FICT Master’s student wins Best Paper Award

Master of Science (Computer Science) student Lim Xuan shined with his Best Paper Award at the reputable IEEE-supported international conference, the 2025 IEEE International Conference on Agrosystem Engineering, Technology & Applications (AGRETA), held from 28 to 29 November 2025 at Hotel Mardhiyyah, Shah Alam.

Lim enthused, “Winning the Best Paper Award is truly an honour, and it reinforces my motivation to continue advancing AI-driven solutions that create meaningful impact. I believe this is also the element that distinguished my research from the rest because it deeply emphasises on solving a real agricultural challenge with meaningful measurable impact, making the research highly relevant to practical farming needs and sustainability goals.”

He further explained, “In line with sustainability, my research also potentially contributes to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger, and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, because it improves fertiliser-irrigation decision efficiency through reinforcement learning. Additionally, it promotes more sustainable agricultural management, and enhances long-term crop productivity.”

The research titled Transformer-Enhanced Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning with EV-Aware Shaping for Maize Optimization in DSSAT, aimed to develop an advanced RL decision system that learns optimal fertiliser–irrigation strategies, improving yield–cost balance and stability compared to existing methods.

“I was encouraged to explore the application of AI in a real, high-impact problem, and agriculture felt meaningful to me, because I envisioned better decision making directly improving productivity, reducing waste, and creating tangible benefits,” he commented. Hence in the practical aspect, this research aims to provide a decision-support tool that recommends daily fertiliser and water inputs to improve profit and reduce resource wastage. It also hopes to promote sustainable farming by lowering input overuse, reducing environmental impact, and improving crop productivity.

The conference was organised by IEEE Malaysia Industrial Electronics & Industrial Applications Joint Chapter, with the aim to provide a platform for researchers and practitioners to present high-quality work in agrosystem engineering, smart agriculture, and AI-driven agricultural technologies. This year, it was themed Advancing innovation in Agrosystem Engineering, Technology, and Applications across areas such as precision agriculture, IoT sensors, automation, AI, GIS, and mechanisation. The reputable conference provided a platform to cross-link engineering and agriculture, offering rigorous review, global participation, and a key venue for impactful research in sustainable and technology-enabled farming.