Professor Dr Wan Himratul Aznita Wan Harun is a passionate oral microbiologist. Since year 2000, she has served as an academic staff at the Department of Oral & Craniofacial Sciences and is currently the Deputy Dean of Value Creation and Enterprise, Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Malaya. She is a member of the Malaysian Section International Association for Dental Research (MalSec-IADR), Malaysian Society for Microbiologist (MSM) and Malaysian Society for Oral Microbiologist and Oral Immunologist (MySOMOI). Her research interest includes microbial virulence, oral biofilms, polymicrobial interactions, microbiomes, and medicinal plant extracts. She was awarded the Hitachi Fellowship Award in 2009 and flew to Japan to conduct research on the virulence of oral microorganisms. She publishes articles actively in ISI and Scopus journals and has experienced in supervising many PhD and Masters research for both local and international students including undergraduate elective projects. Throughout her service, she has secured various grants, including Fundamental Research Grants Scheme (FRGS), Ministry of Higher Education-High Impact Research Grants (MOHE-HIR), etc.

Rosnah Zain has served as an academician for more than 30 years. She has been involved in managing the dental faculty at the University of Malaya in the capacity of the Head of Department, the Deputy Dean (Undergraduate/Postgraduate/Research) and Dean (2010-2014)  for the last 25 years. Her role in these positions involved managing curriculum and its development, the dental services centre (including human resource infrastructure and dental patients’ general issues). In the research setting, she strongly believes in collective efforts so as to gather a wider scope of ideas yet benefiting the others as well. Through this believe she had embarked on numerous projects with numerous co-researchers within the country and from countries of the region. One of her major research endeavors is a collaborative research project with colleagues from the Oral Health Division, Ministry of Health Malaysia and Aichi-Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan in 1993/1994. This nationwide project on the prevalence of oral mucosal lesions produced the first population-based prevalence data on oral cancer and precancer in the Malaysia. This study emphasizes her leadership and organizational skill where despite fund limitations, with national and international support, she was able to successfully manage and organize human resource infrastructure and logistics towards the successful completion of the project.Throughout the organization of these researches and in collaboration with Japanese, Swedish and German colleagues, she has developed calibration and training packages/programmes and booklets. These packages/programmes are aimed at tackling methodologic issues such that data on oral mucosal lesions will be standardized for meaningful global comparison. This training programme (DentalDetect) is currently being used widely in Malaysia and also in Cambodia. Another of her major research endeavor is the development of the Malaysian Oral Cancer Database and Tumour Bank System [a ‘Top-down Intensified Research in Priority Areas (IRPA), the 8th Malaysia Plan (RMK-80 project] in 2003, a biobanking intiative linking data and tissue providers, researchers of different disciplines from different parts of the country. With such a system, research on oral cancer in Malaysia shifted from individual/group research to the ‘team science’ approach being a collaborative effort from different institutions. As a follow-up to this, her effort was recognized by the University administration where a University of Malaya Research Centre was officially recognized and supported by the University Management with the formation of the Oral Cancer Research and Coordinating Centre at the University of Malaya (OCRCC-UM) in 2005, which she served as the Director/Head until December 2015. She is currently designated as the Founding Director and Advisor to OCRCC-UM. Her other experiences entails being involved as the Chair of the Document Preparation for Assessments in preparation for the University of Malaya Self-Audit for Programme Accreditation; being Member and Chairman for the Accreditation of Dental Programme for the MQA; Committee Member for the evaluation and monitoring of the the Higher Education Centre of Excellence (HiCOE) of the Ministry of Education; Evaluation Panel for the Malaysian Ministry of Education Research Grant; and a member of the Professional Qualifying Examination for Dentistry. Rosnah Zain has published more than 100 research and consensus papers. Her research expertise and experience lead her to receive the ‘Top Research Scientists Award 2014’(TRSM 2014) and more recently in 2016, she has been inducted as the ‘Distinguished Fellow for Asia, International College of Dentists (FICD)’.  

  Professor Dr. Ngeow Wei Cheong is currently a lecturer at the Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Malaya. He was a visiting professor at the University of California, San Francisco in 2015/2016. He graduated from the University of Malaya in 1992 and was a private practitioner for 9 months before he was offered the post of tutorship at his alma matter. Three years later, he took up a house job at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, England, where he obtained his Fellowship in Dental Surgery from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons of England. He subsequently returned to Malaysia and was a pioneer lecturer at the then newly established Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He later became a lecturer at the University of Malaya in 2000. He later graduated with a Master in Dental Science studying the effect of a combination of long acting analgesic and local anaesthetic on third molar surgery pain in 2008, and obtained a PhD from the University of Sheffield, specialising on Peripheral Nerve Regeneration by studying the effects of different scar reducing agents on nerve repair. He has published more than 160 scientific papers in local and international journals, and was the Editor of the Malaysian Dental Journal from 2005-2007 and the Editor of the MDA Newsletter for 2015. His research interests are craniofacial anthropometry, variations of the mandibular nerve, and recovery of peripheral nerves after microsurgical repair. He is currently an Honorary Supervisor for the Harvard School of Dental Medicine.