Awanis is an Associate Professor majoring in membrane technology and fabrication at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Malaya. She started working at UM as a lecturer since November 2004 and became a senior lecturer in 2011. She pioneered membrane fabrication research using phase inversion process in UM since 2011. Prior to that, she worked as a Plant Engineer at Hitachi Semiconductor Penang upon  completion of her Bachelor Degree sponsored by Monbusho Scholarship (currently known as MEXT Japan). She received a PhD from Imperial College London, Masters in Environmental Biotechnology from University of Manchester (UMIST) and a Bachelor Degree in Chemical Engineering from Osaka University, Japan. Sekolah Tun Fatimah, Johor Bahru is her alma mater. Awanis represented Malaysia in the ASEAN-US Science Prize for Women competition in 2014 due to her work in improving the availability and safe drinking water in ASEAN region through novel membranes. She was awarded Hitachi Research Fellowship by Hitachi Global Foundation in 2016 to perform research in collaboration with Membrane Research Centre, Kobe University and she received Yamaguchi University Visiting Scholar award and MEXT Global Networking award in partnership with Osaka University, both in 2019. Awanis was awarded the JSPS Bridge Fellowship Award in 2023 hosted by Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan. She was awarded a special grant in 2015 by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia through Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) special grant for disaster mitigation and prevention during flood using membrane technology. Awanis has been extensively involved in 16 research projects, in which she has been the Principal Investigator for 12 internal and external grants worth of more than RM1.5 million.  Awanis is a Chartered Engineer of Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK and a Professional Engineer of Board of Engineers Malaysia. She is currently an Exco of JSPS-JAAM and the member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia. Since 2004, Awanis served in a number of administrative positions including; chemical engineering undergraduate program coordinator, faculty auditor, undergraduate curriculum review committee, design project coordinator, lab coordinator, departmental quality manager, and the timetable coordinator. She has been the Head for the Center of Separation Science and Technology from January 2020 until December 2021.  Her recent research activities include 1. Membrane fabrication and modification 2. Membrane technology and separation 3. Separation processes 4. Water and wastewater treatment using membranes 5. Carbon dioxide capture using a membrane gas absorption process. Awanis has more than fifty published articles in ISI-indexed journals and she has presented papers in national and international conferences and seminars as a plenary speaker, invited speakers and oral presenters. Awanis is currently seconded at the Policy and Research Division, Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, where she can be reached via nurawanis.hashim@mohe.gov.my.  

Dr Geetha Govindasamy obtained her PhD from  Monash University, Australia, M.A from the International University of Japan, M.Phil from Queens' College, Cambridge University, UK.  She is an expert on  East Asian international relations. She teaches  courses related to East Asian regional affairs. Generally, she publishes more on inter-Korean issues and East Asian interactions. Her publications  can be found in the local and international journals, UM Press and other reputable publishers. Thus far, she has been a recipient of various research grants from Korea Foundation, Sumitomo Foundation and local funding.  Her networking experiences include academic exchanges at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea University, Institute of Far Easter Studies (IFES), Kyungnam University and the Graduate Institute, Geneva (IHEID).  Dr Govindasamy was also invited to attend the Study of the United States Institute (SUSI) Exchange programe for acadermics in 2013 and in 2019, she was invited by the  Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan to be part of an academic tour to Tokyo and Okinawa.  Dr Govindasamy is a member of  Malaysian Scholars on Korea (MASK) and  the Malaysia-Japan Association (MAJAS) and simultaneously is the  Managing Editor of Wilayah: International Journal of East Asian Studies. At present, she is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Cambodian Institute for Peace and Cooperation.

Dr. Adeleh Asemi Zavareh is a senior lecturer in the Department of Software Engineering, University of Malaya. She was conducting research in HCI and Human Decision Making Simulation area as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Department of Software Engineering, University of Malaya in 2015. Adeleh has received her Ph.D. from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, The University of Malaya under the prestigious MTCP Scholarship in 2014. She obtained her MSc from Pune University, India in 2008 and BSc from Ashrafi Esfahani University, Iran in 2006 respectively. Adeleh served as a lecturer and Assistant Professor at Esfahan University and Safahan Institute of Higher Education respectively, Esfahan, Iran since 2011. She received training in Modelling and Simulation and attended workshops on Big data and R-programming at the University of Malaya. She supervised more than 30 postgraduate students and taught both undergraduate and postgraduate computer science subjects. She joined the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya as a visiting research fellow in 2019 and as an affiliated senior lecturer since 2020. Her research lies at the intersection of decision analysis including simulation/prediction/evaluation and artificial intelligence. She has worked to improve the decision analysis by using theories from disparate areas and formulate the evaluations of different alternatives such as engineering methods and systems to multi-criteria decision analysis. The breadth of her research agenda spans theoretical analysis and systems development, and her research style is not only to develop decision-making techniques and analyze their formal guarantees but also to implement them for industries in the physical world. In addition, she has forged interdisciplinary alliances with experts in agriculture, software engineering, law, environmental science, and speech recognition. Since 2019 she has extended her area of research to the multi-criteria evaluation of big data and IoT techniques.