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Biology in the Era of Convergence and Transdisciplinarity
Dzulkifli Abdul Razak (or for short, Dzul) is currently the 14th President of the International Association of Universities (IAU), a UNESCO-affiliated organisation, based in Paris. Prior to this, he was the President of Association of Southeast Asia Institutions of Higher Learning (ASAIHL) from 2007-2008.
Currently he is an Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham; and the first holder of the Muhammad Yassin Chair of Leadership and Management at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia.
His other involvements internationally include being a member of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) – Advisory Education Hub Committee since 2007, Executive Council of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (2006-2011), and Advisory Committee of the World Universities Forum, Davos (2008-2011).
He has also served as a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Policy and Management since 1995 until 2010; and the WHO Scientific Committee of Tobacco Product Regulation (2004-2006).
At the national level, he is currently a Director of the Malaysian Productivity Corporation (formerly National Productivity Corporation) Board, since 2008, and leads the Innovation and Consultative Panel. More recently, appointed as member of the Financial Services Talent Council, a think-tank of Bank Negara Malaysia.
He has served as the 5th Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and held the office from 2000-2011, and is Founder-Convener of the United Nations University Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development in Penang in 2005. Since then, he took the position as the Founding Vice-Chancellor of the Albukhary International University until recently (2011-2013).
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (FASc), the World Academy of Art and Sciences (FWAAS) and the Malaysian Institute of Malaysia (FMIM). He is also an Honorary Lifetime member of Asian Academy of Management.
He is a columnist writing weekly on education-related issues since 1995.
DR. CHEN ZHONG
Keynote Title
Challenges of Plant Science Education and Research in a Garden City
Dr. Chen Zhong received his B.MedSc from Peking University in 2003 and his PhD from the National University of Singapore in 2010. He studied the formation of male gametophytes in flowering plants at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory during his Ph.D.
At the international level he has received the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) long-term fellowship (ALTF 798-2009) to conduct postdoctoral research on regulatory mechanism and modeling of stem cell niche at Utrecht University, the Netherlands from 2010-2012.
He came back to Singapore in 2012 and joined the Department of Biological Sciences / Centre for BioImaging Sciences, National University of Singapore, working on developmental and regenerative biology. Currently Dr. Chen Zhong is an Assistant Professor at NSSE, NIE/NTU, and a Principal Investigator of Molecular Genetics Lab which among other tasks conducts research on plant molecular genetics and develops model plants for school science education.
PROFESSOR DR. ZULQARNAIN MOHAMED
Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur
