There’s a great future for ICT enthusiasts

Miri – 13 May 2011 – There is a great future for individuals interested to pursue careers in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), according to Assistant Minister of Communications and Assistant Minister of Sports and chairman of the management board of Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak), Datuk Lee Kim Shin.

Datuk Lee said this when addressing the participants of the recent ICT Career Awareness Day held at the Curtin Sarawak campus. The participants comprised 310 students from 10 secondary schools in and around Miri.

The event, which was aimed at sparking the interest of secondary school students in ICT and raising awareness of career opportunities in the ICT industry, was jointly organised by Curtin Sarawak and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC). It follows a highly-successful 2-day Curtin ICT Career Camp for 59 secondary school students in March, which was supported by MDeC.

“Talented individuals should pursue careers in ICT because I foresee a great future for them. We should not limit ourselves to being consumers of ICT, but also be producers of ICT,” said Datuk Lee, who also emphasised the need to continuously drive initiatives to spread awareness of ICT among the younger generation.

The event kicked off with a presentation by Pravena Periasamy, Senior Executive – Programme Management of K-Infrastructure Enterprise Function, MDeC. Her presentation on ‘ICT as a Career of Choice’ focused on exploring career options in ICT, including Internet-based business, software engineering, computer and multimedia systems and mobile computing.

This was followed by a session titled ‘Engineers are Wonderful’ facilitated by Dr Shahrul Yazid Yahaya, Head of Department for Reference Platform Development, Intel Malaysia. Dr Shahrul spoke at length about software engineering and also conducted a game quiz for the participants.

Meanwhile, Terence Tan from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Curtin Sarawak’s School of Engineering and Science shared his perspective on the field of electrical and computer engineering.

Nik Naharudin Mohd Nasir, Senior Manager of Talent, K-Infrastructure Enterprise Function, MDeC, in his presentation remarked that there is a huge demand for talent in the ICT sector nationwide.

“We anticipate about 50,000 ICT-related job opportunities in the following years. Thus, you can look forward to an excellent job prospect in this field,” he said.

In addition to the presentations, the participants also viewed demonstrations of electrical and computer engineering projects by students and staff of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The collaboration between Curtin Sarawak and Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), the agency responsible for the management of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC Malaysia), has created excellent opportunities in reaching out to secondary school students in Sarawak.

For more information of Curtin Sarawak, visit its website at www.curtin.edu.my.