(left to right) Assistant Professor Dr Yeap Swee Pin, Wai Siang Yun (finalist), Ang Koon Meng (champion) and Assistant Professor Ts Dr Lim Wei Hong.

A group photo of the event at Wisma IEM in Petaling Jaya.

(left to right, standing) Ang Koon Meng with supervisor Assistant Professor Ts Dr Lim Wei Hong.

UCSI Mechatronic Engineering student, Ang Koon Meng was the overall winner in the recent Tan Sri Ir Yusoff Ibrahim Best Final Year Project (FYP) Competition held on 28 November 2019 at Wisma IEM.

Koon Meng won this prominent award through his FYP entitled “Development of An Improved Particle Swarm Optimisation Algorithm for Constrained Optimisation”, supervised by Assistant Professor Ts Dr Lim Wei Hong.

In this project, an IC-PSOWV algorithm was proposed with the incorporation of Deb’s rule to address the constrained optimisation problems effectively. Here, two evolution phases were introduced to enable the algorithm to perform searching process using multiple search operators.

In order to prevent rapid diversity loss of population and premature convergence of the algorithm, both multi-swarm technique and mutation scheme were incorporated into the IC-PSOWV. Extensive performance evaluations were conducted and it was validated that this novel algorithm is able to solve real-world engineering problems effectively. With these findings, Koon Meng stood out in the crowd of competitors.

The Tan Sri Ir Yusoff Ibrahim Best FYP is an award given to excellent engineering projects produced by undergraduates throughout the nation. The selection process is highly competitive as this competition is open to all universities in Malaysia.

All the submitted reports were evaluated by two independent reviewers in Round 1 and ten short-listed finalists were invited to the Round 2 presentation. The panel of judges involved in evaluating the Round 2 presentation were Ts Ir Dr Wang Hong Kok, Ir Dr Amran Ayob, Associate Professor Ts Dr Lai Weng Kin and Indiran Nadarajan.

Wai Siang Yun from the Chemical Engineering department at UCSI was also a finalist with her project “Impregnation of Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles into Calcium Alginate Bead for Dye Recovery: Role of Nanoparticle Loading”, supervised by Assistant Professor Dr Yeap Swee Pin. Koon Meng and Siang Yun’s achievements have once again proved that UCSI undergraduates are able to produce high quality work.