Dr Sanjay Rampal was appointed Executive Director of the Department of Research Development under the Office of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Innovation), Universiti Malaya in March 2025. He is a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health and a Public Health Physician at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya. Dr Rampal was medically trained in India and served in the Ministry of Health, Malaysia from 1998 to 2005. The clinical experiences from his early medical career helped him realize that treating one patient at a time was insufficient and that more could be done by intervening at a population level. He improved his basic epidemiology and biostatistics knowledge by completing an MPH degree in 2004 from Harvard University. He joined Universiti Malaya in 2005, intending to strengthen the research skills of the Malaysian medical and public health community. He completed his PhD in Epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University in 2014. He was Certified in Public Health (CPH) by the US National Board of Public Health Examiners in 2013. Dr Rampal’s research has focused primarily on the epidemiology and prevention of cardiovascular disease. He has investigated the etiological and prognostic roles of various factors with diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These factors include gender, ethnicity, nutrition, obesity, metabolic-associated fatty liver disease, dyslipidemia, and other structural determinants of health. He has further investigated the role of these traditional cardiovascular risk factors in cancer development. He hopes to leverage this information further to design and implement better prevention programs that reduce the number of new patients our healthcare system sees. In recent years, he has applied his epidemiological expertise to communicable diseases. He investigated the roles of Obesity and Diabetes on the prognosis of Dengue Severity. His methodological interests include improving research methodology, biostatistics, epidemiological designs, regression models, causal inference, multiple imputations, measurement error, and propensity scoring. Dr Rampal lectures in epidemiology, biostatistics, and research methods at Universiti Malaya. He has supervised 21 Doctoral, 10 4-year Master of Public Health, and 35 Master’s candidates to completion. He actively supervises 10+ postgraduate students. Since 2005, he has provided many methodological and biostatistical consultations to graduate students and clinical researchers. Dr. Rampal has published 89 WOS and 94 SCOPUS papers (h-index: 32 WOS, 39 SCOPUS; WOS Citations without Self-citations: 17,330) and supervised over 65 postgraduate students.   Dr Rampal is a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine Malaysia and was the past honorary secretary for the College of Public Health Medicine from 2006-2009 and an executive member from 2016 to 2024. He has chaired the Public Health Medicine Specialty Education Subcommittee at the Malaysian Medical Council since 2020. He was also a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for Health Technologies Economic Evaluation, Ministry of Health Malaysia, from 2017 to 2024. He had previously chaired the Malaysian National Conjoint Committee for Public Health Postgraduate Medical Program and the Public Health Society of the Malaysian Medical Association.   Dr Rampal heads the Western Pacific Regional Training Centre of the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases(TDR). He is also an advisory member of the Global Health Program of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities and an international advisory committee member of the ASEAN University Network Health Promotion Network. He is also a member of the International Epidemiology Association and a past member of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and the Society for Epidemiologic Research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Rampal improved the prevention and control of COVID-19 through active research and translation. He had actively communicated with the public through the media on COVID-19 issues. He was a member of the following committees: 1) Science and Technology Expert Panel for Disaster Risk Reduction under the Health and Emerging Threat Cluster of the Malaysia Disaster Management Agency; 2) National COVID-19 Epidemiological Analysis Task Force under the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation; 3) AFC Covid-19 Advisory Expert Group; 4) UMMC COVID-19 Task Force; and 5) the Journal of Global Health Science Commission on COVID-19 Response.

Started primary school in St Bernadette's Convent, Batu Gajah, Perak. Went on to secondary school in SMK Convent, Batu Gajah, Perak. Completed Form Six in SMK Sultan Yussuf, Batu Gajah, Perak. Started working career as a college trained secondary school teacher after attending professional training at Lembah Pantai Teachers' Training College and Ilmu Khas Teacher's Training College. Completed one year speacialist course in  Ilmu Khas Teacher's Training College in 1995. Completed Degree in TESL, minor Moral Education followed by Masters in Education, majoring in Moral Education in University of Malaya. Completed PhD in Education in Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Completed post doctoral studies in Inclusive and Critical Educational Psychology in The Waikato University, New Zealand. Strongly passionate about helping teachers to upgrade themselves in the teaching profession through training, research and publication in holistic education and service learning. In 2015 after the AME Conference in Santos, Brazil, have been elected as the Elected EXCO for two years. It is an honour to be the first Malaysian to be in the AME EXCO which comprises mostly renounced academics from Europe and North America. Was the Director for Centre in Research for International and Compartive Education (CRICE) from 2017 until 2022. CRICE focuses on international and comparative education in terms of research, collaboration and publication. Currently, I am holding the post of SULAM @ Service Learning Malaysia-University for Society coordinator in Universiti Malaya. Been working diligently with the internal Service Learning coordinators from the 16 faculties in Universiti Malaya. Initiating Service Learning International for 21 Century Education.  

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, Universiti 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, Universiti Malaya. His passion for teaching and research led him to join the Faculty of Dentistry, here at Universiti 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, Universiti 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, Sree Balaji Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, India, Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals, Chennai, India and Dr. D.Y. Patil Dental College and Hospitals, Pune, India. An ardent researcher, he has 81 papers in indexed international peer reviewed journals, with a h-index of 18. He is involved in numerous research projects and has supervised PhD, Masters and graduate research students for the past 13 years. He is also a Research fellow at MAHSA University, Malaysia. 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.