THE
LUMINARY
UNIVERSIT Y OF MALTA ALUMNI NEWSLET TER
www.um.edu.mt/alumni
AUGUST 2013
Energy Globe Award 2013
Nature Trust (Malta) was recently awarded the Energy Globe Award 2013 at a ceremony held at the Austrian Embassy in Rome in the presence of the Maltese
Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development and Climate Change the Hon. Leo Brincat.
During the event the Executive President of Nature
Trust (Malta), Mr Vince Attard, was invited to make
a short presentation on the implementation of the
Xrobb L-Għaġin project and future plans for this site
as an ongoing project concerned with environmental and energy efficiency issues in Malta. Mr Attard
explained how the old abandoned Radio station
was rehabilitated and transformed into a centre
dedicated to education on sustainable development
through renewable energy, biodiversity and open
spaces for the public. He also described the next target for this site, that to set up a wildlife rehabilitation
centre.
Professor Ing. Cyril Spiteri Staines and Architect &
Civil Engineer Ruben Paul Borg, from the University
of Malta were also present for the Award Ceremony.
They had an active role in
the rehabilitation of the
centre and were responsible for the design of
the Renewable Energy
Sources, the Repair and
Refurbishment Strategies, Energy Efficiency,
Waste Reduction and
Resource Conservation
measures implemented
in the Xrobb l-Għaġin
project. The Maltese
delegation was accompanied by the Ambassador of
Malta in Rome, HE Charles Ingaunez.
Hon. Brincat was invited to give a talk during the
awards presentation where he spoke about the fundamental principles of sustainable development and
the importance of a culture change to favour sustainability principles in society.
This year 161 countries participated in this award.
Protecting our Seas: Scientists offer recommendations
Policymakers want to protect our seas, but they
also need to factor in the economic aspects of these
measures. Scientists and socio-economists are working
together, under the PERSEUS Project, to help provide
policymakers with key insights and recommendations
for marine and maritime sustainable growth.
‘PERSEUS’ which stands for ‘Policy-oriented marine
Environmental Research in the Southern EUropean
Seas’ and is a large-scale research project funded by the
European Commission’s 7th Framework Research Programme (FP7). The PERSEUS Project Co-ordinator, Dr.
Evangelos Papathanassiou, explains that ‘The PERSEUS
research project is a first of its kind in that it specifically
targets its results for policymakers, giving them a complete set of tools for designing an effective and inno-
vative evidence-based marine governance framework,
specifically tailored for the Mediterranean and Black
Seas.’ The PERSEUS project brings together over 300
scientists from 53 partner organisations in 21 countries.
The Maltese partner of the PERSEUS project is the
International Ocean Institute - Malta Operational Centre
(IOI-MOC) at the University of Malta. Malta reaps many
benefits from the sea, but it also has a larger ‘portion
of the sea’ to protect compared to its land mass - for
example, its territorial waters (12nm) occupy a spatial
area 14 times greater than the land mass of the Maltese
Islands themselves. Participation in a prestigious
project like PERSEUS will bring much needed foresight
in the field of marine management and policy-making
to the Maltese Islands.
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AUGUST 2013
New Online Journal on Heritage Interpretation
The Institute for Tourism, Travel and Culture will be
leading a new online journal on Heritage Interpretation.
This peer-reviewed online series, which will be
published by the University of Malta, is a joint activity
between the ITTC and Interpret Europe, the European
Association for Heritage Interpretation. The main
objective of this on-line series is to provide a platform
for emerging academics and practitioners to discuss,
present and illustrate case studies, empirical and
theoretical research on heritage interpretation that is
of relevance for fostering the profession in Europe.
The online journal will cover theoretical and
empirical findings as well as bringing to the fore views
from practising heritage interpreters. It will provide
practitioners with the opportunity to present case
studies from the practical environment that could lead
to academic research and vice versa. While the online
series will have relevance and broad applicability to the
field of heritage interpretation in Europe, it will welcome
contributions from other regions. The series also aims
to publish papers that link heritage interpretation with
discourses from other contexts, such as non-formal and
informal education in the context of European lifelong
learning, regional development, place-based learning or
heritage tourism, and heritage preservation.
The chief editors for this online series, which will be
administered by the Institute for Tourism, Travel and
Culture, will be Dr Nadia Theuma, Director ITTC and
Mr Patrick Lehnes, CEO Interpret Europe. The editorial
board is composed of academics and practitioners in
heritage interpretation in Malta, UK, Croatia, Slovenia,
Australia and USA.
The first issue of the online series is targeted for the
last quarter of 2013.
50th anniversary of the Engineering Degree in Malta
At this year’s University of Malta Final Year Engineering
Projects Exhibition there were 95 exhibits presented by
undergraduate students. These consisted of projects
completed by engineering students in the fourth and
last year of the degree, and included a wide selection of
topical fields, amongst which were renewable energy
technology, water resources, bio-engineering, robotics
and vehicle structures and systems.
The Faculty of Engineering is this year also celebrating the 50th anniversary of the engineering degree in
Malta. While the number of students has grown significantly since 1963, there is now a much wider range of
topics being taught, and the laboratories and facilities
available are of an international standard. The focus
today is both on the teaching and on the quantity and
quality of research undertaken by the Faculty.
During the official opening of the Exhibition there
were presentations of different forms of assistance by
various companies towards research in the Faculty of
Engineering.
Awards were also presented to students who have
excelled in their field of studies: Royal Institution of Naval Architects, RINA, UK - RINA Student Naval Architecture Award (2012) - to Jean Paul Farrugia, Design and
Build of a prototype Hydrofoil Craft, considered to be
the best marine related final year project; Royal Institu-
tion of Naval Architects, RINA, UK - RINA Certificate of
Achievement - to Edward Azzopardi, Mechanical Testing of Marine Sandwich Panels; Royal Institution of Naval Architects, RINA, UK - RINA Certificate of Achievement - to Billy-Joel Zammit, Conceptual Design of a
Low-Speed Displacement Hull. Chamber of Engineers
Prize: Award for the best electrical and best mechanical
final-year projects for the academic year 2011/2012 winner mechanical project - Mark Bonnici: project title: The
development of environmentally conscious cosmetic
packaging through eco-design and design for manufacture; winner electrical project – Andre Micallef: project
title: Acquisition and tracking for UAV Communications.
A Certificate of Recognition was awarded to 10 students
nominated for best mechanical and best electrical finalyear projects for academic year 2011/2012.
Following the official opening of the exhibition, Ing.
Tom Cusens, one of the first engineering students to
graduate from the
degree course that
started 50 years ago,
cut the anniversary
cake together with
Thelma Gauci Minuti,
a current final year
student.
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AUGUST 2013
70 Works for ICT Final Year Projects Exhibition 2013
Throughout the academic year, the University of
Malta’s Faculty of ICT hosts and organises various
events, seminars, talks and visits, as well as conferences
in collaboration with other institutions. However, one
outstanding event on the Faculty’s calendar is the Final
Year Projects Exhibition. During the exhibition, work
developed by the Faculty’s undergraduate final year
students is showcased. This event was officially opened
by the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary for Research,
Innovation, Youth and Sport, Dr Stefan Buontempo. This year’s Final Year Projects Exhibition included
around 70 projects which related to various aspects
of ICT, both applied and theoretical. These projects
represent various fields of study – from microelectronics,
embedded systems and computer engineering to
computing science, software development and artificial
intelligence. As is the spirit and intent of the Faculty, the
exhibited projects comprise a mixture of commercially
orientated and theoretical flavours.
The spread of project domains displayed in this
year’s exhibition included work in the areas of
INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR IN
CLINICAL PHARMACY
The Department of Pharmacy at the University of Malta’s Faculty
of Medicine and Surgery recently organised an International
Seminar in Clinical Pharmacy, during an educational visit by
students of the University of Florida’s College of Pharmacy. The
ten students, who are reading for a Pharm.D. degree, were led
by Professor Jennifer Williams. Malta marked the start of their
visits to European schools of pharmacy. The seminar consisted
of a number of workshops, which included sessions at Mater
Dei Hospital, and patient interviews and discussions on aspects
of clinical pharmacy education and clinical pharmacy service
provision in Malta, in the USA and internationally.
entertainment, graphics, communication, transport
and routing, microchip design, system verification and
modeling, security, data management and cloud-based
technology, and assistive and social technologies. Apart
from these more traditional areas of ICT, this year’s
works also included a few cross-disciplinary projects in
such fields as astronomy, health, and biometrics. Many
of this year’s projects embraced a mobile perspective
with quite a few solutions being implemented on
mobile devices such as smart-phones and tablets. This year, a number of companies offered awards
for the exhibited projects based on various criteria. The
Faculty of ICT would
like to express its
gratitude to its Gold
Sponsors for their ongoing support. These
are Bit8 Ltd, Microsoft
Malta,
Computime,
ISL Limited and CCBill
EU.
Confucius Institute
at University cited as
Outstanding
Hanban, the Confucius
Institute Headquarters in
Beijing, singled out the
Confucius Institute at the
University of Malta in its
‘Collection of Outstanding Cases of Confucius Institutes in Europe’
At a recent meeting
in Bologna of the Directors of the Confucius
Institutes in Europe, the
Confucius Institute at the
University of Malta was
one of those Institutes
singled out as outstand-
This newletter is published by the Communications and Alumni
Relations Office within the University of Malta.
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ing – the citation in the
above-mentioned ‘Collection’ reads exactly as
follows:
‘As a historic breakthrough, the BA Programme in Chinese, offered by the Confucius
Institute, was set up in
the University of Malta
(and also in Malta) for the
first time in 2012. It is also
a milestone for Malta to
be going to have its first
graduates with a Chinese
degree in 2014.’