Rumana Akhter Saifi, MSS, MA, MPH (Epid-Biostatistics), PhD (Demography) Area of Interest: Demography, Implementation Research, Population and Reproductive Health, Epidemiology and Bio-statistics   CAREER SUMMARY: I come with 17 years of experience in research, teaching, and research administration. I am a Faculty at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine Faculty of Medicine (FOM), Universiti Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My present teaching portfolio at FOM includes (1) Medical statistics (2) Research Methodology (3) Practicum in Health Research Ethics (4) Qualitative Inquiry In Public Health (5) Ethics, Law, and Health (6) Principles and Methods of Social Epidemiology and (7) Implementation Research. Over the years, I have also been developing and teaching courses on the Philosophy of Health Systems and Health Policy Research, Applied Statistics in Social Research, and Time Series Analysis. I am committed to expanding the local reach of Implementation Science and have been serving as a Faculty Scholar for the Malaysian Implementation Science Training (MIST) program, a collaborative effort of UM and Yale University, US. As the former Head and Associate Head of CERiA: Centre of Excellence for Research in Infectious Diseases and AIDS. Faculty of Medicine (FoM), Universiti Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I have overseen the entire research portfolio of CERiA. CERiA has been the leading Centre in Malaysia conducting HIV and infectious disease-related research in various fields including bio-medical, social-behavioral, clinical, and implementation research. In my role, I have overseen the progress of research projects starting from grant writing to IRB submission, to data collection, to analysis, to dissemination, ensuring efficiency and smooth workflow. Additionally, my responsibilities include review of grant agreement(s) to ensure compliance; review of financial statements; and preparation of financial audit, and program reports. During my time at CERiA, it has been identified as the most productive research centre of the Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya that conducts innovative and interdisciplinary research combining epidemiological, biomedical, and socio-behavioral approaches, focusing HIV prevention and treatment in key populations. With an excellent academic background, I started my career with ICDDR, B in Bangladesh. I stood 9th in Secondary and 6th in Higher Secondary Examination in Dhaka Board, Bangladesh. Over time, I specialized in mixed-method research. My major research expertise includes designing and conducting primary research projects, monitoring of outcomes, evaluation of programs, scaling-up interventions, analyzing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data, designing and conducting large data collection surveys, managing and analyzing large data sets, and data trend analysis. For the last 17 years, my research focus has been on population health and health policy across diversified cultural contexts from cross-border areas of irregular migrants to conservative Muslim rural areas to urban metropolitan to urban slums to hard-to-reach areas; and across various disadvantaged population groups from young adolescents in early marriage to men who have sex with men (MSM) to sex workers to transgender to injection drug users to prisoners to fishermen. Working in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and New Zealand for the last 17 years gave me the opportunity to understand both developing and developed country settings. I’m acting as a faculty member of the Master of Health Research Ethics Program, jointly developed by Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, and the Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center. I’m acting as a faculty scholar on a Fogarty Science of Implementation Training program jointly developed by Yale School of Public Health and Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, and Universiti Malaya, Malaysia which ultimately aims to create a regional implementation research center hub in Malaysia. My academic background is a blend of Demography, Public Health, Epidemiology, and Social Science. I hold a Doctor of Philosophy in Demography and Masters in (1) Public Health (Epidemiology and Bio-statistics) (2) Population and Reproductive Health Research and (3) Social Science.

Dr. Anand Ramanathan graduated with a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from Saveetha Dental College & Hospital under The Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, Chennai, India in 2002. He then pursued his Master of Dental Surgery, specializing in Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology at Rajah Muthiah Dental Collage & Hospitals, Annamalai University, Chidambaram, India in 2009. He then migrated to Malaysia where he did his spouse program at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya to obtain his practicing license in Malaysia in 2011. From 2009 to 2011 during his spouse program he was actively involved in research with Oral Cancer Research & Coordinating Center (OCRCC), Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya. His passion for teaching and research led him to join the Faculty of Dentistry, here at University Malaya and he has since become a valuable senior lecturer and clinical specialist in the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Clinical Sciences. He has been the module head of various integrated modules such as oral malignancy & potentially malignant disorders, tumours and tumour-like lesions of the jaws and undergraduate discipline coordinator for oral medicine and oral pathology. He has been a member of curriculum review for undergraduate and postgraduate programs in oral pathology and oral medicine at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya. He is also a trainer of the OralDetect which is a training and calibration program for early detection of oral cancer and oral potentially malignant disorders. He has successfully conducted OralDetect program in Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Nepal and India training undergraduate students, general dentist, postgraduate students and various specialist in dentistry. He is an adjunct faculty member in Faculty of Dentistry, University of Puthisastra, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tagore Dental College and Hospital, Sri Ramachandra University Dental College and Hospital and Sree Balaji Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, India. An ardent researcher, he has 54 papers in indexed international peer reviewed journals, with a h-index of 11. He is involved in numerous research projects and has supervised PhD, Masters and graduate research students for the past 10 years. He was awarded the outstanding researcher in Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology at the 3rd Venus International Healthcare Awards 2020 (VIHA, 2020) by the Venus International Foundation. He also received the Sijil Perkhidmatan Cemerlang (Certificate of Excellent Service) by University of Malaya in 2021. He is currently an active member of OCRCC, Malaysian Association for Orofacial Diseases and Asian Society of Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology. His research interest are oral cancer, oral potentially malignant disorders, oral pathology, oral medicine, immunohistochemistry, adjunct diagnostic tools, natural products and drug toxicity, oncoimmunology, homeobox genes and odontogenic lesions. 

I am a researcher in human genetics specialising in copy number variations (CNVs) and the impacts of such genetic variations in human health. I am equipped with a comprehensive research background which include biotechnology (BSc), human molecular genetics, population genetics, genomics, cytogenetics, molecular and cellular biology, bioinformatics, high-performance computing and biostatistics (MSc, PhD). My aim is always to promote wellness and lifestyle solutions through scientifically-driven values and tools in providing personalised disease screenings, therapeutics and preventive strategies, specifically using structural genomic variations (and other genetic variations) as potential therapeutic and screening targets for non-communicable diseases, also known as NCDs (i.e. cancer, obesity, diabetes). As an educator, I always believe in the importance of education to create long-lasting awareness in health.  Specifically, I am interested to investigate differential patterns of structural genomic variations in order to identify the plausible causes, or origins of NCDs in our Malaysian population. I am fascinated by the diversity of our ethnic composition and intrigued to see the genetic patterns of such diverse background. Given the opportunity and the right collaborations, it is hoped that together, we could delineate the genomic architecture of our unique population, which could eventually provide more informative data that are beneficial in our fight against such diseases. My previous work thus far has involved the integration of various bioinformatics components in genetic analytics, and I would like to continue doing so since big data technology is becoming a norm in current and future biological scientific research.