Sr Dr Nurshuhada Zainon is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Quantity Surveying. She holds the Bachelor of Quantity Surveying from UM in 2005 and was awarded the prestigious Anugerah Pelajaran Diraja. She earned her MSc in Construction Economics and Management from The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London in 2009 and her Doctoral in Construction IT Management from UM in 2013. Her career began with CIDB E-Construct Pvt Ltd (a subsidiary of the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), Malaysia) as a Junior Analyst and later as an IT Project Manager. Her involvement in developing the National e-Tendering Initiative (NeTI), which was an emerging discipline, sparked her research interest in digital construction transformation. Since joining UM in 2013, she has pursued her digital construction research, focusing on utilising Building Information Modelling (BIM) to achieve sustainable construction design and economy. In 2019, she was awarded the Young Excellent Researcher Award  (Humanity and Social Science) by the university. Her community engagement project, #MsiaEndsDengue won UM Best Community Engagement Project 2015. She was also the coordinator for the national-level DIY Made Simple Competition 2017-2020, one of UM's flagship community-based projects.  She was one of the advisors for UMCares (2018-2019) and a reviewer for multiple international journals and conference proceedings. She had spearheaded several BIM research and development MOUs between UM and industry key players such as CIDB and Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR) Malaysia and international university partners such as Manchester Metropolitan University. She is also actively involved with the Board of Quantity Surveyors of Malaysia (BQSM) and the Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia (RISM) as an organising committee for various conferences. In addition, she contributes her expertise through consultation with industry partners and industry-based workshops for BIM-related development in Malaysia. Sr Dr Nurshuhada is a Professional Quantity Surveyor of BQSM, a RISM member, and a Student Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), UK. She is always a passionate academician in producing the best out of her students and for the progress of UM, the Faculty of Built Environment, particularly the Department of Quantity Surveying.        

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. 

Dr Zulaikha currently serves as Senior Lecturer and Clinical Medical Physicist at the Clinical Oncology Department, UMMC. She previously worked as Medical Physicist in Hospital University of Science Malaysia (HUSM) for 3-years before joining UMMC in 2010. She received her PhD in Clinical Oncology Physics in 2021 from the Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya. As clinical physicist and a lecturer in a teaching hospital, she is responsible on producing high quality radiotherapy treatment planning for oncology patients; perform dose measurement and quality assurance check on radiotherapy modalities while being involved with various clinical improvement technique, research and academic teaching related to Medical Physics and Oncology services. Her main expertise and research covers all applications related to brachytherapy, stereotactic body radiotherapy, in vivo dosimetry, hybrid treatment planning and radiobiology of hypo-fractionated treatment, while being the author and co-author for number of publications related to her field of expertise.