IEM-USM Student Section conducted a welcoming day on 11 Oct 2017 at DK3. The purpose of this welcoming day is to introduce The Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM), IEM Penang Branch and IEM-USM Student Section to first year students. The program started with IEM introductory talk by the Chairman of IEM Penang Branch, Ir. Ting Chek Choon and followed by Q&A Session conducted by Dato' Prof. Ir. Dr. Eric K.H. Goh, a professor in the School of Materials and Mineral Resources Engineering and also the past chairman of IEM Penang Branch. An introduction to IEM-USM Student Section was then be given by the advisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lau Tze Liang and the program ended with an experience sharing session by alumnus of USM Engineering Campus, Mr. Ooi Zi Xun who is a civil engineer from M.E.I. Project Engineers Sdn. Bhd. and also a committee member of IEM Penang Branch Young Engineers Section (IEM YES).

A team of four fourth year students from the School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia has made the country and USM proud in the “Introducing and Demonstrating Earthquake Engineering Research for Schools (IDEERS) 2017” which was held on September 22 – 23 in Taipei, Taiwan. USM team led by Cheah Yi Ben with team members of Chan Wai Kit, Chong Hong Rui and Tan Chin Guan was supervised by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Lau Tze Liang. The team was honoured for outstanding achievement by winning First Runner-Up, Quake-Resistant Certificate and Best Design Concept Exhibition Award under the undergraduate category. There were forty-nine international teams from Southeast Asia, Australia, China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan participated in this competition.

This international competition was held at the Taiwan National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE). This program is jointly organized by NCREE, National Applied Research Laboratories (NARLabs) and British Council (BC). Each team was required to construct a building model using the provided materials in 6.5 hours. All models were then tested for various levels of bi-directional earthquake ground motion (from 250 gal to 800 gal) simulated using a shaking table.

IEM-YES National Summit (Natsum) 2017 was held in Miri, Sawarak from July 20 to 23. It was organized by IEM-YES Miri Branch with the help of IEM Curtin Student Section. IEM-YES Penang Branch has subsidized the registration fee for the Chairman of IEM-USM Student Section for this event. The participant of this event constituted of members of IEM-YES (Penang Branch, Perak Branch, Kuala Lumpur Branch, Pahang Branch, Kelantan, Melaka Branch, Southtern Branch, Sawarak Branch, Miri Branch and Sabah Branch) and student section members (USM, UTHM, UTM, UMP, UTAR KL, UTAR Kampar, UNMC, UiTM (Shah Alam), UNITEN, UTP, Swinburne Sarawak, UNIMAS, UCTS, Curtin University Malaysia and UMS). There are foreign participants from Brunei who came here representing PUJA.