Associate Professor Dr. Peter Aning Tedong joined the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Malaya in December 2014. He is currently the Head of Department of Urban and Regional Planning and was formerly the Head of the Centre for Malaysian Indigenous Studies. As an urban studies and housing scholar, Dr. Peter Aning’s broad areas of interest cover housing policy and governance, the political economy of urban planning, and neighborhood sustainability and planning. He has received numerous research grants from both the public and private sectors and has led several high-impact national and international projects. Notably, he served as Project Leader for the Family Wellbeing Index funded by the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN), with findings published in the 13th Malaysia Plan (RMK13). He is also the Project Leader for a study on poverty alleviation funded by the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) Sarawak, and the Principal Investigator of a comparative study on informal housing in Makassar (Indonesia) and Sabah (Malaysia) funded by the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils (AASSREC). His recently completed projects explored socio-spatial planning in the context of Malaysia’s urban future and the dynamics of poverty among Indigenous communities in rural areas. He has also conducted extensive work on the role of governance in addressing the needs of vulnerable communities—including refugees, stateless persons, and foreign workers—while examining broader issues of housing and migration in Malaysian cities. His latest research interests center on multi-layered governance of affordable housing, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to neighborhood and community planning, and the impacts of migration on regional and urban development. While his empirical focus is on Southeast Asia, Dr. Peter Aning has also conducted fieldwork in Europe, the Borneo Islands, North America, and Oceania.        

  Dr Benedict Francis is a psychiatrist at the University Malaya Medical Centre. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya and was selected for the Brightsparks scholarship to pursue his Masters in Psychological Medicine at his alma mater, the University of Malaya. Subsequently, he completed a fellowship program in Aged Healthcare Services at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, in 2019. Dr Benedict is a keen researcher and is involved in several international, multi-centre clinical trials involving novel antipsychotics and antidepressants. He has also published in several international and regional peer-reviewed journals and presented in international congresses. Dr Benedict is a clinical expert in treatment resistant depression. He was part of the Ministry of Health’s  National Advisory Board committee that drafted the guidelines for prescribing and dispensing Esketamine, a novel adjunct antidepressant treatment. Dr Benedict is regarded as a Key Opinion Leader (KOL) in the fields of treatment resistant depression and schizophrenia, and is regularly invited as a speaker at both local and regional events. His passion and interest is in the mechanism of action of rapid-acting antidepressants and treatment optimization of patients with treatment resistant depression. 

As an educator, researcher, and innovator in Software Engineering, I treat values and purposes with topmost priority. I believe individuals and organisations guided by righteous values and noble purposes make the difference in the world; realistically making the world a better place to live for all. Thus, in my 20 years of career life, I have devoted my time contributing to education, research, and innovation in and beyond Software Engineering, benefiting the current and future generations. My total grants from research, consultancy, and software development projects amounted to nearly RM3,000,000. In recent year, I started a few future education initiatives such as innovation and work-integrated learning lab (iWILL) in response to the changes brought about by disruptive technologies.