Izlin is currently the Deputy Dean Research and Innovation at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya. She was formerly the Head of Department of Finance and Banking, as well as the Director for the Centre of Business Excellence (CBE@UM) at the faculty. She has also served as the Deputy Director at the International Institute of Public Policy and Management (INPUMA). Prior to academia, she was a corporate analyst at a multinational corporation. Izlin graduated with a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, MSc in Investment Management from Bayes Business School, City, University of London, and PhD at Nottingham University Business School. She has published in indexed journals in areas such as international finance, microfinance, financial literacy, fintech and energy finance. She has also published several books including a financial literacy handbook for primary school students, as well as research-based books on consumer financial vulnerabilities, and Fintech in Malaysia. Izlin has been appointed as consultant for several projects such as on financial literacy for primary schools, economic enhancement programmes for public infrastructure projects and the global services sector. She has also led 10 out of 20 research projects with a total grant value of more than RM2 million. Her recent projects include financial literacy workshops for vulnerable groups including pensioners, migrant workers as well as students. She is also a trainer for finance-related courses in corporate certification programmes. As for supervision, she has supervised more than 12 PhD and 50 Master students to completion.  

Lucy Lum Chai See joined the University of Malaya, Department of Paediatrics in 1990. Assigned to the paediatric acute care ward, she recognised the need of acutely ill children and set to look after them even though resources were meagre, the resistance to expansion stiff and the doctors and nurses lacking in knowledge and skills. Pioneers of Paediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) were invited to Malaysia to begin PALS training. Over the next four years, Lucy and colleagues contributed to twenty-five consecutive training courses for >800 doctors and nurses in 12 of 13 states. Her enthusiasm and perseverance saw her refining the management of severe dengue in children and other critical conditions. She underwent clinical-fellowship training in paediatric intensive care in The Hospital for Sick Children, in 1996. The Toronto and the North American experience shaped Lucy’s physiological approach to mechanical ventilation of healthy and sick lungs.  She later became the first Malaysian to complete the Paediatric examination for the European Diploma in Intensive Care.  Back in Malaysia, the P1 Acute Care Ward was hit by a shortage of funding and support. Despite of the limited resources, the unit played a key role in defining the pathophysiology of EV71 outbreak which caused many deaths in 1997. In 2001 the Hospital allowed a charity fund to be established.  Soon after The Star highlighted the PICU work, generous support poured in through individual, public and corporate donations. Then UMMC eventually acknowledged the work and formed the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit.  For the first time the PICU received a stronger allocation of nurses and budget needed to ensure the smooth delivery of intensive care for children. Humanitarian medicine should not be a casualty of technology.  Lucy is very much a hands-on bedside doctor. Her clinical rounds are characterised by both an incisive analysis of history, physical examinations and investigations as well as standing back to view the “Google map”.  Doctors and nurses are trained not just to treat the disease, but to treat the patient as a human being connected to families and societies. Her clinical expertise was sought after by WHO, and regional offices in the Western-Pacific Region where she has been to China, Laos, the Solomon Islands and Africa.  She was invited by WHO/TDR to be the lead author of the handbook on clinical case management of dengue and by WPRO to design a training curriculum of dengue management.  She was credited for bringing calm to a chaotic situation in the Solomon Islands, a poor nation of islands in the middle of the Pacific. Re-training doctors in basic clinical techniques which identify the high risk patients was her legacy. She has managed to unify the various clinical departments in UMMC to work together so that dengue patients do not fall between the cracks. She collaborated with the various hospitals in Ministry of Health and WHO, Geneva, Oxford University, Brandeis University, and other universities in Singapore, SEAsia, Latin America and European Union. In the field of paediatric intensive care, she collaborates with colleagues in North America and around the world in pediatric sepsis, congenital diaphragmatic hernia and neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.   Compassion has to be the driving force behind the otherwise just another slogan, “First, do no harm”. Through her inspirational leadership, the PICU which used to record high rates of nosocomial infections has been transformed into one with high rates of hand hygiene and low rates of infection.  Yet, the work is not finished; her KPI (key performance index) for her staff is zero blood stream infection.  Indeed this is possible.

Professor Dr Jacob John completed his basic dental training in 1994 and subsequently qualified as a Prosthodontist in 1997 and has always been active in the field of oral health care. In 2023, he also qualified as a Master in Medical Education from Universiti Malaya. He had served as a Lecturer at the Tamil Nādu Dr MGR Medical University, India and as a Dental Officer in the Ministry of Health, Malaysia before joining as an academic at the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya, Malaysia in 2009. He also holds an appointment as an Honorary lecturer at a few dental institutions in India.  Over the past 14 years, Dr Jacob has actively supervised and guided students pursuing their Masters in Prosthodontics (MClinDEnt), Masters in Dental Sciences, Masters in Oral Sciences and at the doctoral level besides the many undergraduate dental students. He is a Life Member of the Indian Prosthodontic Society, founding Secretary of the Malaysian Association for Prosthodontics and currently the Honorary Secretary of the Asian Academy of Prosthodontics. He has been an active member of the International Association for Disability and Oral Health since 2011 and was recently conferred its Fellowship for his “sustained high level of iADH activity and clinical care for the people with disability, alongside research, pedagogy, advocacy and service in the area of Special Care Dentistry”.  Dr Jacob also works very closely with the Special Olympics Malaysia, as its Clinical Director for Special Smiles, by providing oral health education and care for its intellectually disabled members. As part of his academic career, Dr Jacob has been actively involved in the field of research, collaborating within Malaysia and globally. Besides Prosthodontics, his special interest lies in the areas of Geriatric Dentistry and Dental Education. He is appointed as an Academic Board member of the Federation of Special Care Dentistry, India and as a Board Member of the American Society for Geriatric Dentistry. He has to his credit over 50 peer reviewed, international publications as scientific articles and book chapters with an H-Index of 15 and over 1800 citations in Google Scholar.  Dr Jacob is very passionate about Community Outreach activities and he was the first recipient of the prestigious Jan Andersson-Norinder Award by the IADH in 2016 in recognition of his work among people with special needs and the under privileged. Over the years, he has also presented his work at numerous national and international conferences.