Dr. Awanis is an Associate Professor specialising in membrane technology and fabrication at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Malaya (UM). She joined UM as a lecturer in November 2004 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2011. Since then, she has played a key role in developing membrane fabrication research at UM, particularly through the application of the phase inversion process. Before entering academia, Awanis worked as a Plant Engineer at Hitachi Semiconductor (Penang) after completing her Bachelor’s degree under the Monbusho Scholarship (now the MEXT Scholarship, Japan). Her academic training spans Japan and the United Kingdom, with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Osaka University, a Master’s degree in Environmental Biotechnology from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and a PhD from Imperial College London. She completed her secondary education at Sekolah Tun Fatimah, Johor Bahru. In 2014, she represented Malaysia in the ASEAN–US Science Prize for Women competition in recognition of her work on membrane-based approaches to improving access to safe drinking water in the ASEAN region. Her research career has also been strengthened through international collaborations supported by the Hitachi Research Fellowship (2016), the Yamaguchi University Visiting Scholar Award and MEXT Global Networking Award (2019), and the JSPS Bridge Fellowship Award (2023). Awanis received a special grant under the Fundamental Research Grant