Chemistry of Foods” were held. In addition, our Student Chapters organize many webinars/virtual talks/sharing sessions/competitions.
(4) To communicate chemistry’s value, we successfully organized ACS Chemistry Festival 2022. A few outreach programs were conducted physically under this program, which was held with students of SK Bogor, Jeli, Kelantan and students of SK Jenderam Hilir, Sepang. Our chapter also participated in the Penang International Science Fair (PISF) 2022 attended by various primary and secondary school students from Penang. The ACS-USM chapter booth conducted hands-on experiments using wastewater treatment kits from Water Watch Penang (WWP), purple cabbage indicator, and colorful milk polarity as well as one demonstration of an oil density tower. Apart from these, four of our student chapter representatives attended the ACS Leadership Summit and the ACS MENA Research Conference in Doha, Qatar, from the 9th to 11th of May 2022, where they also presented their research during the conference. Another event that we co-organized with Malaysian Young Chemists Network (MYCN) is the “2022: MYCN Sepetang Bersama Ahli Kimia Muda | Making #SDGs Matter: Caring for the Future”, held on the 2nd of December 2022, which is an annual networking event seeking to cultivate professional relationship among students, young academic and industrial chemists based in Malaysia.
(5) To better coordinate the activities in the chapter, four different task forces have been introduced into the governance; Public Relations, Capacity Development, Outreach, and Awards. Each task force is led by a head who overseas activities and members under it. These task forces are overseen by the executive committee.
Despite the challenges of starting everything physically again, with the support and determination of our members, the above-mentioned plans/activities were made possible. We hope everything will return to complete normal in 2023 with more face-to-face programs, albeit a new normal. We will continue to strive in propelling the Chapter to greater heights.
Thank you.
“Chemistry for the Society”
Dr. Mohd Sukor Su’ait
Chair (2022-2024)
American Chemical Society Malaysia International Chemical Science Chapter
Email: mohdsukor@ukm.edu.my