Professor David Young

University of the Sunshine Coast

School of Science and Engineering

Professor David Young is the Head of School of the School of Science and Engineering at USC and previously held the positions of Head of the School of Science and Interim Head of the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University Malaysia. He is a chemist with an interest in new materials and has been awarded two national research medals by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Professor Young obtained his PhD from the University of Queensland before postdoctoral training at the University College of North Wales and at Oxford University. He joined University of Sydney as a Senior Tutor, from where he moved to the Queensland University of Technology and then to Griffith University. After 20 years at Griffith, he joined Universiti Brunei Darussalam and was appointed Dean of their Graduate Studies and Research Office. Professor Young holds the honorary post of Visiting Scientist at the A*STAR Institute for Materials Research and Engineering, Singapore, Visiting Professor at Soochow University, China and Adjunct Professor at Monash University. He is an Associate Editor of Journal of Molecular and Engineering Materials.

Professor Fahrul Huyop

University of Technology, Malaysia

Faculty of Bioscience & Biomedical Engineering 

Professor Fahrul Huyop obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology with honours from the University of Wales College of Cardiff, United Kingdom in 1995, and his PhD was from University of Leicester, United Kingdom in 2001. He has extensive experience in the scientific research field as well as in administration. He has been either an active member or spearheading numerous committees and different taskforces related to the university management and development, including as a University level committee member for evaluation of research grants. His dedication to research has largely been on bacteria capable of decomposing toxic halogenated hydrocarbons, namely bacteria producing dehalogenase enzymes, an enzyme that catalyzes the removal of a halogen atom from a substrate. The toxic halogenated organic compounds in the environment can be reduced by the method of degradation via microbial metabolism,that is mediated by enzymes which remove the halogen substituents. Much of the work was due to interest in how toxic materials such as active components of herbicides or pesticides viz. Dalapon and Glyphosate, enter the bacterial cell membrane for the degradation process and consequently, are rendered harmless to the environment. These enzymes in the bacteria system are highly relevant or a greener approach to remove xenobiotic toxic and recalcitrant halogenated compounds from the environment. Much of his work has been related to Microbiology of Prokaryotic, concentrating on biotransformation and development of sustainable solutions for industrial and environmental pollutions. Due to his extensive research experience, he was invited by several local and international universities within the South-East Asian region as a “Visiting Professor” and as a mentor for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as junior lecturers for opinion and knowledge sharing in the field of his expertise. Contributions to academic his work have been well documented, reflected from extensive more than 100 articles published in reputable refereed journals, with a current cumulative citation of 861 and cumulative h-index of 14. He is also source of inspiration to hundreds of my former local and international students. Finally, his current study has primarily focused on the “Fundamental aspects” of the “Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Pollutant Degradation”.

Associate Professor Dr. Sreeramanan Subramaniam

Universiti Sains Malaysia

School of Biological Sciences

Associate Professor Dr. Sreeramanan Subramaniam graduated in BSc (Hons) of Biochemistry from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in 2000 and PhD in Plant Biotechnology from the same university in 2005. He worked as a lecturer at AIMST University Malaysia from July 2004 prior joining with the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) in March 2008. Currently, he is the Programme Manager for the Agrobiology, Entomology and Parasitology at the School of Biological Sciences, USM. He held this position since September 2011. His current research interests are on the plant tissue culture of various ornamental plants and horticultural crops, establishment of cryopreservation technology, secondary metabolites using cell culture system, genetic engineering of selected plants for fungal disease resistance, induction of hairy roots in selected medicinal plants, LED technology in plant tissue culture, somaclonal variation for crop improvement and studies on the vegetative crystal proteins from native Bacillus thuringiensis isolates. He has published more than 150 manuscripts in journals listed under Scopus/ISI, 11 book chapters, research reports, magazines and 1 academic book. At the moment, total of 13 PhD and 33 MSc students (both as main and co-supervisor) were graduated under his supervision. Currently he is supervising 22 postgraduate students. His primary research collaborators are Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), AIMST University, UAEU University Abu Dhabi, MARDI Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK), Universiti Institut Teknologi Mara (UITM), Periyar University Tamil Nadu India, Institute of Biology of Mongolia (Mongolian Academy of Science), Rajshahi University of Agriculture Bangladesh, United Plantations Sdn Bhd (Teluk Intan Malaysia), Figs Direct Sdn. Bhd. (Kedah), OSRAM, and P-Plus Sdn Bhd (LED company in Penang).

Associate Professor Dr Shyamala Ratnayeke

Sunway University Malaysia

Department of Biological Sciences

Dr. Ratnayeke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Sunway University, Malaysia.  She completed her doctoral work on the genetics and spatial organization of carnivores at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.  In 2002, she received an International Research Fellowship award from the U.S. National Science Foundation to conduct carnivore field research in Sri Lanka, including a pioneering study on the subspecies of sloth bear endemic to the island. In 2011, she received a U.S. Fulbright Scholarship Award to work in Tanzania’s largest public university, before coming to Sunway University in 2014.  Her current research focuses on invasive species biology and the conservation ecology of tropical carnivores.

Associate Professor Moritz Mueller

Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus

Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Science

Upon graduation [PhD (Biogeochemistry) at the UK National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK], Moritz accepted a lectureship position at Swinburne Sarawak where he initially established the BSc (Biotechnology) program and later set up the Aquatic and Environmental Sciences (AquES) Research Group. The focus of our current research projects lies on tropical peat-draining rivers in Sarawak, Borneo; in particular the production, transport and burial of organic material from the rivers to the coast and the diversity and roles of microbes in these processes. We apply multidisciplinary techniques (i.e. field observations, laboratory experiments; analysis of trace gases (CO2, CH4), their stable C isotopes and radiocarbon content (14C-AMS), as well as high-throughput sequencing of microbial diversity) in collaboration with colleagues from China, Singapore, UK, Germany, and Australia. Collaboration with international colleagues is of great importance to us and has allowed us to publish in Nature Communications, as well as other A* category and leading journals in the respective fields such as Global Change Biology, Biogeosciences, and Geobiology. Besides peat-draining rivers, we work in coastal waters, coral reefs, as well as on endophytic fungi which live inside host plants. We assess their diversity and roles as well as their potential use as biosorbents for heavy metals and producers of novel antibiotics and anti-cancer compounds.

Associate Professor Hii Ching Lik

University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus

Faculty of Engineering

Dr Hii is currently Director of Food and Pharmaceutical Engineering Research Group, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. His research interests are in the areas of modern drying & dehydration technologies, preservation of food antioxidants & nutrients, bio-products processing and computer simulation on heat & mass transfer processes. In the past and including to date, he has carried out research for several agriculture/food products such as cocoa beans, chocolates, star fruits, herbs, kedondong, chicken meat, papaya leaf and also investigated/developed several processing technologies such as heat pump drying, adsorption drying, stepwise drying, hybrid drying and solar drying. Particularly, he is interested to investigate the effect of processing on the nutritional and antioxidant properties of underutilized agriculture materials in his current research. He was awarded Drying Technology Top 30 Journal Referees and The University of Nottingham Vice Chancellor’s Medal in 2017.

Associate Professor Sarinder Kaur Kashmir Singh

University of Malaya

Faculty of Science

Dr Sarinder was awarded a Bachelor of Computer Science from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University Malaya (UM) in 2000 and a Masters in Computer Science in 2002. She then completed her PhD in the field of Bioinformatics at the Faculty of Science, University of Malaya in 2007.Currently she is an Associate Professor at the same department, as well as the  Program Coordinator for Bachelor of Science in Bioinformatics program. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Data Science & Bioinformatics Laboratory in UM. Dr Sarinder’s main interest is managing, representing and analysing biological data using computational tools and techniques. Her contribution towards these projects is mostly in building digital systems using visual analytics, databases and data mining techniques. She is also working on research projects to automate species recognition using image processing and machine learning techniques. Currently, she is engaged in a project on Electronic Medical Records (EMR) at the University Malaya Medical Center (UMMC), mainly for building automated systems using data science techniques. Dr Sarinder has published 70 over publications including books, journals and proceedings. Dr Sarinder is an Associate Editor of Malaysian Journal of Science (MJS) and a reviewer for many journals in her discipline. Dr Sarinder was also a Visiting Scholar at the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK.

Professor Cheah Yoke KQueen

Universiti Putra Malaysia

Department of Biomedical Sciences

Prof. Dr. Cheah Yoke Kqueen is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Industry Relations and Networks (CiRNeT), UPM. He is also the Technical Advisor on Molecular Diagnostic to Subang Jaya Medical Centre. He is a Chartered Scientist, Fellow of Institute of Biomedical Science, UK and Chartered Biologist, Royal Society of Biology, UK. He holds the position as President for Malaysian Biomedical Science Association and BiomedKL. Prof. Dr. Cheah is an established scientist with more than 200 scientific publications, 5 patents, copyrights and won numerous awards in the research exhibitions. Prof. Dr. Cheah was awarded as the Top Research Scientist Malaysia in 2017.