Sr Dr. Nur Mardhiyah Aziz is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Quantity Surveying, Faculty of Built Environment, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She obtained her BSc (Hons.) in Quantity Surveying in 2003, MSc in Facilities Management from Universiti Teknologi MARA in 2008, and PhD from the University of Malaya in 2013, specialising in IT Management in the Construction Industry. She is a Professional Quantity Surveyor with the Board of Quantity Surveyors Malaysia (BQSM) and a Member of the Royal Institution of Surveyors Malaysia (RISM). She teaches courses including IT in Construction, Integrated Project, Research Methodology, and Introduction to the Construction Industry. Sr Dr. Nur Mardhiyah has published books and articles in reputable local and international journals, including Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus-indexed journals. She has secured several internal and external research grants with her collaborators and serves as a reviewer for multiple international journals. Her research interests include IT in construction, knowledge management, project management, and digitalisation in the built environment. She received the Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cemerlang (Excellence Service Award) in 2022. She has also won Gold and Silver awards at conferences, as well as a Best Presenter Award. In terms of academic leadership and service, she served as the Coordinator for the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) Master of Project Management programme (2020–2023) and the Coordinator for the National-Level DIY Made Simple Competition (2020–2022). In 2021, she was appointed as the Faculty’s Communication and Media Relations Officer (2021–2024). She is actively involved with RISM as the Representative of the Quantity Surveying Division Sub-Committee for Session 2024/2025 and 2025/2026, and previously served on the Editorial Board of Journal of Project Management Practice (2021–2024). She has also contributed in various capacities for international conferences as an Organising Committee member, Secretary, and Session Chair. Through her academic, research, and professional contributions, Sr Dr. Nur Mardhiyah Aziz continues to support the advancement of quantity surveying education and the integration of digitalisation in the construction industry.

Md. Ershadul Karim, LL.B. (Hons.), LL.M. (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh), PhD in Nanotechnology Law and Policy (University of Malaya, Malaysia) is an Associate Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of Universiti Malaya (UM). He joined UM as Senior Lecturer after completion of his PhD with the very prestigious Bright Spark Scholarship.    Being a passionate researcher and academic, Dr. Karim has widely published in peer-reviewed Journals and presented papers at many national and international Conferences in his areas of interest i.e. ‘information and communication technology’, ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘legal and regulatory aspects of nanotechnology’, ‘emerging technologies and law’, ‘privacy and data protection law’, ‘health and medical law’, ‘legal research’, and ‘Asian and comparative law’, etc. Ershadul authored six books and is the author of Cyber Law in Bangladesh, Kluwer Law International, 2022 (2nd Edition), Environmental Law in Bangladesh, Kluwer Law International, 2024 (2nd Edition), Privacy and Personal Data Protection Law in Bangladesh, Kluwer Law International, 2024, and co-author of Personal Data Protection Law in Asia (second edition), Thomson and Reuters, 2018. Dr. Karim has been managing the National Chapter on Bangladesh for the Yearbook of International Environmental Law published by Oxford University, the United Kingdom since 2013. Dr. Ershadul has written Chapters on the Legal System of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Iran, Nepal, Maldives, and Myanmar in GlobaLex, New York University, USA. He has also developed the Research Guide on Nanotechnology Law and Policy, and SAARC for the same database. Ershadul has published more than fifty peer-reviewed academic papers and contributed chapters in books published by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Chemistry, Elsevier Inc., SpringerNature and BRILL analysing, inter alia, the relationship between nanomaterials and international environmental law, various legal and regulatory issues in polymer nanocomposite, functionalised nanomaterials, biosensors, consumer nanoproducts, international renewable energy law, and nuclear energy law. Dr. Ershadul is the Managing Editor of one of the oldest law journals in Malaysia and the flagship journal of the Faculty of Law, UM — the Journal of Malaysian and Comparative Law. He has reviewed more than a hundred articles and book proposals for all major and renowned academic publishers worldwide. As an enlisted lawyer with the Bangladesh Bar Council and Bangladesh Supreme Court, Dr. Karim was instrumental in developing the Bangladesh Code, a collection of 38 volumes containing all existing Acts of Parliament, Ordinances and President’s Orders in force in Bangladesh between 1836-2006. He was also the Web Administrator and Editor of the first ever online case law database of Bangladesh, Chancery Law Chronicles [www.clcbd.org] for six years.   Dr. Karim served as Senior Research Officer at the Technical Support Secretariat of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Women and Children for three years. So far Dr. Karim and his team have received grants of more than USD 2,00,000 to research different legal and policy issues. He was a member of the research team in the “INDUSTRY-ACADEMIA COLLABORATIVE BLOCKCHAIN-BASED REGULATORY FRAMEWORK RESEARCH PROJECT”. Dr. Karim has been consulted by different national and international organisations including Japan Government's Patent Office through Kyoto Comparative Law Center, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UN Women, World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), World Bank Group, European Union, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Japan International Cooperative Agency (JICA), Consumer International, Prime Minister’s Office of the Government of Malaysia and Ministry of Justice, United Arab Emirates, Transparency International, Bangladesh, ARTICLE 19, and Qatar Foundation. Ershadul has been interviewed by Prothom Alo, the largest circulated newspaper in Bangladesh several times, the Daily Star (Bangladesh) [largest circulating English-language newspaper in Bangladesh], the Star (Malaysia) [largest paid English newspaper in terms of circulation in Malaysia], and has also been quoted in the several news media including the Prothom Alo and BBC Bangla. Ershadul is a member of the International Network Initiative on Safe and Sustainable Nanotechnology, and covers the Asian legal systems. He is also a member of the Global AI Ethics Consortium (Technical University of Munich, Germany). Ershadul is a supervisor and examiner of PhD theses and Master's dissertations in his areas of interest and expertise. Ershadul has recently developed interests in exploring the history and philosophy of technologies, technology regulation theories, sociology of technologies, science and technology studies, and is available to supervise research students willing to explore the legal aspects in these areas.

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.