Malaysian excited, grateful for being part of ‘cosmic breakthrough’

Noor Hafizah Isa, who is pursuing her PhD in Glasgow, Scotland, was unaware that she was the talk of the town back home. The Kelantan-born is part of a group of international scientists involved in a recent landmark discovery that opens a new window for studying the cosmos. For the first time, the scientists detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time hypothesised by Albert Einstein a century ago. Noor Hafizah, a trainee lecturer with the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), is grateful to be part of the team, and looks forward to returning to Malaysia to share what she learned with her students. "I feel very grateful and thankful for the opportunity given to me and hope it is one of the successes that can be emulated by other young people to excel. "I would also like to congratulate my fellow team members who had worked long on this project. My contribution is nothing in comparison," said Noor Hafizah, who also thanks her university's science faculty and the Education Ministry. "I cannot wait to return to Malaysia to share what I've learned." The student and researcher at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) and IIUM is part of the paper "Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger" which proved the detection of gravitational waves and the merging of two black holes into one. The research has been hailed by the scientific community as a "decades-long quest" for what some have called "the holy grail of science". IIUM rector Professor Datuk Seri Dr Zaleha Kamarudin hoped Noor Hafizah would share her knowledge and experience. "It is one of the great successes of IIUM because she will soon become a full-time lecturer in the Kulliyyah of Science at our Kuantan Campus. We are therefore proud to have such an illustrious expert in IIUM who can share her knowledge with her prospective students after graduating from the UK." Noor Hafizah graduated froM UiTM in 2009, before doing her Master's at the varsity's Jengka capus. After her selection for the "IIUM Fellowship Programme", she went on to pursue her PhD at the University of Glasgow. – February 22, 2016.]]>