ii � POSTGRADUATE HANDBOOK 2015/2016 POSTGRADUATE HANDBOOK 2015/2016 � iii

welcome to Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). Recently, UTM has been conferred as the fifth university in the nation to be granted with a Research University (RU) status. Being an RU, UTM has a bigger role in shaping the research and development of the nation. Among others, UTM has to excel in its intake with quality graduate students, increase its publication in high impact journals, as well as increasing its citation index. These requirements directly influenced the direction of FKE. As a consequence, research students in FKE have wide opportunities to perform and contribute in maintaining the UTM status as a Research University. In this regards, several incentives have been allocated for those who have contributed. In the meanwhile, we always endeavor to maintain our taught course programs at highest possible level. To ensure this, we recently conducted a workshop with industries and companies in order to get their feedback with respect to our postgraduate taught course programs. By implementing these comments into our programs, we hop