Associate Professor Dr. Rashidah Abdul Rahim as a Director of CCB and a distinguish academic at the School of Biological Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang under microbiology and biotechnology programmes. Since joining USM in December 2002, she has made significant contributions to the fields of enzyme technology and biotechnology. She earned her Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Biochemistry from the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, and later obtained her PhD in Enzyme Technology from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Her research primarily focuses on enzymology, with a particular interest in the cloning, expression, characterization and structural function studies of hydrolases especially lipase from thermophilic and psychrophilic bacteria. These enzymes have potential applications in various industries due to their stability and activity under extreme conditions.

Dr. Rashidah has an extensive publication record and her work. Her work contributes to the understanding of enzyme properties and their potential industrial applications. She is also actively involved in international research collaborations and has co-authored papers on the internationalization of research strategies in universities, focusing on global challenges in the polar regions. Her involvement in studies evaluating the governance of Malaysia's Antarctic Research Programme (MARP) highlights her commitment to advancing scientific research through effective policy and collaboration. Through her dedication to research and collaboration, she continues to contribute significantly to the advancement of enzyme technology and biochemistry.

For more details, visit her USM Experts website: https://experts.usm.my/cvitae/rshidah

Associate Professor Dr. G. Veera Singham is an urban entomologist by profession and a molecular biologist by training. His study focuses on bridging these two fields by identifying new approaches to the control of urban pests, particularly those that are significant for public health. His research focuses on understanding insecticide resistance and resistance mechanisms in pest species, examining changes in pest dynamics through population genetics measures, designing molecular markers, examining the relationship between insects and microbes, insect physiology, and creating integrated pest management plans.

Associate Professor Dr. Veera Singham graduated with first-class honors from Universiti Sains Malaysia and earned his PhD in Applied Entomology before beginning work at the Center for Chemical Biology, Universiti Sains Malaysia, in 2015. Before entering the department at USM, he was employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the RIKEN Centre for Sustainable Resources in Yokahama, Japan.

In addition to graduating post-graduate students under his supervision, he has published numerous research articles in international peer-reviewed journals, with the majority of his writings published in the Q1/Q2 journals. Aside from this, he has been actively sharing his knowledge on insect research at international platforms as a keynote and plenary speaker, as well as serving as an expert consultant to numerous multinational firms on the development and evaluation of insecticide products. His collaboration with numerous industrial partners has been crucial to the local and international registration of innovative pesticide products. Additionally, he has been asked to deliver expert training on urban pest management to the Jeddah municipality in Saudi Arabia and the FDA Philippines.

Associate Professor Dr. Veera Singham's study has been highlighted in Astro AEC's research documentary "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" in acknowledgment of his competence in urban pest management. The aforementioned video series seeks to identify and highlight Malaysia's top scientists and researchers in a variety of sectors. This program has highlighted the value of USM's entomology research to society. Additionally, two foreign periodicals have published his termite studies (Entomology Today USA and FAOPMA International Pest Association Magazine).

Associate Professor Dr. Veera Singham is currently a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Malaysian Scholar Award 2022 and will spend six months conducting research at the University of California, Riverside in the USA to advance his knowledge of urban entomology.

For more details, visit his USM Experts website: https://experts.usm.my/cvitae/veerasingham

Dr Teh Aik Hong studies protein functions and structures by using X-ray crystallography, computational docking and molecular dynamics. He is currently working on polysaccharide-degrading enzymes such as alginate lyase, which cleaves the negatively charged sugar alginate into unsaturated oligosaccharides that possess biological activity. Preliminary collaborative studies from his lab have shown that the degraded alginate extended the lifespan of worms and improved the rough-eye phenotype of fruit flies with Alzheimer’s disease. Other ongoing collaborations include the use of the enzyme in drug delivery and testing of the unsaturated alginate on cancer cells.

Aik Hong is also employing in silico techniques in addition to empirical methods to study how the giant mTOR complexes, which are the master regulators of cell growth and ageing conserved from yeast to humans, are regulated by DEPTOR which inhibits mTOR. He has previously worked on PhaC too, an enzyme which produces polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) bioplastics that have huge potential to replace petroleum-based plastics. Using a novel docking protocol that he developed, his analysis has provided new insights into PHA polymer elongation and substrate specificity, knowledge that can be used to improve the enzyme's activity. Other proteins that he has studied include Salmonella toxin–antitoxin systems, bacterial haemoglobins, phosphatase and cytidine deaminase. After gaining valuable experience in protein structures, he is now embarking on engineering enzymes with new activity and designing peptides as drugs.

Aik Hong obtained his BSc and MSc from Tokyo Institute of Technology under the Monbukagakusho scholarship from the Japanese government, and continued with DSc under a scholarship from the Tokio Marine Kagami Memorial Foundation. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at SPring-8 in 2007, one of the largest synchrotron radiation facilities in the world, and came back to his hometown in 2009 to join CCB as a postdoctoral fellow. He became a contract lecturer in 2013.

For more details, visit his USM Experts website: https://experts.usm.my/cvitae/aikhong 

Dr. Go Furusawa is a marine microbiologist currently working at the Centre for Chemical Biology (CCB), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). He started on research against a unique bacterial group, bacterial predator, isolated from marine environments at Kagoshima University, Japan. The research topic has caught his attention. After he graduated with a Ph.D. in Fisheries Sciences at Kagoshima University in 2006, he joined Prof. Patricial L. Hartzell’s lab at the University of Idaho, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow to continue the investigation of a bacterial predator. In her lab, he studied a soil bacterial predator, Myxococcus xanthus, and its life cycle. After five years, he moved and joined CCB, USM as a postdoctoral fellow to study marine bacterial predators. He isolated several marine filamentous bacteria belonging to the family Saprospiraceae from a coastal area of Penang, Malaysia, that could exhibit robust predatory activity on Gram-negative bacteria. His other research topics are the isolation and identification of novel bacterial species from marine and mangrove environments in Malaysia, polysaccharide-degrading bacteria, and biosorption for wastewater treatment. In 2017, he became a senior lecturer in CCB, USM and a leader of the environmental microbiology unit in CCB. He is also a supervisor of CCB Microbial Diversity Library (CCB-MBL).

His current research topics are (1) Elucidation of predatory mechanisms of marine filamentous bacteria against the causative agent of shrimp disease, Vibrio parahaemolyticus; (2) Investigation of the polysaccharide-utilization pathway of a marine bacterium, Sacchaobesus litroralis, which is a novel genus proposed by his group.

For more details, visit his USM Experts website: https://experts.usm.my/cvitae/furusawa

Dr. Lau Nyok Sean is a plant and animal genome researcher currently working at the Centre for Chemical Biology, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her research focuses on characterising the genomes of individual organisms and systems or organisms, metagenomes. In particular, she analyses omics data from plants, fish, and crustaceans, genomes of environmental bacteria and metagenomes sampled directly from the environment, such as mangrove sediment and lake water. She has more than eight years of experience in omics research and has authored more than 45 peer-reviewed articles. She provides consultation and training on genomic and metagenomic analyses at Centre for Chemical Biology.

Dr Lau Nyok Sean began her studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia, where she obtained a BSc Hons and PhD in Biotechnology. Her doctoral studies focused on the genetics of biodegradable polymer biosynthesis, as well as physical and chemical characterisation of the biopolymer.

For more details, visit her USM Experts website: https://experts.usm.my/cvitae/nyoksean