Dr Nishakanthi Gopalan is a Senior Lecturer at the Medical Humanities and Ethics Unit (MedHEU), a newly established unit within the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya (UM). She is a biotechnologist by training with a PhD in research ethics and policy implication particularly looking at stem cell technology. During this time, she published her key findings in several reputable high-impact bioethics journals. Dr Nisha is the Programme Coordinator of the Master of Health Research Ethics (MOHRE), a programme developed incollaboration with the Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University (JHU). Besides teaching in MOHRE, she also provides ethics lectures in other programmes in the faculty. Dr Nisha also contributes as a member of the Universiti Malaya Research Ethics Committee (UMREC) as well as an external member of the Universiti Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) Medical Research Ethics Committee. She is one of the instructors for the Introduction to Health Research Ethics, an online course in FutureLearn. She also facilitates the APRU Health Research Ethics course. Additionally, Dr. Nisha is an editorial board member of the Asian Bioethics Review. Dr Nisha’s research interest includes different aspects of ethics such as bioethics, research and clinical ethics on diverse topics ranging from emerging technologies (such as regenerative medicine, stem cells, and genetic testing), health research, and aesthetic medicine. She is an expert in qualitative research methods such as in depth interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), inductive and deductive analysis, thematic analysis,grounded theory, as well as narrative and scoping reviews. Currently, Dr Nisha is working on a bioethics training grant (Fogarty International Centre, NIH US) with Johns Hopkins University (JHU),  the ethics of genetic testing among Parkinson’s patients (USMC Care Fund), ethics and governance in AI in healthcare and understanding the ethics committee deliberarion process. She is constantly on the look out for collaborations with local/regional/international projects on various topics involving ethics. 

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Patricia Nora Riget is a senior lecturer at the Department of Asian and European Languages, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya. She was formerly the Head of Department of Asian and European Languages, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya (2012-2016) and also the Deputy Director of the International Relations Centre, Universiti Malaya (2019 - 2022). Her achievements include being conferred the Knight of the Order of Academic Palms (Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques) by the Government of France in 2019. The award recognises Dr. Patricia’s contribution to the strengthening of cooperation in the French language and culture between France and Malaysia. Patricia received her Bachelor and Master of Arts (Teaching of French as a Foreign Language) from Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, France and her Master 2 Research and Doctorate in Language Sciences (Teaching of French as a Foreign Language) from Université de Strasbourg, France. She has to-date published more than 30 papers in respectable journals, books and conference proceedings both locally and internationally. Her research interests are in the areas of didactics of foreign languages, language education and ethnolinguistic. Her secondary interest is in the area of internationalisation of higher education institutions. 

  Dr. Choo currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Malaysia. She obtained her B.Sc. (Hons. Class I) in Chemistry in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2004 from the University of Malaya, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Mississippi, USA. Her international research experience includes visiting scholar appointments at the National Tsinghua University (Taiwan), the IBM Almaden Research Center (USA), and the Institute for Molecular Science (Japan). Dr. Choo’s research focuses on the discovery of bioactive compounds from Malaysia’s ethnomedicinal flora, integrating traditional knowledge with modern drug discovery strategies. She investigates underexplored native species using phytochemical profiling, bioactivity assays, advanced spectroscopic techniques, and computational approaches such as molecular docking, pharmacophore modelling, network pharmacology, and DFT calculations to support target identification, lead prioritisation, and structural elucidation. This integrative framework proved particularly effective during the COVID-19 pandemic in the identification of potential SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors and has since been extended to diverse chemical scaffolds relevant to infectious diseases, oncology, and neuroinflammation. Dr. Choo has published over 100 scientific papers and book chapters and holds an H-index of 24 (Web of Science) and 25 (Scopus). She serves as an Editorial Board Member of Biomedicines and Traditional Medicine Research. In addition to her research activities, Dr. Choo is actively involved in teaching and student mentorship, delivering undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Natural Product Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Organic Synthesis, with a strong commitment to developing students’ critical thinking and research capabilities.