Dr. Saturveithan Chandirasegaran is a Consultant Orthopaedic Spine Surgeon at Universiti Malaya with a strong academic and research portfolio in spine surgery. He completed MBBS (UM) in 2011, followed by Master of Orthopaedic Surgery (UM) in 2020, where he graduated as the Top Student of Universiti Malaya. He subsequently undertook Subspeciality Training in Orthopaedic Spine Surgery at University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) and Fellowship in Spine Surgery at National University Hospital (Singapore), gaining expertise in spinal deformity, complex spine disorders and advanced surgical techniques. He is an active contributor to the regional spine community and a committed member of several professional bodies, including AO Spine, Asia Pacific Spine Society (APSS) as a Life Member, Malaysian Spine Society (MSS), and the Malaysian Orthopaedic Association (MOA). He has received multiple international awards in recognition of his clinical research in spine surgery. His recent accolades include the English Presentation Award Gold Prize 2025 from the Japanese Society for Spine Surgery and Related Research, as well as the Presidential Best Research Award at the International Malaysian Spine Society Scientific Congress for 2 consecutive years, 2023 and 2024. He has been regularly invited as a speaker at major scientific meetings, including the AO Spine Asia Pacific International Spine Conference. As an academician, Dr. Saturveithan has authored over 23 publications in leading ISI-indexed spine journals and continues to be actively involved in clinical and translational spine research.

Academician Datuk Professor Dr Lai-Meng Looi is Malaysia’s inaugural National Distinguished Professor, positioned at  the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya (UM).  She holds a concurrent appointment as senior consultant histopathologist at the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC).    Professor Looi studied medicine as a Malaysian Federal Scholar at the University of Singapore (1970-1975), where she was a medalist in Pathology and Social Medicine, and won King Edward VII Hall awards for literary works, art forms and poetry.  She trained in Surgical Pathology at UM, Royal Postgraduate Medical School (UK) and Brigham and Woman’s Hospital, Boston, (USA) and defended her research doctorate (on amyloidosis) at UM.  She assumed the Chair of Pathology, UM at the age of 36 years and during her long academic career at UM has served as Department Head, Deputy Dean (Postgraduate), Chair of the Medical Centre Research Committee, representative to the Malaysian Medical Council, Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee of UMMC and UM’s Committee for External Academic Evaluators.  She continues to chair the UMMC-Medical Research Ethics Committee/ Institutional Review Board.  She has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, mainly on amyloidosis, nephropathology and oncopathology, is devoted to promoting a research and ethical culture among researchers, has delivered >500 guest lectures and conducts scientific writing workshops nationally and internationally. Professor Looi is a Foundation Fellow and Academician of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) and has served as Chief Censor and Scribe of the Academy of Medicine Malaysia.   She has served as  Editor-in-Chief of the Malaysian Journal of Pathology, on the International Editorial Advisory Boards of Pathology, Journal of Pathology, Human Pathology and Histopathology, is Founding Vice-President of the Association of Malaysian Medical Journal Editors, and chaired the Ethics and Editorial Policies Committee of Asia-Pacific Association of Medical Editors.   A Fellow of both Royal Colleges of Pathologists, UK (RCPath) and Australasia (RCPA), she served as Examiner and Advisor to both.  She is the Founding President of the College of Pathologists, Academy of Medicine Malaysia, and was instrumental in developing pathology laboratory accreditation for Malaysia, the Pathology Act and several National guidelines on medical laboratory practices.  In 2010 she was honoured RCPA Distinguished Fellow and Inaugural National Distinguished Professor (Profesor Ulung Negara).  She was President of the World Association of Societies of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine (WASPaLM) from 2013-2016, and chaired its Education Committee which focusses on capacity-building in countries-in-need.   She co-chaired the InterAcademy Medical Panel (now the InterAcademy Partnership for Health) for two elected terms (2010-2016) and currently represents ASM in its Executive Committee.   During her chairmanship, this global network of National Sciences and Medical Academies extended its initiatives into global health, the social determinants of health, urban health, and young physician leadership capacity-building. She chaired the ASM Newton-Ungku Omar Fund Committee for Bilateral Research Programmes with the Medical Research Council, UK. (2015-2018) and the 2019 MRC-Malaysia Joint Panel on Non-Communicable Diseases. She is a Member of the MRC (UK) Applied Global Health Research Board, and the InterAcademy Partnership Expert Working Group on Harnessing the World's Academies to combat predatory journals and conferences.  She is a Commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Diagnostics. Her contributions to research, education and medical science have been recognised with several accolades including the Panglima Jasa Negara (Datuk), Sri Indera Mahkota Pahang (Dato Indera), National Science Award, ASEAN Outstanding Scientist Award,  Merdeka Award 2016 (Health, Science and Technology category),  WASPaLM’s Gold-Headed Cane and Honorary Professor of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences-Peking Union Medical College. She was named in Stanford University's list of the World Top 2% Scientists 2022. 

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.