Thursday, 28 November 2019

Build Spirit of Innovation through the Tanoto Student Research Award

Innovation plays an important role in the development of the nation. Through innovation based on science and technology, the quality of human resources will increase and encourage economic growth. Innovation can also create efficiency in the economy, so the products produced are increasingly competitive. This message was conveyed by Aryanti Savitri, Head of Scholarship & Leadership Development of the Tanoto Foundation at the 2019 Tanoto Student Research Award Media Briefing in Jakarta, Wednesday, November 27, 2019.

The Tanoto Student Research Award (TSRA) is an initiative of Tanoto Foundation in supporting young people to innovate through applied research in their respective campuses. TSRA has been running since 2007 in partnership with four universities: Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), University of North Sumatera (USU) and Hasanuddin University (Unhas). To date, Tanoto Foundation has supported 500 applied researches from the partner universities.

“Tanoto Foundation as a philanthropy organization focusing on education, encourages young people to be able to innovate and develop the application of knowledge they have received from college to become products that can be directly utilized by the community. Through the Tanoto Student Research Award, we also want to increase the number of researchers in Indonesia, especially young researchers who have grown up from universities,”

Aryanti Savitri.

According to UNESCO report in 2016, the number of researchers in Indonesia is the lowest among the G-20 member countries. The ratio of researchers in Indonesia is 89 per 1 million population. Compared to Singapore, which has 6,658 researchers per 1 million population, Indonesia is still far behind. The ratio owned by Indonesia is also far from the ideal ratio of researchers set by the World Bank, which is between 4000-5000 researchers per 1 million population.

In TSRA 2019, Tanoto Foundation supports 54 researches in the fields of technology, health, agriculture and environment. The team from the Bogor Agricultural University, for example, created the Ebron-C (Ergonomic ‘Brondolan’ Collector), an ergonomic palm fruit leaflet (brondolan) collection tool. According to Tegar Nur Hidayat, the team’s spokesperson, this tool improves the quality and quantity of work.

“So far, palm oil leaflet citations have been done manually. In addition to being inefficient because it requires a lot of workers and is tiring when quoted by hand, citing with a scratching tool will physically damage the palm fronds. With Erbron-C, we believe that we can increase work productivity and reduce losses on palm oil yields. This tool also has several companies in Sumatra and Kalimantan,” Tegar Nur Hidayat said.

Meanwhile a team from the Bandung Institute of Technology developed ABEVEST, a modern honeycomb integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT). With this tool, breeders can monitor the condition of bees, such as the weight of honey filled, temperature, and humidity of the cage in real time. This tool is also able to harvest honey automatically through smart phone applications, so as to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of honey bee cultivation.

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