IN early January 2023, Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, in his inaugural speech as the Minister of Higher Education, threw us a curveball: Malaysia's research and develoment (R&D) expenditure constitutes less than one per cent of its GDP.
Based on the 2019/2020 statistics by the World Bank, our figure is a paltry sum compared with the US (3.5 per cent), Japan (3.3 per cent), China (2.4 per cent), and Singapore (1.9 per cent) while the world's average stands at 2.6 per cent.
Khaled also outlined five guiding principles to what impactful research should be, i.e. (i) all types of research are important, but some are more critically strategic, (ii) research fundings need to be sourced through strategic collaborations and not solely be dependent on the government, (iii) consortiums of research, transcending disciplinary boundaries and be implemented on a much longer term, (iv) responsible and accountable research, and (v) the linchpin of a university's income.
Research needs to produce beneficial impact to the society and nation, providing pragmatic solutions to pressing economic needs and social issues.
For example, Professor Esther Duflo, one of the 2019 Nobel Prize Laureates in economics, applies her research to tackle poverty, education and health issues.
Using innovative field experiments and randomly held controlled trials, she and her fellow researchers have, since the early 2000s, looked into women empowerment through microfinancing as a more effective poverty alleviation tool, the impact of free education, and ways to increase immunisation demand and vaccination rates, among others.
Another is Professor Bruce Chapman's research in student loans, initiated in the late 1980s. He is highly regarded as the architect of the Australian income-contingent loan system for university tuition fees.
His work has since been consulted by governments from all over the world in designing their own student loan systems. Closer to home, we have our own Royal Professor Ungku Abdul Aziz. His work in development economics had spanned four decades, between 1950s and 1990s.
His research had contributed immensely not only to the country's economic development and policy implementation, but more importantly, to the betterment of livelihoods for, farmers, fishermen, rubber tappers, marginalised ethnic groups and the rural poor in general. He was their voice, highlighting their plight and brought exploitative middlemen practices to an end.
The Minister of Higher Education has also emphasised on the need for research consortiums as a mainstay of future research work. One of the largest research consortiums in Europe is Project ITER (i.e. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).
Bringing together researchers from 35 countries, it is an ambitiously large-scale and long-term research on clean nuclear fusion energy, initiated since 2005 and is expected to culminate in 2035. The project received US$6.8 billion in its latest round of 7-year funding allocation.
Although Malaysia has yet to reach such stratospheric levels in terms of funding and participation, we already have a few research consortium works up and running.
MARCOP or the Mechanisation and Automation Research Consortium of Oil Palm was launched in November 2021. With a research funding of RM60 million, MARCOP is tasked with developing advanced drone, remote sensing and automation technology. Such technology development is crucial to solve our over-dependence on foreign labour, especially during the harvesting phase.
In August 2021, with an initial funding of RM3.22 million, Malaysia established its first research consortium in genome sequencing or gene-editing of the SARS-COV-2 virus, as part of our efforts to control the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is a collaboration between 11 laboratories and has since received an additional RM15 million in funding. Our research is on track and in line with the minister's vision.
What we need is a better overall ecosystem to solidly support research work, ranging from more contemporary types of research funding such as endowments and crowdfunding, to encouraging radically brave and innovative cross-disciplinary amalgamation of research ideas, to good governance and impeccable integrity in all research-related activities, to commercialisation of research products, and finally to translating research impact to help the beneficiaries and society in a meaningful way.
It would undoubtedly be a long, bumpy, and winding road but a road we nevertheless must travel on. To be a beacon of light and hope for others, we need unflinching commitment in pushing the frontiers of knowledge.
The writer is associate professor, School of Economics, Finance & Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia and Member of the Malaysian Society for Higher Education Policy & Research Development (PenDaPat).