A year like no other – one that changed things as we know them, some in the positive, others negatively.
As 2020 draws to a close, the Newspoint team looks back at the story most widely read by the University of Malta community.
Here are the best Newspoint stories of 2020 for Q2 (April - June):
With many finding new social medium TikTok a channel through which their creativity can shine through, Newspoint selected the top 10 acts with the most followers in Malta.
The Department of Dance Studies asked Newspoint readers to send in their dance contributions after publishing an instructional video featuring an easy-to-follow dance, after its plans to organise a flashmob had to be changed due to the social distancing measures.
UM PhD student Jeantide Said Camilleri is helping design a hyperthermia system which is potentially less harmful than current cancer treatments, and its potential application could have long-term benefits for cancer patients.
As Malta went into partial lockdown, the University had to provide continuity for its community, with the Office for Human Resources Management & Development providing training opportunities to staff via its ongoing, remote webinars.
Dr Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, a Senior Lecturer at the Health Services Management Department within the Faculty of Health Sciences, has been appointed as the new Director of Country Health Policies & Systems at the World Health Organisation.
A user-generated content portal, the collective effort of many academics and top practitioners in the educational field, including the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta, launch lovetoteach.info in the presence of the then-Minister of Education, Hon. Dr Owen Bonnici.
UM improves its rankings on a number of international ranking websites, including U-Multirank, in terms of the number of international joint publications it was featured in.
The Institute of Aerospace Technologies at UM announced a project to improve taxiing, or aircraft manoeuvring on the ground prior to take-off.
A UM MSc student working on multilingual semantic role labelling led to the Knowledge Transfer Office to apply for a joint patent with tech giant IBM.
This academic year (the one that started in October 2020), a record number of courses are being offered by the UM’s Gozo Campus, and the plans are for these to increase.