Professor Dr Ilhaamie is serving at the Department of Syariah and Management, Academy of Islamic Studies, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.  She is currently the Editor in Chief for Online Journal of Islamic Management and Finance (OJIMF). She obtained her PhD at USM, MBA from UKM and BBA, IIUM.  Her current research interests are human resource management, entrepreneurship, service quality and Islamic management.  To date, she has authored and co-authored books, book chapters, journal, newspaper articles and conference papers. She has presented her papers in UAE, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Turkey, Cambodia, Australia, Korea, Thailand, Spain, Italy and UK. Four of her papers have won best paper award at the international conferences. She also had been a key note speaker for two international conferences at Singapore and Malaysia. Her research teams also won diamond, silver and bronze medals in research poster competitions locally and internationally. Furthermore, she was awarded as Visiting Professor at Universitas Muhammadiyah, Yogyakarta in 2024, Visiting Fellow at University of Wollongong, Australia and Universiti Malaysia Kelantan in 2013 and Visiting Scholar at International Islamic University Malaysia in 2019. Due to her excellent work service, she was bestowed with Excellence Service Awards in 2003, 2010 and 2018 respectively, and a Certificate of Excellence Service from University of Malaya in 2011.  Due to her passion in research, she is registered with Global Agency Research, International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology for life time member, Migration Research Center as an associate member and Islamic Management Center as Head of researchers.  On top of that, she was appointed as a panel reviewer/assessor for research grants, university education programs, international conferences, books, theses, article journals and promotion applications locally such as MQA and internationally such as OECD.  She also served as the Head of Department that she affiliated with from 2002 to 2003 and 2008 till 2011, PhD programme Coordinator from 2014 till 2016 and Head of Unit of Leadership and Wellbeing, ADeC from 2021 to 2022 where she organized webinars and 4 national conferences relating to moderation, Islamic entrepreneurship, Islamic finance and Muslim intellectuals.  Prior to that, she was the External Relation Coordinator in 2001. She also had trained government officers pertaining to moderation leadership in 2018 at INTAN. She was also a consultant for Ministry of Human Resource in 2024. Due to her passion in human resource management, she is registered as Associate Member at Malaysian Institute of Human Resource Management and Majlis Profesor Negara.

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. Taking Malaysia as the first case study of Taiwan's soft power in the region, Dr. Lee is developing the third intervening variable correlating both Taiwanese soft power resources and outcomes, in his course of providing a dynamical explanation for such phenomenon. For the coming years, his research focus and publications will be on the different areas featuring Taiwan-Malaysia and Taiwan-Southeast Asia cooperation such as digital social innovation (DSI) for climate change, industry-based education/training programmes, smart cities, tourism, digital democracy, agriculture, public health and medicine, ornamental aquaculture and aquascape. 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) (2018-10992019), 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, Taiwan's soft power in Southeast Asia and Taiwan-Malaysia DSI cooperation for climate change. He is also willing to discuss with potential doctoral candidates on proposals related to the Chinese sub-state (provincial) diplomacy toward ASEAN, China's soft power in ASEAN, Southeast Asian sub-state diplomacy, comparative cases of sub-state diplomacy around the world and conceptual innovation of sub-state diplomacy as well as soft power. 

Rusnah S. D. Hussen, PhD: Studied Applied Chemistry at the University of Malaya and obtained MSc and PhD in Material Science and Nanotechnology. The scientific work covers the preparation of renewable resource derived surfactants and their molecular self-assembly related to drug carriers for life science applications. Besides physical investigations of self-assembling materials, the research is emphasizing on the development of surfactant formulations for specific applications, e.g. water-oil emulsions and vesicles for medical applications.  The research also includes metallomesogens for molecular switch applications related to liquid crystalline behaviour. Investigations cover spectroscopy, physical measurements at the nanoscale, optical polarising microscopy and systematic surface studies.