Datuk Dr Nor Fariza Ngah

Datuk Dr Nor Fariza Ngah is the Deputy Director-General of Health (Research and Technical Support) at the Ministry of Health Malaysia. A senior consultant ophthalmologist with subspecialty training in medical retina and uveitis from Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, she previously served as the National Head of Ophthalmology Services.

With extensive experience spanning clinical leadership, national health policy, research governance, and innovation, she has led major initiatives in diabetic retinopathy screening, cataract services, digital health, AI-enabled diagnostics, and precision medicine. As Principal Investigator for the MyGENOM project at the Ministry of Health, Datuk Dr Nor Fariza plays a central role in advancing Malaysia’s national genomics agenda, supporting the development of a population genomic reference to enable precision medicine, research translation, and equitable healthcare delivery.

She is actively engaged with WHO and international collaborations and has authored numerous national clinical practice guidelines and peer-reviewed publications. Datuk Dr Nor Fariza is widely recognised for her contributions to health system strengthening, research translation, and inclusive eye-care delivery in Malaysia.

Allen Chan

Kok Gan Chan

Prof. Dr. Chan Kok Gan is a distinguished interdisciplinary microbiologist, with double degrees in microbiology and law, and PhD in Molecular Microbiology. He leads research in microbial genomics, quorum sensing, quorum quenching, genome biology, biosafety law, and intellectual property law. He publishes >490 WoS publications, including premier journals such as Nature. He has >27,200 citations with h-index 83. He received Malaysia Toray Science Foundation Award, United Kingdom Prime Minister’s Initiative 2 (UK PMI2) Grant, 15 France Fellowships, JSPS Award, 3 China grants, Hubert Curien Partnership-Hibiscus grant, USA SEAOHUN Award, JSPS Award & Malaysia grants. He is listed for 6 years by Stanford University World’s Top 2% Scientists (2020–2025) in both “Career” and “Current Year” categories. He is ranked the World’s Top 0.1% Scientists by ScholarGPS, ranked First in “quorum quenching”, “multidrug resistant pathogens”, “genome ”by Google Scholar. He is ranked as First Microbiologist in Malaysia according to Research.com. A novel bacterial genus and species, Chania multitudinisentens, was named in his honour. Prof Chan is the leading expert in biosafety law, NGS, multi-OMICs (genome, plasmidome, resistome, virome, transcriptome, methylome, microbiome, metagenome, lipidome, metabolome).

Chatarin Wangsanuwat

Dr. Chatarin (Chad) Wangsanuwat is a Lecturer in the Division of Medical Bioinformatics, Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University, Thailand. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his research focused on developing next-generation sequencing–based methods for bacterial mRNA detection. He later worked in R&D, performing high-throughput exogenous RNA screening at a leading biotechnology company in the United States. His current work focuses on advancing genomic diagnostics in Thailand by developing practical sequencing workflows, infrastructure, and expertise to support clinical implementation.

Choo Yee Yu

Dr. Yu Choo Yee is a Research Officer at the Institute of Bioscience, Universiti Putra Malaysia, where he specializes in rapid diagnostics, biosensors, genomics, next-generation sequencing, and bioinformatics, particularly in the context of infectious diseases and epidemiology. He earned his Ph.D. in Medical Biotechnology from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and has since built a distinguished career advancing diagnostic technologies and sequencing applications. Prior to his current role, Dr. Yu served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Universiti Malaya (UM) and Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), gaining extensive experience in translational research and applied genomics. His scholarly contributions include more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, reflecting his commitment to scientific innovation and knowledge dissemination. Dr. Yu’s work has been recognized with numerous awards at both national and international exhibitions and conferences, underscoring his impact on the fields of biotechnology and infectious disease research.

David Godler

Associate Professor Godler is group leader at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. He is an inventor on 6 patent families with 16 granted patents related to technologies developed for different diagnostic and screening applications, publishing in such quality journals as Genetics in Medicine, Clinical Chemistry, Neurology, JAMA Neurology and JAMA Network Open. In 2022 he was awarded a 5-year program funding from the Genomics Health Futures Mission to assess benefits of extended epi-genomic newborn screening workflow developed by his group on 100,000 infants recruited into the whole-of-state birth cohort called Generation Victoria. He also leads projects funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Foundation of Prader Willi Research (USA) utilizing milti-omics analyses to: (i) define genetic pathways dysregulated in Prader-Willi syndrome in blood and brain; (ii) identify existing medications used for other conditions to target these pathways in future clinical trials.

Nor Azian Abdul Murad

Dr Nor Azian Abdul Murad graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Biomedical Science) from UPM in 1999, MSc (Medical Sciences) from UKM in 2004 and PhD (Clinical Medicine) from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2011. Her research interests include non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes, obesity, and hypercholesterolemia. Her work focuses on identifying mutations or variants involved in these diseases using whole-exome sequencing, targeted sequencing, and genotyping. In addition, she also studied genetic-environmental association related to these diseases. She received several grants from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia (MOHE), such as FRGS and the MyPAIR-UK-MY Joint Partnership on Non- Communicable Diseases (NCD) in 2020. This project is a collaboration with the University of Oxford to determine the body composition of a subset of the Malaysian Cohort participants using DXA imaging.

Souvik Kar

Dr. Souvik Kar holds a Master degree in Zoology from India, and received the prestigious Georg Christoph Lichtenberg international scholarship to pursue his Ph.D in Neuroscience at the Hannover Medical School in Hannover, Germany. Following completion of his doctoral research work, he joined INI Hannover as a senior scientist, where he set up his own research lab, and established the biobank facility. Currently, Dr. Kar supervises the central biobank facility at INI Hannover which has the largest collection of human cerebral cavernous malformation (CCM) patient tissue and blood samples in Germany. Also, his lab was the first to identify crucial non-coding RNAs (microRNAs, snoRNAs, and lncRNAs) in CCM patients harboring lesions in the brainstem region. His key major achievements in the field of cerebrovascular biology include the characterization of crucial coding as well as non-coding RNAs as predictive biomarkers in patients harboring lesions in the brainstem regions.. Such biomarkers will be important for early clinical diagnosis and serve as potential theraupetic targets for CCM treatment. Also, he is a recipient of multiple national as well as international research grants, including the recent European Era-net-neuron 2022-2027 grant on cerebrovascular diseases. He is currently acting as a member of the medical advisory board for the German Cavernoma patient organization.

Saharuddin Mohamad

Dr. Saharuddin bin Mohamad is currently an Associate Professor in Bioinformatics at the Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya. His research focuses on bioinformatics and computational genomics, with particular emphasis on the analysis and interpretation of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. He is actively involved in genomics, metagenomics, whole-exome sequencing, and transcriptomics studies, including data mining, biological database integration, and downstream analysis for biological and biomedical applications. His work also extends to translational bioinformatics through collaborative projects with national research institutes, supporting the application of NGS technologies in health and life sciences. Dr. Saharuddin has extensive experience in teaching, curriculum development, and academic leadership in bioinformatics. He currently serves as the Head of the Centre of Research in Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Human Digital Imaging (CRYSTAL), University of Malaya, where he leads research and capacity-building initiatives in computational genomics and data-driven biology.

Hannah Hong Xue

Prof. Xue obtained her M.D. from the Shanghai Second Military Medical University in 1983, Ph.D. from the Institute of Medical Sciences and Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto in 1992, and carried out postdoctoral studies at the Department of Genetics and Robinson Institute of Biotechnology, University of Glasgow before joining the Department of Biochemistry, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (HKUST) in 1995. Currently, Prof. Xue is a Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor at Division of Life Science, HKUST.
Prof. Xue’s research has focused on genomics, bioinformatics and evolution biology in order to decipher the mechanisms of human complex diseases, in particular schizophrenia. Her group is also interested in translational research on novel therapeutics and diagnostics for complex neuropsychiatric disorders including anxiety, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disorders, with a focus on GABAA receptors as drug targets. As the founding Director of Applied Genomics Center, HKUST and the Hong Kong project leader of International Cancer Genome Consortium, Prof. Xue has made significant contribution cancer genomics. Her team has developed and applied AluScan sequencing technology for genome wide analysis of sequence and structure changes in somatic and germline genomes underlying human complex disorders including neuropsychiatric disorders and cancers.

Ching Ching Ng

Dr. Ng Ching Ching obtained her Ph.D. from Osaka University, Japan. After which, she joined Universiti Malaya as a lecturer. She is currently a Professor in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Programme at the Institute of Biological Sciences. Her expertise includes molecular genetics and medical genetics. Her current research focus is on the genetic susceptibility and pathogenic mechanisms of some cancers, the genetic basis of rare diseases and common complex diseases, and HLA pharmacogenetic markers of drug-induced severe cutaneous adverse reactions (SCARs). Dr. Ng collaborates with numerous researchers and clinicians from Malaysia and internationally, aiming to translate research findings into practical applications.

Yasuhiro Murakawa

Partha Majumder

Partha P. Majumder is a Distinguished Professor of the John C. Martin Centre for Liver Research & Innovations, Kolkata; and, an Emeritus Professor of the Indian Statistical Institute. Until recently, he was a National Science Chair in India. He has made significant contributions to human-, statistical- and population genetics and genomics, including development of methodologies for mapping human disease genes, identifying genomic underpinnings of oral cancer, and reconstructing the ancestries and relationships of ethnic populations groups of India and Asia. He has founded the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, India.
He is an elected Fellow of all the three national science academies of India, The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the International Statistical Institute. He is a Member of the Boards of the Human Genome Organization and the Human Cell Atlas. He serves as an expert on genomics for the World Health Organization.

He has received many awards and honours, including the Biology Prize of The World Academy of Sciences, Trieste (2009).

Naomichi Matsumoto

Professor Naomichi Matsumoto is a leading authority in human genetics and serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Genetics at Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine. With an H-index of 95 (Google Scholar), he has made seminal contributions to the discovery of disease-causing genes in human genetic disorders. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Human Genetics from 2014 to 2020 and currently acts as an advisory editor. Professor Matsumoto has played a pivotal role in identifying the molecular bases of more than 90 developmental genetic disorders, including Sotos syndrome, Marfan syndrome type II, Ohtahara syndrome, Coffin–Siris syndrome, SENDA, and neuronal intranuclear inclusion disease. In recognition of his achievements, he has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Japan Society of Human Genetics Awards (2003, 2011), the Minister of Education Prize for Science and Technology (2019), and the Rare People Award (2025), highlighting his international leadership in human genetics.