Chuah Su Cheen is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya. She has more than 20 years experience in corporate and commercial laws. Prior to joining Universiti Malaya, she was a Partner at one of the oldest and largest independent law firm in Hong Kong, specialising in structuring, establishment and promotion of investment funds. Su Cheen was recognised as one of the IFLR1000 Women Leaders in 2022. Su Cheen read law at Universiti Malaya, where she graduated with First Class Honours. She obtained LLM from the University of Cambridge. Su Cheen was called to the Malaysian Bar in 2002, and admitted as a solicitor in Hong Kong in 2009.

VGR Chandran is Professor of Industrial Development at the Department of Development Studies, Faculty of Business and Economics at University of Malaya. He has also worked as Principal Analyst of Economic and Policy Studies with Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT), Prime Minister’s Department, Malaysia. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and his research interests are mainly on innovation, technology development, trade and globalization that relate to industrial development. His field research covers sectors such as electrical and electronics, automotive, food, chemical, oil palm, machinery, iron and steel, ICT, and the newly emerging sector - renewable energy. He had extensive fieldwork covering the Asian region that includes countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, India, China, Thailand, and Malaysia. In recent years, his research interest expanded into investigating newly emerging enterprises within the context of social innovation and social enterprises, as well as open innovation. His interest has also expanded in studying the issues of NTMs, mainly regulatory and procedural requirements that serve as a barrier for firms to integrate into the Global Value Chain. He has also worked as a consultant for international organizations such as UNCTAD, UNIDO, UNESCO, UNEP, ERIA, OECD as well as governmental organizations in Malaysia. He has published articles in international journals - Economics of New Technology and Innovation, Policy Modelling, as well as book chapters and books on industrial development and innovation. He is the recipient of various national and international grants – to name a few - European Union Horizon 2020 and IDR, Canada, among others. His work is widely quoted in government policy documents contributing to numerous policy changes. He has contributed to the Malaysian regulatory reform efforts, STI and Industrial policy development at national as well as state level. His work via Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Economic Planning Unit, Academic of Sciences, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, MIGHT, Prime Minister’s Department, Malaysian Productivity Corporation and Institute Darul Ridzuan (state level) was instrumental in making the policy changes. His engagement with the industry are mainly in the form of undertaking studies and providing expert opinions. He has received various awards, e.g., excellence in teaching award and outstanding paper award from Emerald and Elsevier. Details of his current projects as follows: (1) Catching-up along the GVC: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/214786/factsheet/en (2) Regional Economic Corridors: http://www.crisea.eu/researchers/chandran-vgr

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.