Professor Dr. Wan Jefrey Basirun

Profile
Wan Jefrey Basirun graduated with a Bachelor of science degree (honors) in Chemistry in 1991. He later pursued a postgraduate degree in the University of Southampton and graduated with a PhD in Industrial Chemistry in 1997. Since 1997, he has been a member of the teaching staff in the department of Chemistry in University Malaya, and teaches Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. His research focus is into Physical Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Material Science, Nanotechnology, and supervised 39 PhD (a record in the department of Chemistry, University Malaya) and 7 MSc students into completion, and authored and co-authored more than 345 papers indexed in ISI Web of Science and 7 book chapters, with a H-Index of 52. Among the international awards and recognition he received are recognized as top 1% Analytical Chemist by the Japan Society of Analytical Chemistry in 2019, Outstanding Reviewer in more than 60 journals published by Elsevier, Royal Society of Chemistry UK (RSC), Wiley, Springer, American Chemical Society (ACS), Taylor and Francis and World Scientific, recognized as top 1% global Peer Reviewer 2019 by Clarivate Analytics, and recognized as top 2% scientist in the world from 2020 to 2024 by Elsevier. Among his administrative duties are as Deputy Director for Institute of Nanotechnology and Catalysis Research (NanoCat), University Malaya since 2018, as Editor in Chief of Malaysian Journal of Science (indexed by Scopus) 2020 – March 2021, and chairman of viva-voce for PhD students from Dept. Chemistry, and various committee chairperson in NanoCat. Since beginning his research career in 1997, he has secured research grant more than Malaysian Ringgit 2.2 million from the ministry of higher education Malaysia to carry out fundamental and applied research in various fields of research. He was seconded to the Microelectronics Institute of Malaysia (MIMOS), 2008-2011, and helped MIMOS to file 9 patents with his credit. He was also an external examiner for 8 PhD candidates from foreign universities in Australia, Egypt and India. He has industrial collaborations with local industries and is the guest editor for Energy Electrochemistry journal published by MDPI. In the age of climate change and global warming where the drive towards hydrogen energy is becoming more intensified, he managed to forged industrial collaboration with HydrogenTech, a local company looking to recycle sodium metaborate into sodium borohydride as a solid hydrogen storage material, where few patents are waiting to be filed with the industrial collaborator. He is the Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in United Kingdom since 2023, Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) in Sweden since 2023 and Fellow of the Akademi Sains Malaysia (ASM) since 2023.

Distinguished Professor Mohamed Kheireddine Aroua

Profile
Distinguished Professor Mohamed Kheireddine Aroua completed his PhD in 1992 at the University of Nancy 1, France. He worked at University of Malaya for 23 years before joining Sunway University in 2017. His research addresses the fundamental and technical issues related to water, energy and environment. He is interested in developing green solvents, sorbents and processes for CO2 capture and utilisation; treatment of water and wastewater using novel adsorbents and advanced electrochemical processes; production of biodiesel and transformation of its by-products to value-added chemicals; and providing safe water to communities in remote areas through the application of membrane technology. He has supervised to completion 35 PhD and 25 Master’s students. His research has generated more than 250 articles in ISI-ranked journals and over 28,000 citations, and his h-index is 80 according to Google Scholar database. He was listed by Clarivate Analytics as top 1% highly cited researcher in 2018 and 2019. He is also recognized in Stanford University list as top 2% world scientist for career long as well as single year impacts in 2019,2020, 2021, and 2022. In 2018 he was the recipient of the IChemE Global Award in Water Category. Recently his water project won the 1st Place in the Innovative R&D Award (International Institutions award) at the 3rd Cycle of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Water Award.

Professor Sivakumar Manickam

Profile
Professor Sivakumar Manickam is a Chemical Engineer with a specialization in the process engineering of nanomaterials, especially nanopharmaceuticals, and has over 25 years of experience in this field. He is currently working with the University of Technology Brunei (UTB), Brunei; before that, he worked at the University of Nottingham, International Campus in Malaysia. A major focus of his research is the development of cavitation-based reactors for the production of nanomaterials of technological importance, greener extraction of natural products, water treatment, development of pharmaceutical nanoemulsions, and use of novel carbon nanomaterials to develop biosensors for earlier diagnosis of cancer and diabetes. While at the University of Nottingham, he served in a variety of leadership roles, including Director of Research, Founding Director for the Centre for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (CENTAM), Head - Manufacturing and Industrial Research Division and Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange. He served as Deputy Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Engineering at UTB and also the Director of Centre for Green Technology and Sustainability Research (GreenTeXS). Currently he is serving as the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research Office (GSRO). Over the course of his career, he has completed more than 20 industrial and government-funded projects and supervised more than 50 students in research projects. Throughout his career, he has published more than 275 peer-reviewed papers in journals of repute. According to Scholar Google, he has a h-index of 72 (Citations more than 16500). In addition, he is also the Executive Editor of the Ultrasonics Sonochemistry Journal (Elsevier Q1 Journal of IF 9.7). He received many teaching and research awards and the recent ones is the Teaching Excellence Award as well as Research Excellence Award from UTB and IAAM Scientist Award by the International Association of Advanced Materials during European Assembly of Advanced Materials Congress, Stockholm, Sweden. Also, from 2020 onwards he is in the Top 2% most cited scientist by the Stanford List. His affiliations include service on the board of the Asia Oceania Sonochemical Society as Vice-President, as well as the Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and the Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC).