Dr. Murad Abdu Saeed is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of the English Language, Faculty of Language and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2016 and Master Degree in 2012 from the School of English Language Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). From 2019-2024, Dr. Murad worked as an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Translation, Qassim University. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral in the Department of the English Language, Faculty of Language and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya (2016-2018). His main research interests are applied linguistics, academic writing, educational technologies in writing, feedback, feedback dialogue and collaborative writing. His research papers appear in journals such as Language Learning & Technology, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Assessing Writing, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Computers & Compositions, the Language Learning Journal, Journal of Research & Method in Education and Asian Education and Development Studies.    

Associate Professor Dr. Nur Awanis Hashim is an Associate Professor specialising in membrane technology and fabrication at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Malaya (UM). She joined UM as a lecturer in November 2004 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2011. Since then, she has played a key role in developing membrane fabrication research at UM, particularly through the application of the phase inversion process. Before entering academia, Awanis worked as a Plant Engineer at Hitachi Semiconductor (Penang) after completing her Bachelor’s degree under the Monbusho Scholarship (now the MEXT Scholarship, Japan). Her academic training spans Japan and the United Kingdom, with a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Osaka University, a Master’s degree in Environmental Biotechnology from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), and a PhD from Imperial College London. She completed her secondary education at Sekolah Tun Fatimah, Johor Bahru. In 2014, she represented Malaysia in the ASEAN–US Science Prize for Women competition in recognition of her work on membrane-based approaches to improving access to safe drinking water in the ASEAN region. Her research career has also been strengthened through international collaborations supported by the Hitachi Research Fellowship (2016), the Yamaguchi University Visiting Scholar Award and MEXT Global Networking Award (2019), and the JSPS Bridge Fellowship Award (2023), hosted by Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan. Awanis received a special grant under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) in 2015 from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for research on disaster mitigation and flood prevention using membrane technology. She has been involved in 16 research projects and has served as Principal Investigator for 12 internal and external grants, with total funding exceeding RM1.5 million. She is a Chartered Engineer with the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK) and a Professional Engineer registered with the Board of Engineers Malaysia. She currently serves as an Executive Committee (Exco) member of JSPS–JAAM and is a member of the Board of Engineers Malaysia. Awanis has held various academic and administrative leadership positions at UM since 2004, including Head of the Centre for Separation Science and Technology (January 2020 – December 2021), undergraduate programme coordinator, curriculum review committee member, laboratory coordinator, and departmental quality manager. From 2023 to 2025, she was seconded to the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia as Deputy Undersecretary in the Policy and Research Division, where she headed the Research and Public–Private Research Network (PPRN) Section, comprising the Research Unit, PPRN Unit, and the Administration Unit. In this capacity, she was responsible for developing strategies and overseeing the implementation and monitoring of policy research, PPRN, and social innovation funding to ensure effective, value-added outcomes. She also coordinated research initiatives across departments within MOHE and represented the Ministry in matters related to research with other ministries. Her research interests include membrane fabrication and modification, membrane-based separation technologies, separation processes, water and wastewater treatment, and carbon dioxide capture using membrane gas absorption. She has published more than fifty articles in ISI-indexed journals and regularly presents her work at national and international conferences.

in f inancial e conomics from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). After completing his master degree, Lim joined UMS as a lecturer in January 2002 . Three years later, he was given a staff scholarship to pursue a PhD degree at the Department of Econometrics and Busi ness Statistics, Monash University. He holds a B . B . A . in finance with honors from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM ) , and a M.Sc. in f inancial e conomics from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). After completing his master degree, Lim joined UMS as a lecturer in January 2002 . Three years later, he was given a staff scholarship to pursue a PhD degree at the Department of Econometrics and Busi ness Statistics, Monash University. Kian-Ping Lim is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya. He received his B.B.A. (Hons.) in Finance from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Determined to become a scholar, he pursued an M.Sc. in Financial Economics at Universiti Putra Malaysia. It was during his master’s program that he first acquired formal training in econometrics through two foundational courses, which became instrumental in shaping his approach to empirical research. Drawing on this new skill set, he completed his dissertation, “Non-Linear Dependence in ASEAN-5 Foreign Exchange Rates: An Insight from a Battery of Non-Linearity Tests”, marking his entry into scholarly inquiry on financial markets. In 2002, after completing his master’s degree, Kian-Ping joined Universiti Malaysia Sabah as a lecturer. During this period, he had the privilege of collaborating with the late Professor Melvin Hinich, a pioneering scholar who developed the bispectrum and trispectrum tests for nonlinearity. Their intellectual exchanges proved formative, as they questioned the dominance of linearity-based approaches in weak-form efficiency studies. Together, they showed that returns can be linearly uncorrelated yet still exhibit nonlinear dependence that is forecastable. By uncovering such nonlinearities across different stock markets, their work challenged the adequacy of conventional efficiency tests and laid the groundwork for his doctoral research at Monash University. From 2005 to 2009, Kian-Ping pursued his PhD at the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University. Building on his earlier work, he moved beyond the question of whether markets were efficient in an absolute sense to challenge the static treatment of efficiency. Using rolling-sample methods, he showed that efficiency evolves over time. More importantly, he advanced the idea of treating efficiency in relative terms, opening new avenues to explore its drivers across countries. His survey article in the Journal of Economic Surveys called for a paradigm shift from the Efficient Markets Hypothesis to the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis. Together with his collaborators, he contributed to operationalizing this framework, and the resulting paper was published in the Journal of Empirical Finance. He regards the four-year PhD journey as the most productive phase of his career, publishing 18 of 21 papers written during candidature in mainstream economics and finance journals. After completing his PhD, Kian-Ping continued his research journey largely in collaboration with his doctoral students, while staying true to his philosophy of offering novel perspectives against conventional practices. His work on stock liquidity moved beyond firm-level analysis to examine liquidity at the aggregate market level. In corporate finance, he shifted the lens from broad corporate governance to the role of blockholder governance. In his more recent research on market integration, he advocated Bayesian approaches that more effectively capture the dynamics of market comovements, offering a conceptually richer alternative to conventional correlation-based measures. Across these domains, his post-PhD work reflects a commitment to advancing scholarship through fresh and critical perspectives. The impact of his research is reflected in both readership and recognition. His publications have attracted high citations across Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, placing him among the leading financial economists in Malaysia. Since 2010, he has consistently been ranked within the top five percent of economists in the country according to IDEAS/RePEc. His international standing is further affirmed by ScholarGPS, where he is listed as a Highly Ranked Scholar within the top 0.05% globally in the specialty of "Stock": ranked #48 in 2022, #59 in 2023, and #66 in 2024 worldwide. Beyond research, Kian-Ping contributes actively to academic leadership and service. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, the flagship publication of the Malaysian Economic Association. He was the Deputy Dean (Research & Innovation) at the Labuan School of International Business & Finance, Universiti Malaysia Sabah (Jan 2010–Jan 2012), and later the Deputy Dean (Research & Development) at the Faculty of Economics & Administration, Universiti Malaya (Aug 2016–Sept 2021). In these capacities, he helped to promote research in business and economics, supporting an environment where scholarship can grow. Kian-Ping's journey, shaped by these milestones in research and leadership, is captured in the attached timeline (click here), which also points to the path he looks forward to pursuing in the years ahead.