Prof. Dr. Chan Kok Gan is a distinguished microbiologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges molecular biology, genomics, microbial communication, and biosafety law. He is currently a Professor at University of Malaya, where he leads research in microbial genomics, quorum sensing, quorum quenching, genome biology, next-generation sequencing, biosafety laws and intellectual property law in biotechnology. His contributions span genomics, microbial communication, and conceptual innovation rather than single isolated discoveries.  Prof. Chan holds double Bachelor and Master degrees in Microbiology and laws, and PhD in Molecular Microbiology, with a rare combination of science and law. Prof. Chan is prolific researcher,  with >485 WoS WoS publications in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Communications. His work has garnered tens of thousands of citations (e.g., his Google Scholar profile shows >27,650 citations, h index 83). He received fundings gloablly, eg. Malaysia Toray Science Foundation research grant, >15 French Fellowships, Hubert Curien Partnership-Hibiscus, SEAOHUN Award, UK Prime Minister’s Initiative II grant, 3 China Governments grants, JSPS Award and many Malaysia fundings.  Prof. Chan has received numerous research awards and recognitions, including a consistent ranking in Research.com’s listings of Top Microbiologist and and Leader in Biology/biochemistry in Malaysia; Malaysia Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) Science and Technology Award, JSPS Award. He was listed as the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University/Scopus in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 in both categories of “Current Year” and “Career”. He is even listed as World’s Top 0.1% Scientist by ScholarGPS.com, and ranked First in the categories of “quorum quenching”, “genomes” , “multidrug resistant pathogens” by Google Scholar. Prof. Chan made several first discoveries in Malaysia and globally, including (i) introducing the concept of, and coining, bacterial “signalling confusion”; (ii) coexistence of quorum sensing and quorum quenching in some bacteria, and (iii) quorum quenching molecules from Malay, Chinese and Indian medicinal herbs and secured several patents,  (iv) characterising novel quorum sensing and quenching genes, (v) novel bacterial genus and species, (vi) he published Malaysia’s first complete bacterial genome 13 years ago when next-generation sequencing was still globally scarce. Prof. Chan is elected Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (FASc) in 2017, and fellowships in other international learned academies. A novel bacterial species of a novel genus was named in honoured of Prof Chan’s contribution in microbiology:  Chania multitudinisentens gen. nov., sp. nov. Prof. Chan is world’s leading expert in bacterial quorum sensing, quorum quenching, genome biology, biosafety laws and whole genome sequencing. After publishing the first bacterial complete genome in 2013, Prof Chan then pioneered into multi-OMICs technology, providing a new dimension of research in microbiology and genome biology. To date, Prof. Chan is the leading expert in NGS, multi-OMICs (genome, plasmidome, resistome, virome, oncogenome, transcriptome, methylome, microbiome, metagenome, lipidome, metabolome).

Dr. Ali Fauzi's research interests revolve around various topics, including social media, digital activism, information literacy, and scholarly communications. He has published several articles in reputable journals, such as Library Information Science Research, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, and Information & Management. Apart from his research work, He is actively involved in teaching and administrative duties. Currently, he serves as the program coordinator for the Masters of Information Science Program and supervises masters and PhD students.

Dr. Zawawi Ismail is an Associate Professor and previously the Dean of the Faculty of Education, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He received his Bachelor Degree in Arabic Language & Literature (Major), Shariah (Minor) from Yarmouk University, Jordan, Post Graduate Diploma of Education from International Islamic University Malaysia, Master in Arabic Education and obtained his Ph.D. in the field of Education from the National University of Malaysia 2008. His research interests include Arabic & Islamic Education Curriculum, Teacher Education, Muslim Minority Education,  and Quranic Language Education. He has published articles in international and national journals,  books and other publications. Dr. Zawawi has contributed a lot to society and he is also active in several NGOs and one of the founders of Yayasan As-Syafie which is focusing on developing Islamic Boarding School in Cambodia and other educational activities in Indonesia and Malaysia.