INTRODUCTION
Materials Lecture Competition is a National event mainly organized by Institute of Materials, Malaysia, IMM and Institute of Materials Minerals and Mining, IOM3-UK. This national-wide competition is an initiative intended to enhance awareness among young material scientists and engineers in Malaysia on the importance of materials engineering and sustainability in the advancement of technology and humankind.
The competition was introduced in 2012 by IMM and IMM Council officially named it as MLC. In 2013 and 2014, it was jointly organized by IMM and Institute of IOM3 Malaysian Chapter. IMM members lead by Prof. Dr. Esah Hamzah, the IMM-MLC Chairperson, have organized the competition at the National Level where IMM was the host of the event. However, since 2014, the several universities in Malaysia has jointly organized the event as the host of the event starting with UiTM (2014), UKM (2015), UM (2016), APU (2017), UTM (2018), UTeM (2019), UPM (2020), USM(2021), and Xiamen University Malaysia(2022) . The IOM3-UK jointly co-organized the competition together with IMM since 2015. The competition has now become nationwide whereby more than ten public and private universities in Malaysia participated in the competition at the national level since the year 2012.
The first winners at the National-level competition represented Malaysia in the Young Persons’ World Lecture Competition (YPWLC) which was held in Hong Kong (2013), USA (2014), Ireland (2015), Brazil (2016), Australia (2017), South Africa (2018), and London (2019). Due to the global pandemic situation, the competition of YPWLC 2020 to 2022 were conducted virtually where in 2022, the Malaysia representative was Rathosivan Gopal from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia respectively. In 2018 and 2019, the UTM finalists have won 1st runner up (or 2nd place) at National level and consolation prize in 2020. For 2022, the UTM finalist has won the competition at the National level and represented Malaysia at YPWLC 2022. In 2022, Malaysia has made history to win the International levels for the first time ever.
All public and private universities in Malaysia are invited to join the competition. They are asked to organize the competition at the university level to select the best candidate to represent their university in the Material Lecture Competition (Semi-Final). Five finalists will be selected and compete in the Material Lecture Competition (finals). The UTM-MLC cash prizes are RM 1,000, RM 800 and RM 500 for the first, second and third winners respectively while the prizes for national level are RM3000, RM 2000, and RM 1000 respectively with the two consolation prizes worth RM500 each. The first winner will represent Malaysia and compete at the Young Persons’ World Lecture Competition (YPWLC) organised by IOM3-UK. The winner of Malaysia will be FULLY SPONSORED by IOM3-UK to attend a series of events in YPWLC.