Malvin, a PhD candidate at Xiamen University Malaysia (XMUM) and researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Advancement and a Zero-Waste Economy (STARGAZE), received the Best Presenter Award at the 3rd International Conference on Innovation in Chemical Engineering and Technology 2026 (ICICET 2026).

Best Presenter Award certificate presented to Malvin at ICICET 2026.

Held from 8 to 9 September 2026, the conference was organised by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in conjunction with the AUN/SEED-Net Regional Conference of Chemical Engineering 2026. Under the theme “Innovating Chemical Engineering for a Sustainable Future”, the conference brought together researchers and industry practitioners to exchange ideas on chemical engineering, sustainability, environmental engineering, biotechnology, materials and digitalisation.

At the conference, Malvin presented the research “Probabilistic Latent Phase Inference for Real-Time Control of Poultry Litter Composting", co-authored with Xiao Qi Ng, Yew Woh Hui, Norsharina Md Saad, Jian Ding Tan, Rui Zhi Yap and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jian Ping Tan.

The study addresses a practical challenge in poultry litter composting, where conventional monitoring approaches may struggle to identify gradual or overlapping phase transitions. Using data from high-altitude composting experiments, the research developed a two-stage machine-learning framework combining Gaussian Mixture Models with supervised learning to identify composting phases from real-time temperature and humidity measurements.

The approach could support more responsive monitoring and control of composting operations by enabling earlier detection of process changes. It could also provide a basis for future integration with IoT dashboards and automated control systems.

Malvin presenting “Probabilistic Latent Phase Inference for Real-Time Control of Poultry Litter Composting” at ICICET 2026