Dr. Lee-Ling Lim is Professor of Medicine, UM and Head of the Diabetes Care Unit, Universiti Malaya Medical Centre. As a clinician-scientist, her major areas of interest include cardiometabolic medicine and intergenerational diabetes with translational and implementation science components.  Dr. Lim sits on the Working Groups of The Lancet Commission on Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association/European Association for the Study of Diabetes (ADA/EASD) Precision Medicine in Diabetes Initiative, who provide authoritative resources in tackling the global diabetes epidemic. She recognizes that every person with diabetes and non-communicable disease (NCD) is unique and warrants personalized care. To revolutionize health care, Dr. Lim aims to advance the implementation of Precision Medicine in Diabetes and NCD, taking into account differences in clinical presentation, genes, and lifestyles in Malaysian populations. These have led to several collaborations with the USA, UK, and other Asian countries. She has published in numerous high-impact journals including The Lancet, Nature, Diabetes Care, and Science Bulletin.  Dr. Lim has received several awards including the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University for 3 consecutive years (2022-2024), the EFSD Albert Renold Fellowship, the USA Endocrine Society Outstanding Abstract Award, and a scholarship funded by the USA NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences for training in statistical genetics at the University of Washington, USA. She is an Editorial Board Member of several Tier 1 Web of Science-indexed journals (BMC Medicine, Diabetes/Metabolism Research & Reviews, and Diabetes & Metabolism). Dr. Lim is an article reviewer for 29 leading academic journals including the European Heart Journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, Diabetes Care, PLoS Medicine, and European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

Dr Helena Varkkey is an Associate Professor of Political Ecology at the Department of International and Strategic Studies, Universiti Malaya. Her areas of expertise include transboundary haze governance in Southeast Asia and global palm oil politics. Her monograph on “The Haze Problem in Southeast Asia: Palm Oil and Politics” was published by Routledge in 2016. Her latest book is a collection of essays on the politics of haze and the environment in Southeast Asia called “The Forests for the Palms” published by ISEAS Singapore in 2021. Dr Helena has almost two decades of experience in qualitative research, including conducting fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups among various government and non-government stakeholders, and has built up extensive research networks in countries across ASEAN. She has edited and produced reports for the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, UNICEF, and the ASEAN Secretariat.

Siti Zaidah Zainuddin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Language. Her primary research interests lie in discourse studies, particularly genre analysis in both written and spoken academic discourse and corpus linguistics. In the field of language learning, she works on second language writing using several perspectives and frameworks as well teacher-learner interaction. Her publications address various topics on academic discourse practices including language and rhetorical strategies in oral defense and thesis writing by postgraduate students, and teacher agency. Zaidah holds several research grants focusing on genre studies in academic and legal discourses and teacher’s agency in language classrooms. She teaches both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. In addition to teaching and research, Zaidah has served as a UG program coordinator, Industrial Training coordinator for the English Language Department and the coordinator and consultant for various language programs with private organisations.