Started his research career in the think tank sector, Dr. Lee Chee Leong (Karl) is attracted to the rise of non-traditional diplomacy in the international order today. Such appeal has taken Dr. Lee into new research horizons that started with his Monash University's doctoral research on the Chinese sub-state diplomacy in China-ASEAN economic cooperation. With constructive supervision by Professor Helen Nesadurai and Associate Professor Kuik Cheng Chwee, Dr. Lee completed his doctoral thesis that unravels how a faraway and least developed sub-state of Guangxi managed to overcome its own hurdles, navigate the complexities within the Chinese state and become the frontline actor in China-ASEAN economic cooperation.  Following his doctoral completion, Dr. Lee's research on non-traditional diplomacy has expanded into Taiwan’s quasi-state diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Such quest has led him spending at great length in comprehending the concept of soft power, a concept that finds its relevance to Taiwan, which has no official diplomatic with Southeast Asia but is heavily connected to the region and has to rely on soft power in its engagements with these Southeast Asian nations. By comparing different case studies of Taiwan's quasi-state engagement within Southeast Asia, Dr. Lee has developed the soft power diffusion process to explain how such phenomenon operates in the real world. His ongoing and incoming research projects include Unpacking ‘De-risking’ China in the Indo-Pacific Region: Economic Statecraft (ES) & Geoeconomics, Taiwan's New Southbound Policy (NSP) and NSP+: The Domestic-International Dichotomy, The Taiwanese Connections in Nvidia's Global AI Supply Chain and Taiwan and Ireland: The Story of Two Tech Powerhouses.  To date, Dr. Lee was the recipient of several scholarships and fellowships in Malaysia and overseas: University of Malaya’s Graduate Fellowship (2010-2011); Monash University’s Merit Scholarship (2016-2019); Chinese Government Scholarship (2018-2019); and Taiwan Fellowship (2020). Prior to his appointment as Senior Lecturer at the Institute of China Studies (ICS), he was the Visiting Scholar at Guangxi University for Nationalities (GXUN) (2018-2019), Taiwan Fellow at National Chengchi University (NCCU) (2020) and Associate Fellow at ICS UM (2016-2019). He welcomes any potential PhD candidate who would like to work on Taiwan-Southeast Asia relations, comparative cases of ES between Asia and Europe, US-China-ASEAN semiconductor geoeconomics and case studies of donut economies in Asia. He is also willing to discuss with potential doctoral candidates on proposals related to the Chinese sub-state (provincial and city) diplomacy toward ASEAN, comparative cases of sub-state diplomacy between Asia and Europe as well as conceptual innovations of sub-state diplomacy vis-a-vis soft power.     

Siti Zaidah Zainuddin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Language. Her primary research interests include genre analysis in both written and spoken academic discourse and the incorporation of corpus linguistics method in academic and professional discourse. In the field of language learning, she works on second language writing using several perspectives and frameworks and teacher-learner interaction.  Her main publications address various topics on academic discourse practices including language and rhetorical strategies in oral defense and thesis writing by postgraduate learners, corrective feedback, and teacher agency in online classrooms. Other publications are on graduate employability and sociolinguistics. Zaidah holds several research grants focusing on genre studies in academic and legal discourse and teacher agency in language classrooms. She has taught both the undergraduate and postgraduate programs including Research Methodology, Fundamentals of Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, and Introduction to Sociolinguistics.  She is a member of the Asia-Pacific LSP & Professional Communication Association, Malaysia Association of Modern Languages and Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics and has presented in international conferences namely LSPPC and ALAK. In addition to teaching and research, Zaidah has served as an undergraduate (UG) program coordinator, Industrial Training coordinator for the English Language Department and the coordinator and consultant for various language programs with local and international institutions and organizations. She is currently the Deputy Dean (Student Affairs and Alumni).

BIOGRAPHY : Dr. Chong Pan Pan is highly qualified with B.Sc. (Hons) in Microbiology (2001), M.Sc. in Biochemistry (2004) and completed her Ph.D. in Tissue Engineering (2013). After that, she worked as a post-doctoral research fellow (2013-2016) and was later inducted as a senior lecturer (2016-present) at the National Orthopaedic Centre of Excellence in Research and Learning (NOCERAL), Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya (UM), Malaysia. Additionally, she is in charge of setting up the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Laboratory in NOCERAL. She has also been put in charge of the newly provided clinical service using platelet-derived extracellular vesicles (P-EVs) to treat lateral epicondylitis, plantar fasciitis, osteochondral defect, delayed union, knee osteoarthritis, etc. The P-EVs service is provided in the University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) and the University Malaya Specialist Centre (UMSC). Her research interest involves the current and innovative area of tissue engineering and manipulating adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for future use as biological therapies for poorly regenerating tissues. Her work focuses on driving the adult MSCs from bone marrow, peripheral blood, and adipose tissue along chondrogenic lineages for later transplantation to replace worn-out joint cartilage in patients suffering from joint disorders, including trauma or osteoarthritis. To attest to her work, Dr. Chong has published in several high-quality (Q1/high impact factor) peer-reviewed journals and presented her works extensively and globally at numerous international conferences. At that time, she also won several awards, including top prizes at the regional level, such as the Young Investigator Awards, Young Investigator Best Paper Award, L’Oréal Malaysia for Women in Science, Best Poster/Oral Presentations and travel fellowships, etc. In addition, she has participated in several biotechnology exhibitions and business idea competitions. Furthermore, she won many innovation awards for her work on MSCs and P-EVs as biological therapies for tissue regenerations. She has also developed intellectual property related to the novel work, which has been successfully patented.