Medical Advisory Panel

Five years lecturing and training medical laboratory technology students in the capacity of tutor, lecturer, and Head of School in Medical Laboratory Technology; mentoring students who went on to have careers as a medical laboratory technologist.

2004-2005 – Medical microbiology undergraduate research on Klebsiella pneumoniae, a bacteria known to cause pneumonia; studied the efficacy of bacteriophage therapy on Klebsiella pneumoniae and the antimicrobial susceptibility testing on K. pneumoniae. Participation in conferences following this research:
1. International science congress 2005. Poster presentation title: Antimicrobial susceptibility and phage therapy of Klebsiella pneumoniae
2. Health Praxis Dental and Health Symposia conference, Dec 2005. Poster presentation title: The effect of phage therapy on Klebsiella pneumoniae

2008-2009 – Master’s Degree research in environmental microbiology on actinobacteria – isolated from the soils of Signy Island, Antarctica; a collaborative project between Universiti Malaya and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), United Kingdom. The project was to isolate, identify, and enumerate actinobacterial strains from Antarctic soil samples, to characterize isolated actinobacterial strains using morphological, chemotaxonomic and molecular methods, and to screen the actinobacterial strains for antibacterial activities and presence of Nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) genes.
Participated in conferences following this research:
1. 4th Malaysian International Seminar on Antarctica (MISA). Title: Characterization of Culturable Actinobacteria from Maritime Antarctic Soils. Award: Second prize winner in the poster presentation (biological sciences) category.
2. 30th symposium of Malaysian society of Microbiology. Title: Isolation and Characterisation of Actinobacteria from Antarctic Soil.

2013-2015 – Cell culture training for Bachelor of Biotechnology students in Universiti Malaysia Sabah.

2013-2016 – PhD research on the immunomodulating properties of Sabah seaweeds Kappaphycus striatus and Eucheuma denticulatum; this project was funded by the PEMANDU Malaysian government as commercial seaweed farming is classified as one of the 131 government’s Entry Point Project (EPP3) under the National Key Economic Area (NKEA), the driver of economic growth to the Malaysian economy (Economic Transformation Program, 2010). This research was to investigate how the seaweeds immomodulate the immune system, activate and proliferate T-cells, macrophages, splenocytes, and produce cytokines; laboratory work included were Balb/c mice handling, animal cell culture techniques (culturing cell lines and live cells), MTT assay, ELISA, RNA extraction, PCR array, quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) and gene expression profiling. Participated in conferences following this research:
1. 21st international Seaweed Symposium, Bali. Poster presentation title: Antimicrobial Activity of Tropical Seaweeds from Sabah, Malaysia
2. Asian Federation of Biotechnology Symposium, Kuala Lumpur. Poster presentation title: The Study of Immunomodulating Activity of Red Seaweed Eucheuma Denticulatum Obtained from Semporna, Sabah.
3. 4th European Congress of Immunology Vienna 2015. Poster presentation title: In Vitro and In Vivo Immunomodulating Activity of Red Seaweed – Eucheuma Denticulatum Obtained from Sabah, Malaysia.