A team of students from The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) emerged as champion at the AIESEC Social Startup Challenge 2015. Aptly called Team SOS, their winning project calls for reducing single occupancy vehicles in urbanised areas, believed to be the root cause of many social problems, such as stress, decreases in productivity and adverse environmental impacts.
“At Nottingham we have been actively participating in social enterprise efforts, realising the importance of using our strong business acumen to enrich the society. We are very proud of our students for winning this competition which addresses a pressing issue in our society,” said Dr Chuen-Khee Pek, the principal mentor of Nottingham University Business School (NUBS) Malaysia Student Competition Mentoring Group (Mentors+) and senior university teaching fellow of NUBS Malaysia.
Team SOS consists of NUBS undergraduates Gan Chii Yunn, How Zhi Yeong, Er Weng Ee, Nicholas Eng, and engineering student Tan Kean Eng.
“The many problems of our society are created by people. Most of us are aware of the problems but only few are willing to address them. This is the driving force for our team to step forward to create solutions to these problems,” said Nicholas on behalf of Team SOS.
The challenge was organised in partnerships between AIESEC Malaysia and MaGIC Social Entrepreneurship, Infinite Ventures, the Founder Institute, SISE, Teach for Malaysia and the Global Shapers Community.
As victors, Team SOS has received exclusive invitation to the MaGIC Social Entrepreneurship Bootcamp mentorship programme from the Founder Institute, and funding of potentially up to RM100,000 from Infinite Ventures to materialise the winning proposal.
NUBS Undergraduate Students' Recent Achievements
Recently, undergraduates from NUBS Malaysia have also won various competition including Best Digital Communication Campaign L'oreal Brandstorm 2015, National Champion of Accenture Risk Management Challenge 2015, Champion of Intervarsity Talent Achievers Challenge 2015, Champion of BDO Challenge 2014, National Champion of 2014 and National Champion of CIMB-ASEAN Stock Challenge 2014.
UNMC's 15th Anniversary
One of the world's truly global universities, with campuses in Malaysia, the UK and China, 2015 marks the 15th year since setting up as UK's first full-fledged international campus in Malaysia and all three campuses continue to enrich the lives of students across the world through global education, ground-breaking research and community engagement.
Image caption (from left to right): Gan Chii Yinn, Tan Kean Eng, How Zhi-Yeong, Sharifah Sakinah Syed Noh from MaGIC, Er Weng Ee and Nicholas Eng.
-Ends-
For more information, please contact Dr Chuen-Khee Pek on chuen.pek@nottingham.edu.myor Josephine Dionisappu, PR & Communications Manager, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus on josephine.dionisappu@nottingham.edu.my,+6 (03) 8924 8746.
Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with campuses in China and Malaysia modelled on a headquarters that is among the most attractive in Britain’ (Times Good University Guide 2014). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and the winner of ‘Research Project of the Year’ at the THE Awards 2014. It is ranked in the world’s top one per cent of universities by the QS World University Rankings, and 8th in the UK by research power according to REF 2014.
The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) is holding events throughout 2015 to celebrate 15 years as a pioneer of transnational education. Based in Semenyih, UNMC was established as the UK's first overseas campus in Malaysia and one of the first world-wide.
Impact:The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future.
Posted on 8th May 2015