Two members of the academic community of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) earned Outstanding Educator and Staff Awards 2019 from Science and Technology Resource Directorate General and Higher Education Directorate General, organised from 26-28 October 2019 in Jakarta.
Ir. Alva Edy Tantowi, M.Sc., Ph.D., won the second place award as lecturer and Ully Isnaeni Effendi, A.Md., S.E., won the title of Outstanding Archivist after going through preliminary selection that involved 279 people. Both went through to the top 10 and each won the titles.
When met in his office at Mechanical Engineering and Industry Department of Wednesday (30/10), Alva Edi Tantowi said he had not expected to be able to win it, because he just carried out the university’s duties.
Speaking about research, Alva said he always engaged himself in a new research. For example, he was involved in the research in intravascular heart therapy that employed the use of a stent, which has now been patented. Currently, he is designing a device to treat blood clotting in blood vessels in the brain that usually causes stroke. He explained his current research interest is biomedics. This started after he had lost his father due to a brain tumour. He was determined to make a device that would help a medical process be more effective and later save the patient.
Meanwhile on community service, Alva said he was involved in projects such as improving horseshoes after many horses had slipped in Yogyakarta due to the slippery condition of the horseshoe, also in the development of a pond for educational and recreational tourism in Margodadi village, Sleman regency. In addition, he had been involved in the construction of temporary shelters for earthquake survivors in Mataram, Lombok.
“Now we need to downstream research not just to get awarded, but to have the end product as a result. In my visit to Italy, I saw the number of research that had been downstreamed there amounted to 100 each year, in Korea it was 500 every five year,” he commented.
Seeing this fact, Alva said if each lecturer’s research in Indonesia could be downstreamed, this would generate new products, hence strengthening the country’s economic resilience. He viewed that the lecturers should give back the funds allocated by the state for their research by making useful products to be used by the society.