Presentation options available at the 3rd ICMBB:
keynote, Plenary & invited speakers
Prof. Datin Paduka Dr. Khatijah Mohamad Yusoff
Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia
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Khatijah graduated with a First Class Honours in Microbiology and DSc (honoris causa) from La Trobe University, Melbourne. She has been at the forefront of science working on the development of a cancer vaccine. She was accorded UNESCO’s Carlos Finlay Prize for microbiology in 2005 and was identified as one of the top 20 most influential women in science in the Islamic World for 2014 by Muslim-Science.Com. She won the prestigious Merdeka Award for 2015. She is Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Vice-President of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences and Vice President of The World Academy of Sciences for East and South East Asia and the Pacific region. As an exponent of Science, her 5 year stint as the Deputy Secretary General of MOSTI gave an opportunity to promote science through policies and development of a strong framework in managing Science in the country. She believes strongly on the need for translating science into tangible benefits to people around the world and has previously sat on the Board of Trustees of the international Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), SEAMEO-BIOTROP Governing Board and the Advisory Board for La Trobe Asia. She is currently researching on the development of the Newcastle disease virus for oncoviritherapy.
Prof. Dr. Denis Murphy
Genomics and Computational Biology Research Group, University of South Wales, UK
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Prof. Dr. Denis Murphy is a renowned researcher in the field of agricultural biotechnology and genomics with over 40 years of research experience and over 170 publications. He obtained his PhD from the University of York, UK in 1977, and was a postdoctoral fellow at several world-class institutes including University of California, Davis, USA, University of Sheffield, UK and the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Since then, Prof. Murphy has held several prestigious appointments including his appointment as Chair of Biology Advisory Committee to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, and as the Biotechnology Advisor to United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Biology Society, UK.
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Prof. Dr. Akira Kurisaki
Professor Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Nara, Japan
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Prof. Dr. Akira Kurisaki is a renowned researcher in the field of stem cell research with over 20 years of experience and over 70 publications. He obtained his PhD from the Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan in 1997, and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden until 2002. He was previously a senior researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, and is currently a Professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Nara, Japan.
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Prof. Dr. Mohd Nazalan Mohd Najimudin
School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia
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Nazalan Najimudin is currently a lecturer at the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). He earned his Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Biochemistry from University of Melbourne and then pursued his postgraduate training at Cornell University (USA) in the field of Genetics and Development. He returned to Malaysia in 1989 to join Universiti Sains Malaysia where he maintained his interest in gene evolution, how genes are organised in genomes and gene regulation. His laboratory team is currently studying the nitrogen fixation systems in Gram positive bacteria, especially the Paenibacillus group. The genomes of several species of this group have been completed to understand the evolution of their nitrogen fixation regulons. He is also investigating interactions between plants and microbes that enhances each other’s growth. Administratively, he served as the Research Dean for Life Science Platform from 2006-2013 and was responsible in assembling several research clusters within Universiti Sains Malaysia. Recently he was reappointed as the Director of Nexus (Science) with the objective of reinstituting back the clustering of research groups within the university. He has officially retired in April 2018 and is now serving the university under contract.
Prof. Dr. Tan Chin Ping
Department of Food Technology, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia
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Prof. Chin Ping Tan received his degrees Bachelor of Food Science and Technology in 1998 and PhD in Food Processing in 2001, from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Tan began his career at the Department of Food Technology, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2001. He then served as a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Food Research Institute in Japan from 2002 to 2004. He is also leading one of the major research programs at UPM, Fats and Oils Technology. To date, he has published one joint-edited book, eight book chapters and over 320 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals, has filed more than 15 patents and has presented more than 300 papers at various national and international conferences. His areas of research specialisation are palm oil, food nanotechnology, food emulsions and the extraction of bioactive compounds from various agricultural by-products. Tan has received more than 40 national/international research awards throughout his research career. He was the recipient of the 2010 ProSPER.Net Scopus Young Scientist Award and recognised as one of the Top Research Scientists Malaysia (TRSM) by the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM) in 2013.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chew Fook Tim
Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore
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A Malaysian born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Dr Chew obtained his PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1998. He was formerly a Research Fellow at the Department of Paediatrics, NUS (1999-2001), before joining the Department of Biological Sciences (NUS) in July 2001. He is currently the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science overseeing the Undergraduate Education, Student Life and International Relations, and an Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, teaching Genetics, Immunology and AgriSciences.
His laboratory has established itself to be a leading laboratory in the field of genetics, immunology, and plant breeding, and has research collaborations and links with many academic research groups, manufacturers / industry, regulatory bodies and clinicians worldwide. He has published more than 160 scientific articles to-date and more than 300 international conference presentations. He also holds multiple patents and is the lead scientific consultant to several agribusinesses and biomedical/pharmaceutical companies. He is a popular speaker both locally and internationally with more than 150 invited lectures, speaking on topics ranging from genetics and genomics, allergens, asthma and allergies, environmental health, crop breeding, education, thinking, entrepreneurship, leadership, life sciences and biomedical sciences.
Prof. Dr. Hiroshi Takagi
Nara Institute of Science and Technology
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Hiroshi Takagi was awarded the degrees of M.Sc. in immunology at Nagoya University in 1982. After his graduation, he worked at Ajinomoto Co, Inc. as a research scientist from 1982 to 1995. During the time, he studied at State University of New York at Stony Brook under Prof. Masayori Inouye in 1986 and received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Tokyo under Prof. Takahisha Ohta in 1988 for protein engineering of the Bacillus subtilis subtilisin E. He promoted to Chief Biochemist for protein engineering of microbial enzymes for industrial use and development of frozen dough. In 1995, Dr. Takagi left Ajinomoto and was appointed Associate Professor at Fukui Prefectural University. He then started his major fundamental research on novel stress-tolerant mechanisms of yeast, focusing on amino acid metabolism and ubiquitin system, and their applications to industrial yeast breeding. He promoted to full Professor in 2001 and moved to Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in 2006. The Takagi lab is involved in Applied Molecular Microbiology including yeast projects and the bacterial cysteine/sulfur metabolism. He is currently Chair of International Commission on Yeasts (ICY). Also, he received “Achievement Award of the Society for Biotechnology, Japan” in 2017.
Dr. Kumar Veerapen
Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit (PNGU) and Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Medical School
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Kumar is a research fellow advised by Aarno Palotie, M.D., Ph.D., at the Psychiatric & Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit (PNGU) and Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit (ATGU) at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Medical School. His general research interests are in human genetic epidemiology, particularly in modeling and understanding complex genetic diseases. Currently, he is working on understanding familial polygenic risk of migraines in Finns. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree (First Class Honours) in Biotechnology at UCSI University, Malaysia (advised by Renee Lim Lay Hong, Ph.D.) and completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences in 2016 at the University of Miami (advised by Olaf Bodamer, MD, PhD). During his undergraduate and subsequent faculty position at UCSIUniversity, his research interests included heterologous expression of recombinant proteins and candidate gene studies of myopia and obesity in Malaysian adolescents. For his Ph.D., his work focused on the genetics of preterm birth which included whole exome sequencing analysis of a Miami-Latino population, and an integrated analysis (RNA-seq and methylation) of a longitudinally ascertained birth cohort.
Prof. Dr. Paul Michels
Centre for Translational and Chemical Biology, University of Edinburgh, UK
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I studied biology and biochemistry in the Netherlands. A major part of my career was done at the ‘Université catholique de Louvain’ in Belgium, where I directed research on parasitic protists of the trypanosomatid group (Trypanosoma, Leishmania) which cause serious, often fatal neglected diseases in different (sub)tropical areas of the world. My major research focus has been on the metabolism of these organisms; unravelling their metabolic network, notably energy and carbon metabolism, its reprogramming during life-cycle differentiation of the parasites, the organisation of different metabolic pathways over distinct cell compartments, and the regulation and flux control of the processes. I coordinated a worldwide, multidisciplinary network of research teams with the aim to exploit knowledge acquired about unique aspects of the metabolism and enzymes of the parasites for the development of potent inhibitors that do not affect human enzymes. Such inhibitors have subsequently been optimised to kill the pathogens in infected animal models and thus are candidates for development of drugs against the human diseases. After my retirement in Belgium, I continued as honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh (UK) and elsewhere as advisor for this kind of research and to teach about parasitology, microbiology, biochemistry and drug discovery.
Prof. Ravichandran Manickam
Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Applied Sciences, AIMST University
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Prof M. Ravichandran is the Dean of Faculty of Applied Sciences, AIMST University. He obtained his M.Sc.-Medical Microbiology from Christian Medical College, Vellore and gained his PhD in Biotechnology degree from Anna University, Chennai, India. Currently, his research interests are genetically engineered cholera vaccine and formulation, molecular diagnostics and phage therapy. He has 70 publications in international journals, supervised 40 postgraduate students, filed 8 patents and commercialized 3 products on diagnostics. He has been awarded 44 national and international awards for the academic and research excellence including Ideas Inventions New Products -(IENA), Nuremberg Germany; International Exhibition of Inventions: New Technologies and Products, Geneva and Anugerah Inovasi Negara. He is an associate member and the Committee member on ‘TOP RESEARCH SCIENTISTS MALAYSIA’ (TRSM) of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM). He was the former Vice Chancellor of AIMST University, Malaysia.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Subha Bhassu
University of Malaya
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In spirit, her research inclination and interest grew since she was in her second year of her degree program when she felt that research is actually very challenging and has kept her going since then. Since 1996, when she joined her PhD Program, her research collaboration, friends, teachers and networks was established from all over the world and her exposure as student led to belief that you need to think out of the box when it comes to research. Therefore, knowledge and research grants are important for one to do research, but the two more important things which are even more important than the former will be the love, truth, right conduct and selfless service in research that caters for the students, university, community, industry, country and global needs.
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd. Yunus Abd. Shukor
Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, Universiti Putra, Malaysia
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Dr Yunus Shukor expertise is biochemistry, being an academic in the Dept. of Biochemistry, Universiti Putra Malaysia or UPM’ since 2002. He graduated from Imperial College in 1993, obtained a diploma in Translation in 1995 and obtained his PhD from UPM in 2001. Dr Yunus main areas of research are bioremediation, ecotoxicology and biomathematics. His global research network covers researchers from Japan, Argentina, Chile, UK, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Nigeria. He was awarded the Top Research Scientists Malaysia award for the year 2017. Dr Yunus was part of the Malaysian Antarctic group having been in Antarctica in 2003. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Biotechnology since 2013. He has more 10 patents granted and is the Chairman and Co-Chairman of 4 UPM spin-offs companies.