After serving the government for 31 years, Ar. Zuraina Leily Awalludin retired on 31 August 2015 where her last posting was at the Architectural Branch, Public Works Department (PWD) Malaysia. Amongst her duties then, were heading several design teams providing architectural, interior design and building conservation services for Government funded projects.    She is presently appointed as an Associate Professor (Industry) at the Faculty of Built Environment in University Malaya where she also lectures students in the Masters programme. Further to that, she has currently two architectural practices that is as the director of Acasys Design and Environmental Architects Sdn. Bhd (ADEA), a body corporate practice and the Principal of Zuraina Leily Architect, a sole proprietor practice. For the past few years, she had been appointed to serve as a Board Member and as Registrar where she is actively involved in several Committees at the Board of Architects Malaysia. Presently, she holds a few post that is;  Honorary Secretary to the Council of Architectural Accreditation for Education Malaysia (CAAEM); Committee Member of the Monitoring Committee for APEC Architect Project as well as for ASEAN Architect.  In the international level, she had been involved and represented the profession in many international missions and negotiations especially in the ASEAN region. She played a key role in drafting the Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) for the ASEAN Member States on Architectural Services. In the year 2009 to 2011, she held the post of Honorary Secretary for the Inaugral ASEAN Architect Council. Besides her practice as an Architect and involvement in lecturing students, she is also an accredited Conservator registered with the National Heritage Department Malaysia. In 2016 and 2018, she was elected as Council Member for International Council Of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) of Malaysia, which champions the protection of heritage buildings and sites.

Professor Dr. Lim Kheng Seang, a University of Malaya (Malaysia) graduate in 1999 with MRCP (UK), is a Professor of Neurology in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, the Head of Neurology Unit, PPUM, and a Consultant Neurologist specializing in epilepsy at the University of Malaya Medical Centre and University Malaya Specialist Centre, Malaysia. He has been trained at the University of Malaya for his neurology subspecialty training (2008), followed by fellowship training in Melbourne (2011) and Cleveland (2017) for epilepsy.  He is the President of the ASEAN Neurological Association (ASNA, 2023-2027), the Chair-elect (2025-2029) and General Secretary (2021-2025) of the Asian and Oceanian Commission, International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE-AO), the chair of the Research Task Force in the commission, the past President of the Malaysian Society of Neurosciences (MSN) and Malaysian Epilepsy Society (PEM), an active member of the Malaysian Epilepsy Council and internationally and ex-chair of the Research Commission in the International Bureau of Epilepsy. He has been involved in many trials of newer treatments (e.g., newer drugs and transcranial magnetic stimulation) in epilepsy. He also specialises in non-invasive and invasive epilepsy surgery assessment, including long-term video-EEG monitoring, intracranial monitoring with stereo-EEG, subdural and depth electrodes, electrocardiography, and cortical stimulation. Other areas of expertise included vagal nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation, transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcutaneous direct current stimulation, corpus callosotomy and radiofrequency ablation.  He is currently the Associate Editor for Neurology Asia, a reviewer for a few academic journals, and an organising committee member of multiple national and international conferences. He has published ≥ 150 original papers with an H-index of 24, in journals including Neurology (IF:8.055), Epilepsia (IF:5.562), Neuron (14.403), and JAMA Neurology (IF:29.91). His research work focuses on the psychosocial aspects of epilepsy, clinical studies, especially epilepsy surgery and seizures in brain tumours, genetics in focal and familial epilepsies, pharmacogenomics and pharmacokinetics of antiepileptic drugs, quantitative EEG and quantitative MRI research, and artificial intelligence. He is active in research, being the principal investigator and co-investigator in many local and international research projects, and has a strong collaboration with Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. He was awarded multiple university and national research grants of more than RM1.5 million, and he has supervised 20 postgraduate students and 30 international neurology fellows. 

Started his research career in the think tank sector, Dr. Lee Chee Leong (Karl) is attracted to the rise of non-traditional diplomacy in the international order today. Such appeal has taken Dr. Lee into new research horizons that started with his Monash University's doctoral research on the Chinese sub-state diplomacy in China-ASEAN economic cooperation. With constructive supervision by Professor Helen Nesadurai and Associate Professor Kuik Cheng Chwee, Dr. Lee completed his doctoral thesis that unravels how a faraway and least developed sub-state of Guangxi managed to overcome its own hurdles, navigate the complexities within the Chinese state and become the frontline actor in China-ASEAN economic cooperation. Following his doctoral completion, Dr. Lee's research on non-traditional diplomacy has expanded into Taiwan’s quasi-state diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Such quest has led him spending at great length in comprehending the concept of soft power, a concept that finds its relevance to Taiwan, which has no official diplomatic with Southeast Asia but is heavily connected to the region and has to rely on soft power in its engagements with these Southeast Asian nations. Taking Malaysia as the first case study of Taiwan's soft power in the region, Dr. Lee is developing the third intervening variable correlating both Taiwanese soft power resources and outcomes, in his course of providing a dynamical explanation for such phenomenon. For the coming years, his research focus and publications will be on the different areas featuring Taiwan-Malaysia and Taiwan-Southeast Asia cooperation such as digital social innovation (DSI) for climate change, industry-based education/training programmes, smart cities, tourism, digital democracy, agriculture, public health and medicine, ornamental aquaculture and aquascape. To date, Dr. Lee was the recipient of several scholarships and fellowships in Malaysia and overseas: University of Malaya’s Graduate Fellowship (2010-2011); Monash University’s Merit Scholarship (2016-2019); Chinese Government Scholarship (2018-2019); and Taiwan Fellowship (2020). Prior to his appointment as Senior Lecturer at the Institute of China Studies (ICS), he was the Visiting Scholar at Guangxi University for Nationalities (GXUN) (2018-10992019), Taiwan Fellow at National Chengchi University (NCCU) (2020) and Associate Fellow at ICS UM (2016-2019).He welcomes any potential PhD candidate who would like to work on Taiwan-Southeast Asia relations, Taiwan's soft power in Southeast Asia and Taiwan-Malaysia DSI cooperation for climate change. He is also willing to discuss with potential doctoral candidates on proposals related to the Chinese sub-state (provincial) diplomacy toward ASEAN, China's soft power in ASEAN, Southeast Asian sub-state diplomacy, comparative cases of sub-state diplomacy around the world and conceptual innovation of sub-state diplomacy as well as soft power.