Mary J Marret is a paediatrician with a special interest in community paediatrics. She has been practising as a paediatrician for about thirty years after undergraduate and postgraduate training at the National University of Singapore. She is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur with a parallel clinical appointment as senior consultant paediatrician at the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). She has extensive experience in undergraduate and postgraduate training with active involvement in the development and implementation of the undergraduate and postgraduate paediatric curriculum at the Faculty of Medicine. Currently, she is the Paediatric Assessment Coordinator for undergraduate students in the University of Malaya Medical Programme (UMMP). As Faculty Advisor for clinical assessment, she helped to design the examination format for the UMMP Final Barrier Clinical Assessment, introduced innovations to run examinations through the Covid-19 pandemic, and continues to advise on further refinements post-pandemic. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, UK, and has been examiner for membership examinations conducted by the RCPCH for over a decade. In her roles as Chairman of the Child Protection Committee at the UM Medical Centre as well as Chair of the Child Protection Sub-committee of the Malaysian Paediatric Association, she has an interest in enhancing professional capacity and competence of professionals in the field of child protection within the institution as well as in the country. She provides consultation to a multidisciplinary team that performs assessments of children referred for suspected child maltreatment and conducts in-house training for doctors, nurses and social workers involved in this multi-disciplinary care. She has been invited by various organisations to provide education on child protection and to advise on laws, polices and service provision, including other local hospitals, educational institutions, government agencies, NGOs and various professional bodies. She is a member of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect and was part of the scientific committee for the 10th ISPCAN Asia Pacific Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect held in Kuala Lumpur. She was a member of an international committee of experts under the auspices of the World Health Organisation which developed guidelines for the health sector response to child maltreatment. Together with a fellow paediatrician, she pioneered the establishment of a paediatric developmental clinic at UMMC in the late 1990s, collaborating with the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine to address unmet needs of children with disabilities and developmental problems. This paved the way for junior colleagues to pursue training in developmental paediatrics, with the subsequent establishment of a Child Development Centre at UMMC. Her research interests are in child victimization across a variety of settings with publications in scientific journals and book chapters and presentations at local and international conferences. She has also been a reviewer for medical journals. She has collaborated in population-based research regarding the epidemiology of child maltreatment in Malaysia as well as the exposure of Malaysian adolescents to risks and victimization through their engagement with online digital technology. Her recent publications on abusive head trauma have examined adverse outcomes of mortality, disability and developmental problems as well as financial implications such as the cost of inpatient care. On behalf of the Malaysian Paediatric Association, she has written articles providing advice on child health which have been published in a local parenting magazine as well the local media. She utilises creative writing and music as channels to reflect on insights derived from her interaction with children.

Dr. Nur Kusaira is a dedicated plant biotechnology researcher with a deep passion for unlocking the therapeutic and nutritional potential of plant natural products. Her academic journey began with a Bachelor's degree in Plant Resource Science and Management from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in 2008, majoring in Plant Systematics. She was awarded the Best Undergraduate Thesis that year. She went on to earn a Master's in Healthcare Biotechnology from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), where she focused on in silico screening of phytocompounds against H5N1 and H1N1 influenza viruses under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Habibah Abd Wahab. In 2012, she undertook a research attachment at UC San Diego, where she conducted molecular dynamics simulations of plant-based inhibitors targeting the NS2B/NS3 protein of Dengue virus type 2 (DENV-2). Her career then led her to Malaysian Institute of Pharmaceuticals and Nutraceuticals (IPharm), where she managed the USM-RIKEN natural product discovery grant, working on the development of a comprehensive library of Malaysian plant extracts intended for diverse bioactivity screenings, laying the groundwork for systematic exploration of Malaysia’s phytochemical biodiversity. Though initially set to pursue her PhD at USM, Dr. Nur Kusaira was awarded an international PhD scholarship by Universiti Malaya and joined the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, under Prof. Dr Henrik Toft Simonsen. Her PhD work made headlines in plant synthetic biology, she pioneered the use of Physcomitrella patens for stable in vivo assembly of biosynthetic gene clusters, achieving the first stable plant-based production of artemisinin, a vital antimalarial drug, marking a breakthrough in sustainable pharmaceutical production. Her research continues at the intersection of plant science, biotechnology, and health. She focuses on: Functional Food Innovation: Developing plant-based bioactives with nutraceutical properties for preventive health and wellness. Drug Discovery: Leveraging computational tools to identify potent, selective plant-based inhibitors targeting cancer, viral and microbial proteins. Plant Synthetic Biology: Exploring plant platforms like moss and medicinal species for scalable biosynthesis of valuable therapeutic molecules. Dr. Nur Kusaira’s work reflects a commitment to sustainability, global health, and innovation paving the way for plant-derived therapeutics that are effective, affordable, and accessible worldwide.

Pei Soo ANG (PhD, Macq.) is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She was the Deputy Dean of Higher Degree (2022-2024) and Visiting Faculty at Universitas Negeri Yogjakarta (2022-2024). Her areas of research interest include disability and health discourses, critical disability studies, critical discourse studies, social semiotics and visual communication. Her current research work centers on characterizing disability and health discourses as represented in the Malaysian media, employing a critical semiotic theoretical approach and a multi-perspectival methodology.