Prof. Dato’ Ir. Dr. Mohammed Rafiq bin Dato’ Abdul Kadir is a Professor of Engineering and currently serves at the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaya. He has held the rank of Full Professor since 2014 and has contributed extensively to advancing engineering education, research, and innovation in Malaysia. He also serves as an EAC Council Member at the Board of Engineers Malaysia (BEM) since 2020. Prior to joining Universiti Malaya, Dato’ Rafiq was the pioneering Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), one of the largest engineering faculties in Asia, comprising nearly 700 academics and 10,000 students. His visionary “Business NOT as Usual” approach steered the faculty to international prominence, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under his leadership, initiatives such as the Distinguished Lecture Series—featuring 114 professors from 32 countries—and the Captain of Industry Programme—with CEOs from 31 major companies—solidified UTM’s global standing while achieving cost savings of almost RM2 million. In research, Dato’ Rafiq is recognized among the World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University. He founded the Medical Devices & Technology Group (MEDITEG), one of Malaysia’s most successful research entities, later elevated to a Centre of Excellence (CoE). Under his leadership, the group secured 94 research projects worth RM12 million, graduated 49 PhD and 38 Master’s students by research, and produced 344 Web of Science publications with nearly 8,000 citations. Dato’ Rafiq’s individual h-index is 48, reflecting his strong international research impact. A prolific inventor, Dato’ Rafiq is Malaysia’s No. 1 Inventor (2010–2014) with 27 patents granted during that period, and now holds 38 granted patents and 18 pending inventions. He is an alumnus of both Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge, and is professionally registered as a Professional Engineer with Practising Certificate (PEPC), an ASEAN Chartered Professional Engineer (ACPE), and a Chartered Engineer (CEng) with the UK Engineering Council.

Dr. Farahin Mohd Jais is a senior lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering. She was a previous recipient of the Programme Mahasiswa Cemerlang under the JPA scholarship during her Master's in Engineering of Science (Environmental) studies, and later pursued her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering under the Skim Latihan Akademik Bumiputera (SLAB) fellowship. She specialized in water and wastewater treatment, with a focus on removing conventional and emerging water pollutants using carbon materials made from biomass waste. To date, she has synthesized water/wastewater treatment materials from a variety of biomass wastes, including spent coffee bean waste, pineapple leaf waste, palm shell waste, and sugarcane bagasse. Her experience in using adsorption technology for water/wastewater treatment has sparked her interest in diversifying into other technology including catalysis and membrane filtration.

Ir. Dr. Adeline Chua Seak May is a Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Malaya. A PhD graduate from The University of Tokyo, Japan, she specialises in biological nutrients removal and resource recovery. She has published more than 40 papers in ISI-indexed journals and has supervised over 15 PhD and master students. Adeline is also a Chartered Engineer of IChemE, UK and a Professional Engineer of BEM, Malaysia. She works closely with the local wastewater treatment operators to improve the energy efficiency and performance of the wastewater treatment plants. The academia-industry research collaboration has earned her the award of international funding Newton Fund Impact Scheme. Her international research partners include NIES, Yokohama National University (Japan), SCELSE (Singapore), Kasetsart University (Thailand), and Newcastle University (UK). Adeline was also a visiting research fellow at The University of Tokyo (2012) and Newcastle University (2016-2019). Her current research interests are related to the development of sustainable wastewater treatment process in the tropical climates, microbial ecology in tropical wastewater treatment plants, and resource recovery (biopolymer, biochemicals, biofuel and nutrients) from agro-industrial waste(water) streams.