Dr Reena Rajasuriar is a Clinical Pharmacist by training and an Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine, University Malaya (UM).  She also holds an adjunct position as a Fellow at the Department of Infectious Diseases, University of Melbourne, Australia.  She leads the research unit at the Department of Medicine, UM and is Head of the Immunotherapeutics Laboratory (ITL), a core immunology research laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine, UM.    Dr Rajasuriar completed her PhD in Immunogenetics at Monash University, Australia and now leads a translational research program in HIV and Aging at the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA).  Her training as a clinical and basic scientist has afforded Dr Rajasuriar the expertise to perform multidisciplinary research spanning basic, clinical and implementation studies.  Her research focuses on understanding drivers of accelerated aging in people living with HIV and its interaction with functional aging outcomes.  She is also invested in understanding how integrated HIV care can best be implemented in resource limited settings to promote healthy aging.   Dr Rajasuriar has published extensively on the intersection of HIV and aging, and is an international leader in advancing the knowledge in this field, having delivered multiple plenaries at international forums, co-authored multiple opinion pieces and viewpoints as well as contributed to the development of consensus statements around this subject matter.  Together with members of her team, she was instrumental in developing the first ECHO training program on HIV and Aging for the Asia Pacific region to advance capacity building for health professionals providing care for people with HIV.  She is also the Principal Investigator of the only HIV and aging cohort in the Asia Pacific region studying aging from a multidimensional perspective, with over a decade of follow up (2014-2024).   Dr Rajasuriar’s work is funded by various national and international funding bodies including the National Institutes of Health, US, the American Foundation for AIDS Research and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Malaysia.  She has received multiple accolades including the Australia-APEC Women in Research Fellowship (2015), the Loreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Malaysia Fellowship (2016), the IAS Research-for-Cure Academy Fellowship (2018), the CIRA International Visiting Fellowship to Yale (2019), the Asian Universities Alliance (AUA) Scholars Award (2023) and most recently, the Fulbright Malaysian Scholar Award (2024). 

Dr. Tang Swee Seong is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Malaysia. He obtained his B.Sc. (Hons) in Biochemistry in 2000 and M.Sc. in Microbiology in 2004 from the University of Malaya. He was awarded a tutorship by the university for his MSc studies and later received the SLAI fellowship (University Academic Training Scheme) from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia to pursue his PhD at the Australian National University, Australia. He completed his PhD in Molecular Microbiology in 2013 and subsequently returned to Malaysia to take up a tenure-track lectureship at the University of Malaya. Dr. Tang has played a key role as a principal investigator (PI) and has led several research projects, including the Isolation and Characterization of Bacteriophage Against Shigella spp. and Elucidating the Molecular Mechanistic Interaction of Polyvalent Bacteriophages Against Bacterial Hosts. Over the past few years, his research team has characterized a collection of phages targeting Salmonella enterica and other enteric bacteria. He is also interested in developing bacteriophage cocktails as diagnostic and therapeutic agents against multidrug-resistant pathogens in aquatic animals. His ultimate goal is to develop natural alternatives to combat the crisis of multidrug resistance and explore the use of phages in the treatment of infectious diseases in humans and agricultural animals. Dr. Tang served as an editorial board member for the Special Issue on Recent Topics in Life Sciences in the Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences (Elsevier) in 2015. He has also acted as a guest reviewer for numerous national and international journals, including Frontiers in Life Sciences, Malaysian Journal of Science, Carbohydrate Research, JSM Tropical Medicine & Research, Journal of Tropical Agriculture and Food Science, Malaysian Applied Biology, PLoS ONE, Phytochemistry, PeerJ, International Journal of Nanomedicine, Microbial Drug Resistance, Journal of Cellular Physiology, Malaysian Journal of Microbiology, Journal of Health and Translational Medicine, Philippine Journal of Science, and Tropical Biomedicine.      

Nor Syakirin is a Language Teacher for the English subject. She is now teaching university courses under the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. She is always ready to equip herself with language teaching skills and knowledge in order to make herself a better educator.