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Zubaidah Ya'cob holds a PhD with Distinction in Biology (insect vectors) from the Universiti Malaya, in September 2017. She continued her enthusiast in research as a Senior Lecturer at Higher Centre of Excellence (HICoE) Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (TIDREC) up to present. Since joining the University of Malaya, she has received various research and community grants at both national and international levels, published more than 40 journal papers in ISI-indexed publications and 5 refereed conferences. She is an active reviewer for numerous high-quality journals, which include publishers from EEB, Elsevier and Springer. She is currently an Editor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and actively being a member of several local and international societies include Malaysian Parasitology and Tropical Medicine (MSPTM), Public Health Entomology (PEKA), Japan Society of Medical Entomology and Zoology (MEZ) and International Society of Global Health (ISoGH)

Her main research interests are vectors (blackfly, ticks and chiggers) and associsted disease agents (parasites, bacteria and virus). Her ongoing research is on ecological and molecular characterization of blackfly, vector of Onchocerciasis agent. She had involved in an international project on Onchocerciasis together with University of Liverpool, New England Biolabs (USA), and Academy of Sciences, Cameroon to evaluate the novel diagnostic screening tool for Onchocerca agent detection in Cameroon, sub-Saharan Africa. She had received intensive training on blackfly taxonomy from the world-class blackfly expert, Profesor Emeritus Dr Hiroyuki Takaoka, Oita, Japan. Her expertise in neglected vector identification has been recognized by the Taiwan Centre of Disease Control (CDC) in 2019 - to work on the Taiwanese blackfly identification specific for the vector control program. She is also a core member of the University of Malaya Simuliidae Research Project (UMSRP) and has involved in black flies surveillance across the Asian countries (i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and recently in Taiwan) since 2010 up to present. The team (UMSRP), led by Profesor Emeritus Dr Hiroyuki Takaoka (Oita University, Japan), has contributed to novel findings in the discovery of 108 new black fly species to science. She also actively involved in the community engagement program particularly with the school children and indigenous across Malaysia, aiming to raise awareness on vectors of disease agents through the creative-knowledge transfer program.