Dr. Norlisah is a Visiting Professor of Radiology, at the Department of Biomedical Imaging and is currently a consultant neuroradiologist at Subang Jaya Medical Centre. She graduated from the University of Malaya with an MBBS and obtained her FRCR in London. She has received her radiology training at Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, and has her neurointerventional training at Bicetre Hospital in Paris. Her main research contribution has been in neuroimaging. She was one of the recipients of the Merdeka Awards in 2008. Professor Dr Norlisah has published over 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and oversees over 100 scientific papers. She has also organized and directed several workshops on neuroradiology imaging and serves as an expert team member for the IAEA.  She is currently the Past President of the College of Radiology, Academy of Medicine of Malaysia (COR), and  Malaysian Society of Radiologists (MyRad), and also currently serves as Executive Councilor of the Asian Oceanian Society of Radiology

  Dr Vilashini Somiah is a feminist anthropologist from Sabah, Malaysia, and a Senior Lecturer in the Gender Studies Programme at Universiti Malaya. She holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore, an MA from Ohio University, an MRes from Universiti Malaya, and a BA from Universiti Malaya. Her research centres on underrepresented narratives of women, migrants, and interior Bornean communities, with a particular focus on marginality, survival, and lived political realities. She is co-editor of Revisiting Covid-19 in Malaysia: Plight and Perseverance (UM Press, 2023) and Sabah from the Ground: The 2020 Elections and the Politics of Survival (SIRD/ISEAS, 2021). Her first single-authored monograph, Irregular Migrants and the Sea at the Borders of Sabah, Malaysia: Pelagic Alliance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), received the Universiti Malaya Award for Outstanding Achievement (ACUM) for Best Social Science Book and has gained international recognition. She is currently completing her fourth book on the lives and resilience of Bornean women, under contract with University of Hawaii Press. Dr Somiah was a Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics in 2024, supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and SEANNET, where she researched Indigenous women entrepreneurs in Sabah and forms of entrepreneurial resilience in the post–Covid-19 period. She was also an ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute Visiting Fellow in 2025, focusing on subaltern politics in East Coast Sabah in the lead-up to the 2025 Sabah state elections. She currently serves as a Harvard Asia Center Associate (2025–2026) and was elected to the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), where she will serve until 2028. In 2026, she was awarded the Greenberg Chair Visiting Scholar Bursary at the University of Ottawa. Beyond academia, she writes widely on Malaysia’s socio-political landscape and is co-founder of the Datum Initiative, a regional research observatory working at the intersection of data, justice, and inclusive socio-economic transformation in Southeast Asia. To know more about her works as a scholar and with Datum visit www.vilashinisomiah.com and www.datum-initiative.com      

Dr. Ramasamy earned her PhD in Clinical Medicine Research Programme (specialisation: human embryonic stem cell research) from the Department of Surgery and Cancer, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London, UK. She is heading the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory, Department of Molecular Medicine, a research group focussing on Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cell Technology and Cancer Stem Cell research. Her passion for developing and driving industrial partnerships has steered to a number of successful MOAs and collaborative endeavours through her management of, including, Cell & Molecular Biology Laboratory (CMBL), Central Research Laboratories (CRL) Faculty of Medicine (FOM). During her leadership role as head of the Internationalisation Unit, FOM (IUFOM), many collaborative and networking activities were embarked at the national and international arena paving the path towards excellence in the research and academic portfolio of the faculty and university. She also has been serving the Industrial and Community Engagement (UMICE) portfolio as the chief liaison officer for FOM. Dr. Ramasamy has been actively engaged in stem cell research for more than a decade now and recently embarked on cancer stem cell research, the research field that she has so much passion. Her research group has set their focus to strive for innovative and creative cutting edge research in developing effective stem cell therapy and target cancer stem cells by developing scientific programs of exceptional merit in collaboration with multiple institutions and industries at national and international levels. She has been leading and involved in many research programmes/grants at national and international levels. She has been invited to present the research findings in many national and international meetings as keynote and invited speaker. Her passion for bringing the impact of regenerative research in Malaysia to a great height is very much evident through her leadership role as the President of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society of Malaysia (TESMA) [2015-2019], Advisory Committee for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) World Congress 2021 and many other national and international meetings. As the founding advisor of the Malaysian Society for Extracellular Vesicles (MySEV) and Co-founder of the Innovation Forum-Kuala Lumpur (IFKL) Chapter, she is aspired to build the network with international institutions and societies. Collaborative Intelligence is what Dr. Ramasamy firmly believed in.