DR. ZUBAIDAH BINTI YA'COB

Zubaidah Ya'cob held a PhD with Distinction in Biology (vectors entomology) from the Universiti Malaya in September 2017. She has continued her enthusiasm as a senior lecturer at the Higher Centre of Excellence (HICoE) Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (TIDREC) up to the present. She has published over 70 research articles in ISI-indexed journals and is an active reviewer for numerous high-quality journals, including publishers from Elsevier and Springer. She is a council member of the Entomological Society of Malaysia (ENTOMA), an active life member of the national society, Entomological Malaysia (ENTOMA) and the Association of Public Health Entomology (PEKA) as well as member in the senior Malaysian Parasitology and Tropical Medicine (MSPTM), Malaysia Society for Environmental Epidemiology (MySEE) and International Society of Global Health (ISoGH). Her leading research is in vector-borne infectious diseases, which currently focus on dipteran flies, ticks, chiggers and fleas and their roles in the transmission of infectious agents in their natural environments. She was awarded several international and national research grants as well as community grants (as PI and Co-researcher) in the health-related field, including from the Biotechnology and Biological Resource Council (BBSRC) (UK), The Royal Society (UK), Wellcome Trust (UK), International Science Partnership Fund (ISPF) (UK), Institute Research & Development (French), Fundamental Research Grant Scheme and SUKUK Prihatin (MoHE Malaysia) and UMCARES (UM). She actively collaborates with national and international institutions/universities, including the University of Liverpool (UK), the University of Clemson (USA), the University of Mahidol, and the University Maha Sarakham, Thailand, for the epidemiology of vector-borne research in the Southeast Asia region including scrub typhus, Rickettsioses, Mansonellosis and other parasitic diseases carried by arthropod vectors. She was also involved in other significant health-related projects, including One Health's approach to evaluating the role of oil palm in the spread of vector and zoonotic diseases and integrated biosurveillance of wildlife pathogens (zoonotic) circulating in Malaysia. In 2020, she visited Cameroon, sub-Sahara Africa, to evaluate the novel diagnostic screening tool for detecting the Onchocerca parasites over six months.  In 2019, she was invited by the Taiwan Centre of Disease Control (CDC) as a resource person to assist in a vector control program. Since 2010, she has been involved in black fly surveillance across Asian countries (i.e. Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and recently Taiwan) and contributed to novel findings in discovering 108 new black fly species to science. She is actively involved in the community engagement program, particularly with schoolchildren and indigenous people across Malaysia, aiming to share knowledge and raise awareness of vectors of disease agents. She received appreciation from Universiti Malaya in 2021 as an Excellence Employee and, in 2023, the Universiti Malaya Excellent Award (ACUM) in the Community Engagement category for young employees (less than five years).