Dr Reena Rajasuriar is a Clinical Pharmacist by training and an Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine, University Malaya (UM).  She also holds an adjunct position as a Fellow at the Department of Infectious Diseases, University of Melbourne, Australia.  She leads the research unit at the Department of Medicine, UM and is Head of the Immunotherapeutics Laboratory (ITL), a core immunology research laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine, UM.    Dr Rajasuriar completed her PhD in Immunogenetics at Monash University, Australia and now leads a translational research program in HIV and Aging at the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA).  Her training as a clinical and basic scientist has afforded Dr Rajasuriar the expertise to perform multidisciplinary research spanning basic, clinical and implementation studies.  Her research focuses on understanding drivers of accelerated aging in people living with HIV and its interaction with functional aging outcomes.  She is also invested in understanding how integrated HIV care can best be implemented in resource limited settings to promote healthy aging.   Dr Rajasuriar has published extensively on the intersection of HIV and aging, and is an international leader in advancing the knowledge in this field, having delivered multiple plenaries at international forums, co-authored multiple opinion pieces and viewpoints as well as contributed to the development of consensus statements around this subject matter.  Together with members of her team, she was instrumental in developing the first ECHO training program on HIV and Aging for the Asia Pacific region to advance capacity building for health professionals providing care for people with HIV.  She is also the Principal Investigator of the only HIV and aging cohort in the Asia Pacific region studying aging from a multidimensional perspective, with over a decade of follow up (2014-2024).   Dr Rajasuriar’s work is funded by various national and international funding bodies including the National Institutes of Health, US, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia.  She has received multiple accolades including the Australia-APEC Women in Research Fellowship (2015), the Loreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Malaysia Fellowship (2016), the IAS Research-for-Cure Academy Fellowship (2018), the CIRA International Visiting Fellowship to Yale (2019), the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA) Scholars Award (2023) and most recently, the Fulbright Malaysian Scholar Award (2024). 

Dr. Nasnoor Juzaily Bin Mohd Nasiruddin aka Dr. Samba was born in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. He completed his elementary school education at St.Thomas Elementary School, Kuantan, Pahang and continued his high school at one of the elite boarding schools in Malaysia: Sekolah Dato’ Razak (SDAR), Seremban. Upon completed his school-education level, he pursued his first degree in Exercise Physiology at University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and completed his Master degree in M.A Physical Education (Pedagogy) at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo-Michigan, USA. In 2019, Dr. Nasnoor obtained his doctoral degree in Kinesiology (Sport Pedagogy) at Texas A&M University, College Station-Texas, USA. Pertaining his sport background. Dr Nasnoor was a former national elite athlete in rugby and was appointed as a national team captain during the Asia Rugby Cup tournament, 2003. His fields of interest are physical education, measurement & evaluation, survey development, physical activity & motivation, curriculum & instruction, and sport performance analysis  

Dr. Teo Chee How received his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Leicester, the United Kingdom where his research was focusing on the distribution and diversity of repetitive DNAs in the Musa genome. He was involved in the development of retrotransposon-based molecular markers for Musa species identification. During his stays at the University of Leicester, he was involved in the fifth EU framework programme where, together with other partners in the framework, he developed universal tools to isolate pararetroviruses (EPRVs) and investigate the biodiversity of EPRV sequences. In addition, he successfully established a plant artificial minichromosome platform for crop improvement purposes during his post-doctorate period at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany. In 2012 he returned to Malaysia to work at Agro-Biotechnology Institute (ABI) under the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) as a Senior Research Officer before joining academic as Senior Lecturer at Taylor’s University in 2014. He joined the Centre for Research in Biotechnology for Agriculture (CEBAR), the University of Malaya as a Senior Lecturer in 2016.