Surakarta – Students of the Faculty of Dentistry, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) won the Silver prize and Special Award at the Seoul International Invention Fair (SIIF) 2023 in Seoul, South Korea. The UMS collaboration team, consisting of students from the Faculty of Dentistry (FKG), Faculty of Pharmacy (FF), and Faculty of Engineering (FT), created an innovation to prevent diabetes mellitus through a tea product they named ‘Clivia Tea Combination of Butterfly Pea Flowers (Clitoria ternatea) and Stevia Leaves (Stevia rebaudiana)’.
This prestigious event was attended by participants from 26 countries with a total of 484 inventions competing on November 1-4, 2023. The UMS team, which had planned preparations for three months, managed to attract the attention of judges and visitors with their products that carried the theme of using Indonesian natural ingredients, such as telang flowers, jasmine, and stevia in the form of tea.
Drg. Ana Riolina, MPH, as the Assistant from the Faculty of Dentistry UMS, revealed that the key to the team’s success was careful preparation. The preparation process involved developing ideas, making abstracts, product trials, finalizing product manufacturing, testing ready-to-use products, and packaging.
“Clivia Tea has the advantage of using natural ingredients from Indonesia. This product is not only useful for preventing diabetes mellitus but also easy to consume by brewing with hot water without added sugar because it already has a natural sweet taste,” said Drg. Ana.
In the competition, the Clivia team had a competition booth in the Indonesian participants’ neighborhood, dispalyed their product and prepared an informative poster explaining the composition, tests, and results of the tea brewing. Despite coming from different faculties, FKG, FF, and FT, the students’ teamwork was considered very good by the team supervisor.
This achievement is a source of pride for the Faculty of Dentistry and Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta in particular, showing that cross-faculty collaboration can produce global innovations. Clivia Tea is expected to make a positive contribution to efforts to prevent diabetes mellitus by utilizing Indonesia’s natural resources in a sustainable manner.
