Awards for food microbiologist, law students
DR CHAI Lay Ching, a food microbiologist from Universiti Malaya’s (UM) Faculty of Science, has been named as one of the recipients of the L’Oreal-Unesco for Women in Science Award.
This is for her research in developing a realtime method to detect dangerous bacteria causing foodborne diseases in raw chicken.
Several studies in Malaysia have shown that nine out of 10 raw chickens in our markets are positive for Salmon nella or Campylobacter jejuni contamination. c
The ese bacteria are the top caauses of foodborne disea ases globally, killing more e than 150,000 people annu ually. Unfortunately, the conventional laboratory-baased testing approaches s of raw chicken are to oo slow and can no lo onger meet the demands d of today’s l arge-scale food production. d
Dr Chai’s work, “Using science to sniff out highly pathogenic bacteria in food, saving lives and reducing morbidities-associated with these bacteria”, found that Campylobacter producces a very specific scent when grown on the agar plate, hence allowing her to correctly identify samples with Campylobacter from thhe negatives ones.
Dr Chhai believes that “the L’Oréall-Unesco For Women in Sciennce Award is definitely a great effort to promote womenn in science.”
“To thhe young girls out there, ddare to dream and go for it. AAlways set your goal high, annd work hard for it,” she saidd.
Dr Chhai’s proposed solution is basedb on the detection of speciific Volatile Organic Compouunds (VOCs) produced by bactteria to identify pathogenic bacteria in food. This work is key for the future development of VOC-based biosensors or electric nose that meet the ideal high-throughout detection criteria. It can also be automated, is easy to perform and instantly detects contamination. The successful completion of this project will lead to a better understanding of bacterial metabolism and adaption in different types of substrates, which will help us understand the impact of environment on bacterial growth.
This year, L’Oreal-Unesco also launched the “Male Championships for Women in Science” initiative where male scientists are encouraged to contribute to better gender balance in science for more effective progress. The Men for Women in Science manifesto was delivered by former UM acting vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud.
Meanwhile, UM’s Law Faculty has won the 13th LAWASIA International Moot Competition 2018 held in Cambodia.
UM beat the National University of Singapore on an unanimous 5-0 decision.
UM’s team comprises final year law students Lee Suan Cui and Lily Sabreena Mastura as well as second year law student Nur Aliya Ayob. The UM team was coached by Raphael Kok Chi Ren, who is currently the moot coach for the UM Law Faculty.
Lily Sabreena was crowned the second overall best speaker at the competition.
Fourteen teams took part in the moot competition.