MJIIT, Leave a Nest cooperate to form Nest-Bio Venture Lab

By Norhidayyu Zainal

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 (Bernama) -- Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) will undertake strategic cooperation with the Malaysian-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT) and Leave a Nest Malaysia Sdn Bhd to establish the Nest-Bio Venture Lab.

MJIIT dean, Prof Dr Ali Selamat said the lab would also be established with support from MEMO-Bio (Metabolic Engineering & Molecular Biology) innovative Kohza (iKohza) for a four-year period from 2019.

"MEMO-Bio iKohza is a research group specialising in genetic engineering and use of waste at MJIIT. 

"The Nest-Bio Venture Lab will have a biotechnology startup incubator as well as access to high technology machines such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), as well as the services of experts from  MJIIT," he told Bernama when met after officiating the soft launch of the lab here today.

Leave a Nest Malaysia Sdn Bhd will bring two biotechnology startups from Japan, namely euglena Co, Ltd and Metabologenomics, Inc (Metagen) to participate in the lab.

"These two companies will focus on research in the field of genomics and alga," Ali said.

He said the cooperation will also support effective science communication expertise among post-graduate candidates through human resource training. 

"We will also develop and undertake educational programme such as science workshops for young researchers from primary and secondary schools in the near future,” he added.

According to Ali, it was MJIIT’s hope to set up more research labs to become of world standard with the strong support of the government and industry.

-- BERNAMA