Spent Bleaching Clay Research Bags Another Award

Not exactly sure how my supervisor will respond to this. [PDF]

Taylor's University College trio bag HSBC top award

KUALA LUMPUR: Students from Taylor's University College came out tops at the HSBC Young Entrepreneur Awards (YEA) 2006/2007.

Team Zerocool from the college, made up of Mervynn Lee, Melissa Tan Jin Peng and Ken Ng Choon Aik, all 20, beat four other teams in the grand finals to clinch the Gold Award in a competition that required participants to come up with an innovative and viable business idea. [...]

Their business plan, entitled Fishworm Corporation (SBC Fish Feed), involves the use of spent bleaching clay, a waste extract from palm oil, as an alternative to fish feed. [...]

First off, congratulations to Mervynn and his team for this success. This was one of the research done in our labs and I was part of it for awhile especially when I supervised a group of high school boys in their science competition project which eventually won the state's top award.

The same team leader has now taken that research work and turned it into a viable business plan and earned another award for the research work. The problem is there's no mention of my supervisor's contribution in this (or at least none in the news report) and my supervisor being very sensitive about intellectual property and all (as are all other researchers), it may prove to be a thorny issue.

Whatever it is, this success has just proven that this project is not just scientifically useful but economically viable too which is what matters most for a research to be considered as successful nowadays.

Keywords: research spent bleaching clay SBC palm oil by-product oil palm award fish meal fish feed fish waste product HSBC Young Entrepreneur Award YEA Taylor's University College education science nutrition fish nutrition aquaculture aquaculture nutrition