A Brief History of Collaboration

UKM-Unsyiah (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia-Universitas Syiah Kuala) collaboration can be traced back to a visit Prof Ir Dr Ahmad Kamal Ariffin paid to Tokyo Institute of Technology in January 2003. Prof Ariffin was greeted by Prof Shigeru Aoki and (late) Dr Ir Muhammad Ridha (then a research scientist from Unsyiah at the Tokyo Institute of Technology). The meeting led to the formation of a committee to organize a focused conference named Computational Mechanics and Numerical Analysis (CMNA). The first CMNA was then held in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in April 2003. Five series of CMNA were organized from 2003 to 2007.

Later in November 2003, Prof Ariffin invited Dr Ridha to deliver a lecture on Boundary Element Method, Inverse Analysis, and Their Application on Infrastructure Corrosion. The guest lecture was held in UKM at Bangi, Malaysia. Dr Ridha's visit established the first formal collaboration between Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universitas Syiah Kuala (now Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) and the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (now Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering). The collaboration saw back-and-forth scholarly visits between Unsyiah and UKM, as well as Master and PhD students exchanges. The collaboration has generated numerous publications since 2004.

Today, amid the Covid 19 pandemic, the 2nd VCCEM 2021 is here to reinvigorate the UKM-Unsyiah collaboration at the gate of the new 20's era.