Dr. Adiwijaya
The acknowledgment and trust are two things that are difficult to gain. Sometimes people need to do higher effort to gain them. Similarly, in the academic realm. It requires high integrity and professionalism.
One of the efforts is the research activity, one of Tri Dharma Perguruan Tinggi (Three Pillars of Higher Education). Doing research requires not only having qualified knowledge, commitment and high credibility but it also needs the researcher to make the research to be useful for people. This principle is always kept by Telkom University researcher, Dr. Adiwijaya.
Due to his hard work and commitment in the research realm, the man called Kang Ady, was able to produce the most paper indexed by Scopus in Telkom University.“ Recently, there are 28 papers indexed by Scopus,” the modeling and computational experiment lecturer, Kang Ady, added.
“People would ask why we need to appreciate this. A researcher must publish his or her research in a journal, especially in Scopus. Not all of the journals can be indexed internationally. Furthermore, Scopus is one of international index for research journal that has been decided by Kemristek Dikti (The Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education) to show quality research.
Scientific paper in international journal proposed in position promotion of a lecturer will be checked by Thomson, ISI Knowledge, Scopus SJR Journal Ranking or in Microsoft Academic Search. If a journal is found in one of those pages, it meets the criteria to be an international journal. Indirectly, the researcher whose paper is in an international journal and indexed there has also international quality. The researcher then is acknowledged and trusted. Indexing is like a license to make the research whose quality is acknowledged.
Adiwijaya also feels the same way. Even though he admitted that to be indexed by Scopus is not the main purpose. “The effect that I feel that there is some sort of trust from others. For example, nowadays I have been asked to review several papers that are indexed by ISI and Scopus. Besides, in this open era, we are always being careful in doing research, writing the paper and publishing it,” he added.
The man born in Majalengka on September 21, 1974 said that researching has been his passion since he was trusted to do research through the grant he got. For that reason, he never stops despite many challenges and difficulties. He spends almost 20-30 percent of his day for the sake of research. The main thing in researching is commitment.
“The effect that I feel that there is some sort of trust from others. For example, nowadays I have been asked to review several papers that are indexed by ISI and Scopus. Besides, in this open era, we are always being careful in doing research, writing the paper and publishing it.”
“When we are trusted, we must have passion for the research. When we have the passion, no matter what challenges we face we will always enjoy the journey and be given easiness to face it. The research is actually originated from curiosity. Research means to search again the knowledge. Therefore, before doing research, we must make research mapping so that we do not do what other people have done. When the research plan and question are clear, the proposal we make will be easier to be accepted by the grant givers,” he said.
To manage the time between other jobs and the research, Kang Ady said, “I always come to the office earlier and go home later than the working hour so that there is time to do and think about the research.”
Becoming a professional researcher since 2008, Kang Ady, a graduate of ITB, makes his habit of research applied to his daily life. The culture of having an argument for everything has even influenced his children who always ask about the decisions made in the family.
His mindset about mathematics is also similar to research. He said that many people are allergic to mathematics. It does not apply to me, he said. He thinks that mathematics is a field to sharpen our logic and it can be represented more easily in the forms numbers. Researching in the field of mathematics has made Kang Ady have a logical and argumentative attitude. This is the thing that he always pointed out while teaching his students.
After learning mathematics, there are four mindsets that are supposed to be the outcomes for its learner: problem-solving, communication, connections and reasoning.
“To make it more interesting, mathematics should be viewed in an applicative way. Thus, a lecturer must do research to make them upgrade their useful insight continually while teaching. A good lecturer can inspire and improve students’ insight based on the subject competence that he holds. If a lecturer only teaches the same materials as the book, it only says. Therefore, students just need to read by themselves even watching a youtube video is enough,” he added.
“For example when delivering materials related to the matrix, I started by giving an example if a student has 1 megapixel. 1 megapixel means 1.000 pixels to the right and 1.000 pixels below of the picture. The value of each matrix component is the pixel intensity itself. This is to make easy the understanding process inside. Thus, we started by introducing the matrix and its operation which is small,” he explained.
A number of researches have been done by Adiwijaya both in Telkom University and in other external parties. Besides the fundamental research funded by The Ministry of Research Technology and Higher Education related to graph coloring application, Kang Ady is also active in doing some applicative research in cooperation with government and private institutions. One of them is BMKG. The research conducted is related to rainfall prediction. Furthermore, there is also cooperation with The Ministry of Agriculture in deciding the planting calendar for several commodities such as rice, corn, and potato.
According to Kang Ady, all the researches are originated from the related parties that need technology optimization. For example,
for the planting calendar, the purpose is to optimize the planting period from two times to three times. The other research is detecting the fertility period of a woman based on the USG in cooperation with maternity clinics. Recently he is doing the competitive research of Telkom University related to correct the hijaiyyah letters and searching chunks of Al Quran verse based on pronunciation.
Even though the research that he conducted required his mind and time, Kang Ady remained happy when he finally found something. “It is more like finding a treasure, we must feel tired but when we finally find it, we are unavoidably happy. Sometimes when I feel stuck, I do something else such as doing sport,’’ Kang Ady said, admitting that he loves futsal, swimming and biking.
Wanting his track to be followed by his colleagues and students in Tel-U, Dr. Adiwijaya, The Vice Dean of Academic and Studentship of School of Computing, has made the research integrated with the final task. In line with his plan, in each final task, there must be a lecturer who has academic functional position, at least in the level of lector or doctor divided into several teams. Each team consists of young lecturer, so that they are used to doing research and making progress quickly in their position. Therefore, the process of the lecturer’s data sharing can be monitored well.
Kang Ady highlighted, “there is a benefit from doing research but not many and not really reliable. However, when we already have a good positioning in the research world, we will not have to think about funds anymore. For example, when we need lab equipment, conduct a colloquium or be invited to a scientific meeting, the funds can be taken from the research funding.”
“A lecturer must do research to make them upgrade their useful insight continually while teaching. A good lecturer can inspire and improve students insight based on the subject competence that he holds. If a lecturer only teaches the same materials as the book, it only says.”
Now, the School of Computing has got ICoICT that has been indexed by Scopus. Additionally, SoC has handled two, international and national, journals i.e International Journal on Information and Communication Technology (IJoICT) and Indonesian Journal on Computing (Indo-JC). Kang Ady hopes that the journal supervised by SoC under coordination with PPM Directorate of Telkom University can be indexed by Scopus so that more people can publish their work through those journals.
Furthermore, he wishes that Telkom University can be seen beautifully not only from one angle but also from every angle it has.
also from every angle, it has. “I hope that all of us in Telkom University has shared understanding to achieve our goal. Each element need to be reliable, not dependent. It is like a picture, we need to be the best pixels so that the picture looks beautiful at any angle. The last picture is the vision of Telkom University,” Kang Ady added.
