Mahardhika Pratama ST MSc PhD (berdiri) saat mengisi kuliah tamu di Departemen Teknik Elektro Otomasi ITS pada 2018 lalu

ITS Campus, ITS News – Department of Electrical Engineering Automation Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS) welcomes a new lecturer who is also an ex-diaspora, Mahardhika Pratama ST MSc PhD. The new lecturer called Dhika is a dedicated figure in the academic field. At a young age, Dhika has many publications and with h-index scoring of 21 in the international journal at Scopus.

ITS should be proud to have Dhika as a lecturer. Dhika is an accomplished young academic with big ambitions. He managed to get his doctorate at the age of 26. After completing his studies in the Department of Electrical Engineering ITS, Dhika continued his Master education at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, in computer control and automation. Then he completed his doctoral studies in electrical engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2014.

After graduating in 2014, Dhika later became a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. According to his statement, Dhika had been offered this position even before completing his doctoral studies. Besides, Dhika has also worked as a lecturer at La Trobe University, Australia, for two years since 2015.

Finally, before lecturing at ITS, Dhika was an Assistant Professor at NTU. “I am still an Assistant Professor at NTU, but I am currently taking time off due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” Dhika explained.

Of course, Dhika got this extraordinary work experience record thanks to his quality, and he proved it through his scientific publications. Dhika has been accustomed to writing and publishing his research since the sixth semester of his undergraduate study.

More than a hundred journals have been published under his name on his profile pages on Google Scholar and Scopus. The majority of his publications have a good reputation in the Q1 category. There are even publications with a minimum acceptance rate of only 9 percent.

Mahardhika Pratama ST MSc PhD (right) while participating in Artificial Intelligence Forum III at Asia University 2018 (source asia.edu.tw)

Another proof why Dhika’s publications are extraordinary is their h-index scoring exceeds 20. The h-index scoring for Dhika on Scopus reaches 21 and 24 on Google Scholar. The index is based on the number of scientific papers produced by a scientist and the number of citations or citations received from other publications.

“The bigger the number on the index means the more other scientists will quote and it means that the impact of our journal is also getting bigger,” explained Dhika.

Apart from scientific publications, Dhika has also made achievements through his projects. One of his research was Semantic Visual Indoor Positioning System with Real-time Analytics, a Co-Investigator who received USD 372,360 by the Industry Alignment Fund – Industry Collaboration Projects (IAF-ICP). The funds for this research are still active until 2022.

With those achievements, it’s no wonder Dhika could be accepted as a lecturer at ITS through the non-civil servant (PNS) route. Apart from the minimal admission quota, the non-PNS way has quite complicated requirements.

Dhika’s entry into ITS is not a coincidence. The man in charge of Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining shared that he had wanted to teach in Indonesia. However, Dhika has not found the right moment to make it happen.

A DTEO ITS lecturer who was a student at NTU, Dhika and DTEO ITS communicated quite often through his acquaintances. This communication network then brought Dhika back to Indonesia and participated in the recruitment of non-PNS lecturers at ITS, which eventually made him a DTEO ITS lecturer as of August 2020.

After almost two months as a lecturer at the DTEO ITS, Dhika is sure by returning to Indonesia, and he can help and share his knowledge with more people. Dhika also highly recommended fellow Indonesian scientists to come back and teach in Indonesia to help advance the country.

“But I also believe that contributing to Indonesia does not recognize space, wherever a child of the nation works, as long as they carry out activities with the motivation to advance the country, they have contributed to their homeland,” he concluded.

Mahardhika Pratama ST MSc PhD (second from right) at the Visiting Professor event in the Department of Electrical Automation Engineering ITS in 2018

Meanwhile, ITS Deputy Rector III for Human Resources and Organization (SDMO), Technology and Information Systems (TSI) Dr Eng Ir Ahmad Rusdiansyah M Eng revealed that ITS is currently pursuing talented young lecturers from all over the world. Specifically, Indonesians become diaspora in other countries to be recruited as lecturers at ITS either through PNS or non-PNS channels.

“We call it the next generation of ITS lecturers, such as Pak Dhika and also several lecturers who have extraordinary achievements abroad both (in terms of) publications, patents, innovations and so on,” said the lecturer called Doddy. He hopes that such outstanding young lecturers can join ITS.

The Department of System and Industrial Engineering lecturer also said that ITS would routinely recruit qualified lecturers to replace senior lecturers who are about to retire. So it is expected that ITS lecturers’ quality will increase and become a new engine for ITS innovation. (ram/sel/ITS Public Relations)