Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC) was invited to give a career talk on biotechnology recently in The Star Education Fair at the Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC) in Kuala Lumpur. The education fair is organized by The Star annually to give students an insight into the various opportunities and options available within each industry and profession. This year, MABIC was invited to give its professional perspective on the career opportunities in biotechnology in the Biotechnology session. Due to the Government’s high emphasis on biotechnology, many students and parents have attended the session to find out what is biotechnology all about and also its career prospects. There were approximately 400 attendees in the hall.

Ms Wong Yar Li, the Biotechnology Information Officer of MABIC started her talk by giving a brief introduction on biotechnology and few famous examples of biotechnology products such as wine and yoghurt. She emphasized that biotechnology is not a new field and with the Government’s financial support, it is expected to be one of the key engines for the country’s economic growth.

Ms Wong then presented the different careers available in this field, from research and development to manufacturing and production; information systems; regulatory affairs and administration. Breaking down biotechnology applications to four main areas: medical, agriculture, environment and industry, she elaborated on their respective career prospects in Malaysia. Ms Wong then described the stages of the biotechnological production process, which she called “From Lab to Market”. She highlighted that there are diverse job opportunities in each stage, starting from the research level to product development, regulatory approval and marketing stages.

Due to the high emphasis on biotechnology by the Government recently, there have been other opportunities for careers in biotechnology in organizations or companies that provide a supporting role in the biotech industry. The trend now is for graduates to have a double or combine degree with biotechnology that complements the desired career path. For example, local law firms are starting to show interest in biotechnology to provide advisory consultations for Intellectual Property Rights or patent protection for life-sciences. Therefore, a graduate with a combination of biotechnology and law would be ideal to work in this area.

Besides that, Dr Mohamed Omar from the Monash University Malaysia and Prof Dr Mohd Yazid Abdul Manap from the Universiti Putra Malaysia were also invited to give talks in the Biotechnology session. Dr Omar gave an overview of biotechnology and its applications while Prof Yazid talked about food technology.

The session was very well received .The speakers had very good response from the attendees and there were lots of interest generated. The overwhelming attendance of the event shows that the public are interested in biotechnology and also its development in the country.


To download the presentation slides, please click here.