Firdaus Aziz obtained his BSc (Genetics and Molecular Biology) in 2007 from the Universiti Malaya (UM) in Malaysia, before joining the University’s International and Corporate Relations Office as a Special Projects Officer. After successfully awarded with the National Science Fellowship, he furthered his studies at the University of Sheffield, where he graduated in 2011 with MA in Biotechnological Law and Ethics. He then returned to Malaysia and worked at the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Following a brief period of ministerial work as a Special Officer to the Deputy Secretary General (Policy and Innovation), Firdaus joined Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) to pursue his doctorate (DPhil in Public Health) at the University of Oxford, which he completed in 2015. Firdaus’s DPhil project focused on regulatory measures to improve the regulatory framework for human stem cell research (hSCR) in Malaysia through comparative legal studies among countries across the globe, particularly focusing on the Commonwealth countries.

He is currently a Senior Lecturer and a Program Coordinator of Bachelor of Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law, UM. He continues to be a research associate of HeLEX and aspires to build strong connection and collaborations between the Centre and Malaysia. His research interests are in the legal and ethical issues of biosciences and emerging technologies. He is also a researcher and production editor at the Centre for Law and Ethics in Science and Technology (CELEST) at the UM Law currently working on the governance of biobanking and stem cell law and policy. He has been actively involved in developing bioethics in the Southeast Asia region as a UNESCO Bioethics Trainer. He is also a co-investigator of the UK Wellcome Trust to establish a regional bioethics network between Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand and a co-investigator of the NIH Fogarty grant to develop a Master in Health Research Ethics at UM, the first of its kind in the region.