Afrizal Faisal Ali, student of Machine Engineering Department Faculty of Engineering UNS, has his fortune during his searching of sponsorship to fund his trip to Bergen, Norway. He won the Study Abroad Award in Global Challenge 2016. Afrizal got his fund sponsorship to attend the upcoming international conference related to energy and economy, IAEE 39th International Conference on June 19th-22nd, 2016. He will present his scientific paper and scientific poster in the conference which the theme is “Energy: Expectation, and Uncertainty”.
In the international forum, Afrizal who is also the member of International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) will present the renewable energy. According to Afrizal, renewable energy remains facing the obstacles especially in Indonesia. In the recent 3-5 years, the number of electrical generator is only 5% and dominated by geothermal and solarcell. According to Rizal, although Indonesia has numerous islands and becomes the fourth longest coast in the world, however, there is no electrical generator using ocean poweryet, especially using wave power.
“The subject of my research took place in Bawean island which spent 7 hours using cruiser from Gresik,” explained Afrizal during the interview on Friday (6/3/2016). The research findings conducted from January to December 2015 will be presented in Norway as well as his mission to promote the potency of renewable energy in Indonesia to the world. Based on his research, Afrizal finds that the people living near the shoreline have not used the electricity yet.
Go Abroad Needs Effort
Traveling to Norway to attend the conference is not the first trip for Afrizal. In 2015, Afrizal joined Asean Youth Energy Summit in Singapore as well as International Student Energy Summitas the world level gathering. Afrizal remains having the same problems whenever he goes abroad, namely sponsorship funding. He has consequently passed up the chance to go to a prestigious international event due to this problem. Moreover, Afrizal also becomes the only delegation from UNS. “Other universities are represented by several delegations, however, I’m the only one from UNS,” he explained. This situation encourages him to seek other opportunities to go abroad and bring UNS to be the World Class University.
The insufficient financial support from the university is not the primary problem for Afrizal. Afrizal said, “There is not nearly enough willingness to go abroad. If there is not enough fund, the students whose mental is rather low will give up. Otherwise, they will attempt to find other sponsorship by arranging a good proposal.”
Mental test
According to Afrizal, the researches for the students of UNS is merely as the graduation requirement. However, published journals as well as the paper involved in the forum have the important contribution for the university and the researcher. Afrizal admitted, “The researches of UNS students are mostly good in average. Nonetheless, arranging five pages journals seems rather difficult for them.” The engineering research as Afrizal conducted must be a published journal as one of the graduation requirements, however, most of them are satisfied when their researches published only in their department journal.
Afrizal stated that the journals dissemination in the scope of international level is very important for the students. It can be the chance for them to promote the researchers’ ability in Indonesia. Afrizal, who comes from Gresik, said that ‘the students are demanded to be a driver not a passanger’, a quote from his favorite book entitled Paspor whose author is J.S. Khairen. Afrizal emphasized, “Those two things will definitely journey the same destination but the process makes them different”. He also reminds the UNS students that there are bunch of opportunities to go abroad. “When studying until midnight, you may have internet surfing through Google to seek the events based on your passion and ability instead of doing your assignments only. There are many events to look for,” he ended. [denty.red.uns.ac.id]
