The Division of Programme Promotion (DPP) organised an alumni sharing series titled, “Electronic Engineering, the right choice?” on 9 July 2021 via Zoom and Facebook Live. The webinar recorded a total of 584 views.

Invited to deliver the talk were Faculty of Engineering and Technology (FEGT) Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) Electronic Engineering alumni, namely Sim Kar Yern, Yugarani Kunaseelan and Hari Chand Balasubramaniam. The webinar was moderated by FEGT Department of Electronic Engineering Dr Yew Tiong Keat with technical assistance from DPP Chin Yuon Loong.

The webinar aimed to provide a platform for the alumni to share their learning journey at UTAR so that future students and parents could gain insight into the life of university students. The speakers also shared how the Electronic Engineering programme helped them in their careers.

The first speaker, Sim, has eight years of experience as a Vision Engineer in Pentamaster, Penang. Sim stated her job scope involved managing different types of vision engineering on machine and robot engineering. Sim said, “As a vision engineer, we need to see, think and do the task. When we capture an image, we need to do the image processing, and then submit the outcome to the robot to do the final operation.  When we work for long hours, our eyes tend to get strain and tired. This causes us to make some errors in our tasks. Therefore, with the implementation of the vision system with sophisticated engineering technology in robots, it will reduce the inaccuracy and produce more quality and safe products for the community.”

Apart from that, Sim also clarified that she was interested to enrol in the Electronic Engineering course because of her family’s influence. Although the course was not easy, she never gave up and kept on challenging herself to study smart. Moreover, Sim also advised the participants to take part in practical assignments and volunteer in engineering activities to boost their confidence and sharpen their skills in engineering studies.

The second speaker was Yugarani who is a Failure Analysis Engineer at Mini-Circuits Technologies in Penang. Yugarani explained that her task included performing failure analysis on products as requested by the in-house engineering personnel and clients. Besides, she also has to determine the failure analysis on devices such as amplifiers, transformers and many more as requested by customers, and write an in-depth analysis technical paper on the projects she works on. Yugarani said, “As an analysis engineer, we need to do failure inspection in units and devices when we produce or receive a new product. The inspection is mainly on studying and reviewing the requirement and specification whether it is accurate and safe to use. The inspection also involves both internal and external inspection of the packages, devices, amplifiers and transformers by using the equipment, namely low power optical microscope, high power optical microscope or X-ray machine to conduct the failure analysis in the lab.”

Yugarani explained that she was uncertain of what to choose after SPM but somehow managed to enrol in the Electronic Engineering course at UTAR after seeing her late uncle work in the electrical engineering field. Although she was the only Indian in her class, her classmates and friends were very close and helpful during her study years, which made her happy to study at UTAR. Despite having graduated and working for years, Yugarani said that she has never stopped learning about the fundamentals of engineering, engineering design, materialisation, input and output of electronic engineering, and advanced technology because she wished to understand more about engineering field. Moreover, she advised the participants to never skip the lecture and tutorial classes, and actively participate in other activities as employers like to see their employees display their practical skills.

The third speaker, Hari Chand has been an Embedded Engineer at Intel Malaysia, Penang for the past six years. His tasks, as a part of the Intel Maker Club, were to invent, innovate and share new ideas that would benefit the people and society. He said, “The emerging technology in the current pandemic environment is progressing really fast and we are struggling to adapt to make the situation better. Since artificial intelligence (AI) has evolved in the market demands, we have learnt to develop the engineering.”

In addition, he said that he never knew the word Engineering, and he thought all the innovation, the invention was done by scientists until he realised how engineer plays a significant role in improving human lifestyle. He said, “During my school days, I participated in numerous activities and explored events that required me to do problem-solving. Since young, I have always wanted to know more about engineering and how it can benefit others. I did a lot of search after graduating high school, and I chose UTAR because of its beautiful environment and cost-effectiveness.” Although Electronic Engineering was a difficult course, Hari Chand never gave up because he enjoyed learning. Before ending his talk, Hari Chand advised the participants that university life is short but precious. He encouraged them to use this precious moment to explore, participate in different club and society activities and competitions to sharpen their skills, polish their communication and networking skills, and build their own self-confidence.

Furthermore, DPP Chin said, “We hope the audience will get an insight into university life, working life/experiences, and also the career prospects of the programme. Since the speakers are former UTAR students, their sharing will be more impactful for the participants.”

The webinar ended with interactive Q&A.