LYSA 2020 is an award to young scientists under 40 years old who have consistently conducted researches. Afriyanti joined the Department of Materials Engineering, FTMD ITB in September 2018 after completing her undergraduate and doctoral degree at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Since early 2020, Afriyanti has been recorded as having won several awards, namely "SINTA Top 50 Authors" from the Ministry of Research and Technology / BRIN, an award for outstanding lecturers in research from the Rector of ITB at the 61st of ITB Anniversary, and the LYSA 2020 award in November 2020.Afriyanti's current research is focusing on energy storage materials. "Currently I am developing several materials that can be used in various energy storage devices, especially batteries," she said.

According to her, research on batteries is fascinating because almost all of the human activities require electrical energy. Humans also need energy storage devices because they are not always near that energy source. "An ideal battery must store a lot of energy, can deliver energy quickly, and life-long. Therefore, the role of materials engineering is to find the best materials that aim to improve energy storage performance," she explained.

The 33-years-old lecturer said that energy storage could serve social welfare. "A massive scale of energy storage devices will help Indonesia and the world to access energy. The suburban areas that are struggling to electrify their lands will get the advantages of the energy storage system," she said.

Before joining as a lecturer at ITB, Afriyanti was a researcher at ASTAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore from 2014 to 2018. In 2020, she had written about 43 papers as the main author and co-author in several international journals indexed by Scopus.

Not only that, but Afriyanti is also busy doing her patents. The most recent patent that she prepares is about high-strength continuous carbon fibre reinforced aluminium composite material. Those materials are for the cores of power transmission cable reinforcement.

Afriyanti said that the LYSA 2020 award is a mandate that must be maintained and for her to maintain a good track record in conducting research consistently. She hopes that in the future, there are a lot of students that have an interest in materials engineering.

"We should prepare human resources with premium quality. But it is not only about humans; we should provide them with supporting facilities such as laboratories. I hope that ITB can provide international standard laboratory that aims to spur the enthusiasm of students and other researchers to continue working optimally, " she said.

Afriyanti gave several messages to ITB students to continue working in their respective scientific fields. "Students must read a lot about scientific issues respectively from a credible source. Also, as an educated society, we should be critical readers that collect facts from science," she said.

Reporter: Billy Akbar Prabowo (Metallurgical Engineering, 2020)

Translator: Billy Akbar Prabowo (Metallurgical Engineering, 2020)