Dr Megat Hafizzuddin Abd Hamid is a Senior Lecturer and Group Leader in the Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, where he leads the Tissue Immunology and Immunoinformatics Group. A T cell immunologist by training, his focuses on tropical disease immunology and cancer immunobiology- specialising in the cellular immune mechanisms of human T cells, combining HLA-restricted epitope mapping, multi-omics bioinformatics and immune phenotyping and functional approaches to identify antigen-specific T cells and understand how they recognise and respond to disease.

He completed his DPhil in Medical Sciences at the University of Oxford's MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine (2020), following a First Class Honours degree in Biotechnology from the Australian National University. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at Oxford's Nuffield Department of Medicine and the CAMS-Oxford Institute, where his passion in research on antigen-specific cytotoxic T cells earned the University of Oxford's 2023 Award for Excellence.

His scientific contributions include first-author papers in Nature Immunology and Cancer Immunology Research, notably the discovery of an unconventional CD61 integrin on human antigen-specific CD8⁺ T cells that enhances anti-tumour cytotoxicity. He holds an h-index of 12, a field-weighted citation impact of 2.62, and an active journal and grant reviewer, invited international speaker, and supervisor of postgraduate researchers.

Since establishing his independent laboratory at Universiti Malaya in May 2025, Dr Megat has built a translational programme focusing on mapping protective-driven versus immunopathological-driven T cell epitopes and their functional characterisation in Malaysian patient populations to inform rational vaccine and immunotherapy design.