Professor Dr. Sa’adan Man is an established scholar in Contemporary Islamic Jurisprudence, currently serving at the Department of Fiqh and Usul, Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya. He holds a Bachelor of Shariah and earned his PhD in Islamic Law from the University of Edinburgh, UK. Since beginning his academic career in 1993, Dr. Sa’adan has held various positions at the University of Malaya, including Academic Tutor, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor. He has served twice as the Head of the Department of Fiqh and Usul (2010–2013 and 2020–2022) and played a pivotal role in shaping academic development and research initiatives within the university. He has been holding the position of Deputy Dean (Postgraduate Studies) at the Academy of Islamic Studies from March 2025 to February 2027. Dr. Sa’adan’s expertise is widely recognized beyond the university setting. He has been an external auditor for the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) since 2011 and served on multiple expert panels for Malaysian Department of Islamic Development (JAKIM), including the Falak Expert Panel (2013–present) and the Advisory Committee for Malaysia Halal Certification (2014–2020). He was also the Deputy Coordinator of the International Halal Research University Malaya (IHRUM) from 2016 to 2018 and fellow of Universiti Malaya Halal Research Centre (UMHRC) until now. He also contributes to the development of Malaysia National Halal Policy (DHN 2025-2035) as consultant panel.  His contributions to Shariah governance include roles as a member of the MBSB Shariah Advisory Board (2012–2017) and the Shariah and Technical Advisory Board for the International Halal Certification (IHC), South Korea (2017–2019). He was also appointed as a fellow for Malaysia International Islamic Fiqh Academy (MIIFA) in 2020-2022). He is also a Certified Halal Trainer recognized by JAKIM, and prviously conributed in developing several halal training modules including Halal Technical Competent Person (HTCP) under Halal International Selangor (HIS). With his expertise, Dr Sa'adan serves as an External Academic Assessor and Advisor for various academic programmes in local public and private tertiary education institutions.    Dr. Sa’adan was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in 2013 and continues to engage in scholarly exchanges globally. He has led several research projects in his field and presented extensively at both national and international conferences. He has published several impactful academic books and numerous articles in leading international and local journals. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Fiqh (indexed by Scopus) and is actively involved in academic editing and peer review. With a proven track record in postgraduate supervision, Dr. Sa’adan has guided over 50 postgraduate students and continues to contribute to intellectual discourse through public forums, religious lectures, and scholarly engagements.  

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. 

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.