Prof. Dr. Chan Kok Gan is a distinguished microbiologist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges molecular biology, genomics, microbial communication, and biosafety law. He is currently a Professor at University of Malaya, where he leads research in microbial genomics, quorum sensing, quorum quenching, genome biology, next-generation sequencing, biosafety laws and intellectual property law in biotechnology. His contributions span genomics, microbial communication, and conceptual innovation rather than single isolated discoveries.  Dr. Chan holds double Bachelor and Master degrees in Microbiology and laws, and PhD in Molecular Microbiology, with a rare combination of science and law. Prof. Chan is prolific researcher,  with >485 WoS WoS publications in high-impact journals including Nature, Nature Communications. His work has garnered tens of thousands of citations (e.g., his Google Scholar profile shows >27,200 citations, h index 83). He received fundings gloablly, eg. Malaysia Toray Science Foundation research grant, >15 French Fellowships, Hubert Curien Partnership-Hibiscus, SEAOHUN Award, UK Prime Minister’s Initiative II grant, 3 China Governments grants, JSPS Award and many Malaysia fundings.  Prof. Chan has received numerous research awards and recognitions, including a consistent ranking in Research.com’s listings of Top Microbiologist and and Leader in Biology/biochemistry in Malaysia; Malaysia Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) Science and Technology Award, JSPS Award. He was listed as the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University/Scopus in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 in both categories of “Current Year” and “Career”. He is even listed as World’s Top 0.1% Scientist by ScholarGPS.com, and ranked First in the categories of “quorum quenching”, “genomes” , “multidrug resistant pathogens” by Google Scholar. Prof Chan made several first discoveries in Malaysia and globally, including (i) introducing the concept of, and coining, bacterial “signalling confusion”; (ii) coexistence of quorum sensing and quorum quenching in some bacteria, and (iii) quorum quenching molecules from Malay, Chinese and Indian medicinal herbs and secured several patents,  (iv) characterising novel quorum sensing and quenching genes, (v) novel bacterial genus and species, (vi) he published Malaysia’s first complete bacterial genome 13 years ago when next-generation sequencing was still globally scarce. Prof. Chan is elected Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (FASc) in 2017, and fellowships in other international learned academies. A novel bacterial species of a novel genus was named in honoured of Prof Chan’s contribution in microbiology:  Chania multitudinisentens gen. nov., sp. nov. Prof. Chan is world’s leading expert in bacterial quorum sensing, quorum quenching, genome biology, biosafety laws and whole genome sequencing. After publishing the first bacterial complete genome in 2013, Prof Chan then pioneered into multi-OMICs technology, providing a new dimension of research in microbiology and genome biology. To date, Prof Chan is the leading expert in NGS, multi-OMICs (genome, plasmidome, resistome, virome, oncogenome, transcriptome, methylome, microbiome, metagenome, lipidome, metabolome).

  Kasturi Dewi Varathan, is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, Malaysia. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National University of Malaysia. Her main research focus is in the field of Data Analytics, Text Mining and Information Retrieval. Dr.Kasturi has published in several high-ranked journals and conferences. Her research on data analytics won several awards in international and national level competitions. Research institutions too have gained from her expertise. She has served as visiting scientist to the Information Systems Research Group of the Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland as well as research fellow at the Institute of Visual Informatics, National University of Malaysia. She has been appointed as Adjunct Professor at Veltech University, India. Dr.Kasturi has also secured national and international grants. Some of the prominent grants that she has received are Applied Research Partnership Grant funded by ETH Zurich(Switzerland), People Exchange Grant funded by Swiss Education, Research and Innovation Grant(Switzerland) and Prototype Research Grant from the Ministry of Higher Education (Malaysia).  She is also a recipient of the prestigious Leadership in Innovation Fellowship award by the United Kingdom and Malaysian Government.   

Dr. Santheraleka Ramanathan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Universiti Malaya since 2025. She earned her Ph.D. in Nanobiotechnology Engineering in 2020 and gained research experience as a postdoctoral fellow at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia from 2021 to 2023. Dr. Santheraleka's research focuses on biosensors, nanomaterials, and nanodiagnostics, with an emphasis on molecular imprinting for environmental sustainability and biomedical applications. She specializes in synthesizing nanomaterials from environmental waste and integrating them into diagnostic platforms for detecting non-communicable disease biomarkers. Her expertise includes electrode fabrication, sensing platform surface chemistry, and analytical techniques. She actively develops molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP)-based sensors for environmental monitoring, targeting pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals. As a passionate educator, Dr. Santheraleka is dedicated to inspiring lifelong learning by fostering a positive classroom environment and empowering the next generation of learners with wisdom toward knowledge and innovation.