Dr Benedict Francis is an associate professor and consultant psychiatrist at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya and was selected for the Brightsparks scholarship to pursue his Masters in Psychological Medicine at his alma mater, the University of Malaya. Subsequently, he completed a fellowship program in Aged Healthcare Services at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, in 2019. Dr Benedict is one of the research leads at the Psychological Medicine Research Unit and has been involved as principal investigator and sub-investigator for several international, multi-centre clinical trials including the ESCAPE-TRD, REMISSIO, ASPIRE, SUSTAIN-3, ROUTE 6, and CONNEX-2 trials. He has also published in several international and regional peer-reviewed journals and presented in international congresses. Dr Benedict has and continues to exhibit stellar leadership in his field. He was part of the Ministry of Health’s  National Advisory Board committee that drafted the guidelines for prescribing and dispensing Esketamine, a novel adjunct antidepressant treatment. In addition, he has been part of several steering commitees that paved new directions in mental health. For example, he was appointed to be part of the Southeast Asian steering committee to develop a patient decision aid for people living with schizophrenia. He is also part of the regional Asia Pacific steering commitee to develop a module for cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS). In 2023, he received the Excellent Service Award from the University of Malaya in recognition of his contributions. Dr Benedict is regarded as a Key Opinion Leader in the field of treatment resistant depression and schizophrenia and is a regular invited speaker at both local and regional events. He is actively involved in several associations at various levels. He is a life member of the Malaysian Psychiatric Association and a corresponding member of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He is also a member of the Asian College of Neuropsychopharmacology. Recently he was inducted as Fellow of the Pacific Rim College of Psychiatrists. 

Lip Yee Por is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. A Senior Member of IEEE, he is a recognized expert in security and machine learning. His research interests include AI, deep learning, support vector machines (SVM), IoT, authentication, computer vision, blockchain, cryptography, steganography, and watermarking. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in reputable international journals and has secured more than RM 7 million in competitive research funding as Principal Investigator. Prof. Por’s impactful contributions have earned him numerous national and international awards, and he is consistently recognized as one of the top-rated lecturers at FCSIT. In addition to his research and teaching excellence, he serves as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Public Health, Frontiers in Computer Science, and the Malaysian Journal of Computer Science, as well as Guest Editor for Applied Sciences. He is also an Editorial Board Member for CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua. He has held key leadership roles in national and international conferences as Program Chair, Technical Chair, and Local Chair, and serves as an external academic assessor for academic programs at TARUC, MMU, HELP, and APU. To date, he has delivered more than 20 keynote and invited speeches at national and international conferences.

Khong obtained his Bachelor’s Degree and PhD in Sports Sciences from the University of Malaya. He has been working in exercise physiology labs since 2013,and from 2018 - 2019 he was a senior lecturer in the Department of Sports Sciences, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) University College, mainly lecturing on exercise physiology subjects as well as some sports psychology and motor control and learning courses. He began his new career, also as a senior lecturer, at his alma mater, University of Malaya, since 2020. He specialises in exercise physiology and exercise testing, particularly laboratory-based cardiovascular fitness (VO2max) test and isokinetic & isometric strength tests. His research field mainly involves usage of nutrition intervention to prevent exercise fatigue in both endurance exercise and muscular force demanding situations. He has also started to delve into works investigating effects of exercise on health conditions such as diabetes and sarcopenia. On the administration end, he is currently the program coordinator for the Master's Degree in Strength and Conditioning.