5 mins read

MRANTI MakersLab Initiatives Impacting More Than 1,000 Young Innovators

December 9, 2022
www.businesstoday.com.my
5 mins read

MRANTI MakersLab organised 60 awareness and collaborative initiatives over the year impacting over 1,000 students and young innovators.

The makerspace offers a spectrum of 4IR focussed tools, technologies and technology immersion programmes, aimed at gathering communities for greater experimentation and collaboration to increase local inventions. MRANTI acts as a driver of innovation and leads the empowerment of local innovators, in line with the aspiration to make Malaysia a tech-producer nation by 2030.

At the recent MRANTI MakersFest 2022, over a thousand participants comprising makerspace operators, innovators, designers, start-ups, educators and school students, participated in the two-day event which proved to be a resounding success and a catalyst for further expansion of the maker movement in Malaysia.

Innovation and creativity have become the real wealth of countries in the 21st century. The measure of a country’s greatness in this era of technology is based on its ability to cultivate innovation and fuel the thirst for invention.

Featuring 38 exhibitors, 12 pocket talks and five forums, MakersFest 2022 is one of MRANTI’s ongoing efforts to foster a culture of creativity and innovation by honouring creators and innovators.

Some interesting highlights from MRANTI MakersFest 2022 included maker exploration, ideathon and a jet car race. In collaboration with Sam Gibbs from STREAMLine Education, the Jet Car Racing competition was organised with a total of RM1,000 cash prizes given away. The challenge was to outperform opponents by applying creativity and problem-solving skills in building the fastest, furthest distance-travelled and most creative jet car using only plywood, soft drink bottles and powered by compressed air.

MRANTI MakersFest 2022 also featured highly stimulating workshops to pique the interests of youngsters, including ‘Design Your Own 3D Printed Fashion Accessories’ conducted by UiTM Makerspace, ‘Open Source Robotics Workshop’ by Katapult, ‘Fun With Microbits’ and ‘Scratch Gamification’ by Tenom Innovation Centre, ‘Learn to Fly a Drone like an Expert’ by MUDAS, Air Rovers Bellatrix & JRPropo Malaysia;  as well as ‘Paper Architecture: Design and Build Houses or Yurts’ in collaboration with Architect Junior. At the LED Badge workshop, children aged 10-12 years were taught to understand circuitry and soldering and create one LED badge to bring home.

Additionally, educators and school students had the opportunity to learn from forums on building makerspaces in schools and future career paths in STEM while university students and the public are kept intrigued with forums on advances in autonomous vehicles and next-generation robotics.