Two budding young scientists hold great promise for malaysia. they were among five winners, but what makes them special is that they are proof the vernacular school system works, too.
DORAIRAJ NADASON newsdesk @thestar.com.my
Vernacular schools do have plenty of critics, with many claiming they add to racial polarisation. These people want them closed, saying a single school system should be introduced.
Despite that, vernacular schools are getting more popular with Chinese schools especially attracting more students, primarily – and ironically – Malay pupils.
It is indeed an old issue. It goes back some 200 years when the vernacular school system first began.
The first recorded Tamil school was within Penang Free School in 1816. The first Chinese school started three years later – also in Penang – in 1819. Two centuries later, they remain relevant.
We could see that last Friday when five people – all outstanding in academics – were awarded the Merdeka Award Grant for International Attachment. Two of them were from vernacular schools.
G. Keisheni, from Penang, is a budding scientist – almost literally; she is working with flower buds.
The 30-year-old, probably the first Malaysian Indian woman to get the award, has found a new use for the bright blue butterfly pea, a flower often used to make tea.
But she uses them on microneedles, which are already a thing in the medical field, especially in beauty treatment. They allow medicine to be injected into the body via patches.
It’s painless and effective – no sharp needles, and no syringes or tubes.
The butterfly pea is often drunk as a tea, and is believed to help improve skin and hair health, and may even support cardiac wellness or help with blood sugar regulation.
Keisheni, however, found that if microneedles are tipped with butterfly pea, they can sense and signal any problem in the transdermal area and quickly alert health personnel.
Her findings allow for easy administration of medicine with any adverse reactions or allergies almost immediately detected so quick follow-up treatment can be done.
Not bad at all for someone who had her early education in SJKT Ramakrishna, a Tamil school housed in the compounds of the Ramakrishna Ashrama, the oldest Indian orphanage in Malaysia. It was started way back in 1938.
Keisheni had her secondary education in St George’s Girls School nearby and did her degree in biological sciences in Universiti Malaysia Pahang, before her master’s and PHD in the same university.
Her master’s thesis was on edible films, using food waste to replace plastic. She actually found ways in which you can eat the wrapping around your apple!
Keisheni says it was a bit tough coming from a Tamil school because many around her saw her beginnings as inferior, but she was not one to give up.
Her biggest difficulty was “a limitation of opportunities”, but she still showed that she was made of sterner stuff.
Being the first Indian woman to have been in line for the award was also tough. “There was no role model, no one to look to for guidance and assistance,” she says.
But she did get help from her lecturers, Assoc Profs Dr Wan Rafizah Wan Abdullah and Dr Vigneswari Sevakumaran. If Keisheni is impressive, Calvin Shee Yin Ming is almost jaw-dropping. This lad is just 23 and will turn 24 on Tuesday, and he has not even had his convocation yet, but already he has won the award as a graduate in microbiology and molecular genetics.
He also founded and leads an NGO, and has projects with a major pharmacy in the country.
He says he was “a naughty kid” who didn’t quite concentrate on his studies while at SJKC Cheng Sui (1) and SMK Datuk Bentara Luar in Batu Pahat, Johor. However, the epiphany came when he was studying for his STPM.
“I studied for 13 hours a day, and I was interested in physics and quantum physics.”
How does one study 13 hours in a 24-hour day?
“I was very disciplined,” he says. “The competitive Chinese school experience shaped my habits – things like sticking to routines, being meticulous in study, making sense of theories and pressure resistance.”
However, he says the Chinese school education was not a big factor in his later studies. Like Keisheni, his research also centres on a wild-growing plant – the carnivorous pitcher plant, which can literally eat insects that have exoskeletons made of chitin.
Those insects carry some bad bacteria, but these plants have their own bacteria that help in dissolving chitin. He hopes to study how the plants overcome the bad bacteria and come up with an antibiotic to heal certain ailments.
But he has another scary story to tell. Bacteria can become resistant to any antibiotics in 10 generations. Sounds like a long time, right? Wrong.
A bacterial generation is something like 20 human minutes. So, in just 200 minutes, or three and a half hours, an antibiotic becomes useless. So, what do we do?
Enter Calvin’s NGO. It’s called United for Global Antimicrobial Stewardship.
The idea is to create awareness of the short-term usefulness of antibiotics, or antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and ensure people do not misuse them.
It advocates the regulation of antibiotics use as well while also ensuring that expired medicine does not get into our waste and water streams. To that end, they are working with a local pharmaceutical firm to encourage patients to return their unused medicines.
And they have some “crafty” methods, like “pills art” and batik painting competitions with pills and capsules as motifs.
It helps. People learn what not to do with their pills, and our healthcare system has a chance of staying healthy.
Calvin will be off to Paris later this year to join the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Versailles, where he could work with Denis Faure, a renowned expert in plant physiology.
Keisheni will be off to Ireland to study the use of plants like the butterfly pea in microneedles for better treatment of wounds and injection of medicines.
For both of them, though, the seeds of their growth came from vernacular schools. With minds like these as ambassadors, it looks like those schools are here to stay.
