5 mins read

MRANTI’s MakersLab is the Latest 4IR Playground

March 17, 2022
www.businesstoday.co
5 mins read

The Malaysia Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation, MRANTI, an agency under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), today announced that it will be opening a 2,000 sq ft MakersLab in May.

The new learning and development centre will offer a spectrum of 4IR focussed tools, technologies and technology immersion programmes, aimed at gathering communities for greater experimentation and collaboration in a bid to increase local inventions.

Located at MRANTI Park in Bukit Jalil, MRANTI MakersLab will offer innovators, students and hobbyists with quick, affordable and convenient access to tools, equipment, space and knowledge for the rapid prototyping of solutions. It is ideal for sandboxing smaller scale ideas
and tinkering of hardware and software in a dedicated space.

“Opportunities in artificial intelligence, automation, electrification, data science, cloud computing and 3D printing are booming! However, many reports show that Malaysia needs more scientists, engineers, technologists to fill critical occupations1 as we enter the 4IR era – just as much as we need to up-end our innovation commercialisation rate. While roadshows allow us to reach all corners of Malaysia to fan interest in technology and innovation, a central hub allows for the meeting of minds. This is where ideas for impact are sparked, where thought and tinkering become a thing,” said Dzuleira Abu Bakar , Group CEO of TPM.

“We want to maintain our competitive edge. This requires us to cultivate ideas from an early stage, effectively transition and scale them for sustainable impact. As a connector, MRANTI aims to match solutions to problems, MakersLab would be a springboard to cultivate creative
and innovative problem-solving skills from within the community,” she said.

Dzuleira explained that MRANTI’s MakersLab adds to the suite of MRANTI Park’s 686 acre integrated facilities for end-to-end research, development, commercialisation and innovation (R&D&C&I) services.


MRANTI Park currently hosts five Living Labs for dronetech, unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAV), 5G, BioScience (Agriculture, Healthcare, Bioindustry), and 4IR technologies – ideal for stress-testing innovations in a closed environment. From here, viable products and solutions
can be brought on to real-world test beds including the National Technology & Innovation Sandbox sites for live environment testing, and further, primed for industrial-scale contract manufacturing, consulting and a host of go-to-market programmes at MRANTI Engineering
and MRANTI Nexus facilities.

“Ultimately we want to increase the R&D commercial output of local innovations,” she said.

At the MRANTI’s World Engineering Day launch recently, Dzuleira shared that one of the key measures for Malaysia to achieve the high tech nation status is having a 1 to 100 engineer to population ratio. According to the Board of Engineers, Malaysia (BEM), the engineer to population ratio for Malaysia is 1:174.

“There is a high demand for engineers and the skills gap in engineering will negatively affect areas of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in terms of clean energy, sustainable cities and climate action,” said Dzuleira.

“At MRANTI’s MakersLab, we want to foster a culture of learning-by-doing, innovation, hands-on exploration here – where the community can be involved in the shaping of world-class Malaysian-made inventions which could someday be applied to address critical societal and
planetary issues,” she said.

Up Next