Siti Aisyah Alias is a Malaysian mycologist and Deputy Executive Director of the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, Universiti Malaya. Since 2001, she has been the Deputy Director of the National Antarctic Research Centre (NARC) and the Malaysian Antarctic Research Programme (MARP). In January 2023, she became the Director of the National Antarctic Research Centre (NARC) Malaysia. Her scientific research fields include fungal biodiversity of marine fungi and polar soil fungi, antimicrobial activity and cold-adapted enzymes, and biochemistry of polar microbes. She has described more than twenty new marine fungi to science and published more than 125 peer-reviewed articles. She is co-author and co-editor of 28 books, including two books, namely Checklist of Fungi of Malaysia and Marine Fungi from Mangroves of Malaysia. Under the Higher Institute of Centre of Excellence (HICoE), she is leading a project on Latitudinal Differences in Response and Adaptation of Microbes to Atmospheric Changes. She has significant field experience in the tropics, the Antarctic, and the Arctic, participating in eight polar research expeditions as a result of her strong international networking and collaboration and these include Australian Antarctic (AAD), Instituto Antarctico Chileno (INACH), Instituto Antarctico Equatoriano (INAE), Korean Polar Research Institute (KOPRI), Polish Polar Department and British Antarctic Survey.  She has helped the Malaysian Antarctica Program to develop through her international collaboration. She is also active in outreach activities to promote STEM and polar sciences. She participated in Malaysian Antarctic Research Program (MARP)’s outreach programmes to promote awareness of Antarctica among undergraduate students and secondary school pupils in Malaysia. This outreach activity is called Malaysia’s Journey to the Ice: Women in Antarctica, part of the MOSTI Social Innovation (MSI) grant (2015 – 2017). She has assisted in the development of Malaysia’s Antarctic policies and practices following the country’s accession to the Antarctic Treaty under a grant from the Ministry of Higher Education for the development of Science and Policy in Antarctica (2014- 2017).  Currently, she assists in developing Malaysia's Antarctic Bill. In recognition of her various achievements as a lecturer and researcher, Dr. Siti was awarded Saintis Muda Negara in 2000, CTI-CFF Women Leaders Forum Program and the only Malaysian represented in Wikipedia as recognition for women and their work in Antarctic Research (2016) and MOHE Women Across the World: “Saintis Wanita Terkemuka Dunia Dari 30 Negara Dalam Bidang Sains Antartika”, MOHE, 2018. In 2022, she was featured among the '100 Women Scientists in Global Polar Research'. She sits on various national and international panels such as the MOSTI Science Fund evaluation panel, Asia Forum of Polar Sciences (AFOPs) Panel and Academy of Science Malaysia (ASM) Taskforce Member on Antarctica, Selection Advisory Committee for Australian Research Council (ARC), Subject Matter Expert (SME) for Malaysia Education Blueprint, Academy Sciences of Malaysia and Board Member and Jury in Universal Scientific (USERN) in the field of Biological Sciences since 2019. She is also a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia.

Dr. Saharuddin bin Mohamad received his Bachelor of Engineering (Bioengineering) in 1998 and Master of Engineering (Bioengineering) in 2000 from the University of Tokushima, Japan. He successfully completed his Doctor of Engineering degree in functional system engineering in 2003 at the same university. Then, he took up a post-doctoral position in bioinformatics at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Japan until 2004.  He was appointed as lecturer in Bioinformatics Program, Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya ever since. His research interest focuses on structural bioinformatics, with special interest in computer-aided drug design and protein engineering. He also engages in molecular bioinformatics research projects related to analysis and data mining of the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data in genomics, metagenomics, whole-exomic and trancriptomics. Furthermore, he involves in translational bioinformatics research projects with his collaborators from Institute of Medical Research, Malaysia. He actively involves in teaching and development of courses for Bachelor of Science (Bioinformatics) and Master of Bioinformatics at the University of Malaya. He served as Programme Coordinator for Bachelor of Science (Bioinformatics) Degree Program from 2013 to 2014 and re-appointed as the coordinator from 2019 to 2020. He was appointed as Advisory Board Member of MyBioInfoNet (Malaysia Bioinformatics Network) for 2019-2021 session. He was elected as vice president of the Malaysian Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (MaSBiC) for 2018-2020 and 2020-2022 session. He was appointed as the Head of Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science from January 2020 to January 2022.  Currently, he serves as the Head of Centre of Research in Systems Biology, Structural, Bioinformatics and Human Digital Imaging (CRYSTAL), University of Malaya since 2017.

Lucy Lum Chai See joined the University of Malaya, Department of Paediatrics in 1990. Assigned to the paediatric acute care ward, she recognised the need of acutely ill children and set to look after them even though resources were meagre, the resistance to expansion stiff and the doctors and nurses lacking in knowledge and skills. Pioneers of Paediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) were invited to Malaysia to begin PALS training. Over the next four years, Lucy and colleagues contributed to twenty-five consecutive training courses for >800 doctors and nurses in 12 of 13 states. Her enthusiasm and perseverance saw her refining the management of severe dengue in children and other critical conditions. She underwent clinical-fellowship training in paediatric intensive care in The Hospital for Sick Children, in 1996. The Toronto and the North American experience shaped Lucy’s physiological approach to mechanical ventilation of healthy and sick lungs.  She later became the first Malaysian to complete the Paediatric examination for the European Diploma in Intensive Care.  Back in Malaysia, the P1 Acute Care Ward was hit by a shortage of funding and support. Despite of the limited resources, the unit played a key role in defining the pathophysiology of EV71 outbreak which caused many deaths in 1997. In 2001 the Hospital allowed a charity fund to be established.  Soon after The Star highlighted the PICU work, generous support poured in through individual, public and corporate donations. Then UMMC eventually acknowledged the work and formed the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.  For the first time the PICU received a stronger allocation of nurses and budget needed to ensure the smooth delivery of intensive care for children. Humanitarian medicine should not be a casualty of technology.  Lucy is very much a hands-on bedside doctor. Her clinical rounds are characterised by both an incisive analysis of history, physical examinations and investigations as well as standing back to view the “Google map”.  Doctors and nurses are trained not just to treat the disease, but to treat the patient as a human being connected to families and societies. Her clinical expertise was sought after by WHO, and regional offices in the Western-Pacific Region where she has been to China, Laos, the Solomon Islands and Africa.  She was invited by WHO/TDR to be the lead author of the handbook on clinical case management of dengue and by WPRO to design a training curriculum of dengue management.  She was credited for bringing calm to a chaotic situation in the Solomon Islands, a poor nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific. Re-training doctors in basic clinical techniques which identify the high risk patients was her legacy. She has managed to unify the various clinical departments in UMMC to work together so that dengue patients do not fall between the cracks. She collaborated with the various hospitals in Ministry of Health and WHO, Geneva, Oxford University, Brandeis University, and other universities in Singapore, SEAsia, Latin America and European Union. In the field of paediatric intensive care, she collaborates with colleagues in North America and around the world in pediatric sepsis, congenital diaphragmatic hernia and neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.   Compassion has to be the driving force behind the otherwise just another slogan, “First, do no harm”. Through her inspirational leadership, the PICU which used to record high rates of nosocomial infections has been transformed into one with high rates of hand hygiene and low rates of infection.  Yet, the work is not finished; her KPI (key performance index) for her staff is zero blood stream infection.  Indeed this is possible.