Professor Dr. Ir. Sha’ri Mohd Yusof

Professor
Graduate School of Business Administration,
Meiji University, Japan

Dr. Sha’ri Mohd Yusof is a professor (non-tenured) in Meiji University, Graduate School of Business Administration (GSBA) since April 2020. He started at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 1990 until his retirement 2019 as Dean of Razak Faculty of Technology and Informatics. In UTM he held various positions including Head of Department, Industrial Engineering and Manufacturing, Deputy Director, Business Advanced Technology Centre (BATC), and Deputy Dean School of Graduate Studies. He has also served in several National committees including Chairman of the TC on Brake and Suspension System Standards Committee, SIRIM, member of the Manufacturing Sector Consultative Committee Panel Member appointed by MITI with MPC as Secretariat, the MQA Auditor for Quality Engineering and Industrial Engineering programs. At the international level, Dr Sha’ri is a Board Member of the Asia Pacific Industrial Engineering and Management Society (APIEMS) and has served in the Asean Professional Education Network research in 2016-2019. He has also been appointed as Program Examiners for UKM, UniMas, UTEM, UTHM, UniKL Pasir Gudang. He has also examined PhD and Master Thesis for various universities including UM, UPM, USM, UKM, UUM, UniKL, Asia-e U, and University of Grenoble, France.  Dr Sha’ri supervised and graduated over 30 PhD candidates in UTM, local and international students from Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Sudan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. He has contributed over 200 publications in journals, conferences, book chapters, articles, etc. from his research funded through MOSTI, and MOHE. Dr Sha’ri is a Registered Professional Engineer with BEM since 2000.

Prior to joining UTM, Dr Sha’ri worked in Proton from 1983 to 1989 after one year training in Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, Mizushima, Okayama in automobile assembling and manufacturing. He graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in Industrial Engineering in 1983 and obtained Master of Science in Integrated Quality Systems from University of Birmingham in 1993. He completed his PhD in 2000 also from the University of Birmingham with his thesis ‘Development of a TQM Implementation Framework for small businesses’.

Dr Sha’ri has provided training and consultancy in UTM itself, and industry on topics including ISO 9000, Quality Control, Lean Management, Quality Costing, Six Sigma, Project Management, and Industrial Engineering. He has also provided training in Sudan on Operations Excellence, Operations Management, Lean Manufacturing, Project Management, Quality Management and Statistical Process Control. He has given several key notes addresses, invited talks for local and international conferences in the topics of lean sustainability, quality management, supply chain management and Industry 4.0.

Professor Dr. Jose Rajan

Professor
Faculty of Industrial Science and Technology,
Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah

Professor Rajan Jose is a senior Professor in the Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) and is the Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Nature journal Materials Circular Economy. He has served as the Dean of Research (Technology) of UMP during Feb 2016 – Aug 2019 besides serving as the Member of Senate and Graduate Council of UMP.

He has investigated nanostructured perovskite ceramics for microwave and superconducting electronics during doctoral research at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Trivandrum, India and has received PhD degree in the year 2002. He has contributed to the science and engineering of diverse range of materials including inorganic and organic semiconductors, polymers, metals and alloys, materials for molecular electronics, biomaterials, glasses, and glass ceramics. He was employed as a scientist at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (India), AIST (Japan), Toyota Technological Institute (Japan), and the National University of Singapore (Singapore) before joining UMP. He has published over 320 papers in the Web of Science (Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics) indexed journals which are cited over 17400 times with an h-index of 68 according to Google Scholar database. He holds 25 patents. He has supervised 6 Postdoctoral, 30 Doctoral, and 11 Master’s researchers. Stanford University places him as a top 2% Materials Scientists in the world ever since the list was produced during 2020. Currently, he ranks 2075/315721 Materials Scientists in the world – representing top 0.65%. He is also ranked top #5 Materials Scientists in Malaysia by  Research.com. His current research interests include renewable energy devices, sustainable materials, circular economy, data science, and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Sharmila Mohamed Salleh

Chief Executive Officer (CEO),
Yayasan Inovasi Malaysia

Sharmila Mohamed Salleh is the current Chief Executive Officer of the Malaysia Foundation for Innovation (YIM), an agency established in October 2008 by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) to promote and champion innovation. Malaysians from all levels of society converge at YIM to share innovation knowledge and strategic intelligence, resulting in the empowerment of creativity and innovation through the propagation of innovative mindsets, sustainable support systems and innovation ecosystems.

Sharmila’s passion inspired nationwide initiatives under Malaysia’s Innovation Discovery (MID) in 2012, making her one of the leading figures in Grassroots Innovation. She further embarked on data mining and spearheaded YIM’s InnoMap Depository System of Innovations. She has recently led community innovation initiatives such as High Impact Program 6, Mainstreaming Grassroots Innovations Projects, and Social Innovations Program.

Sharmila is a certified Innovation Associate and Innovation Manager from the Global Innovation Management Institute in the United States. She is a renowned speaker in her field, and she shares her ideas and experiences on creativity and innovations with individuals from all walks of life. In 2019, she was a panelist and speaker at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) conferences and forums held in India, Bangkok, Tehran, and the Philippines. She also spoke at similar events in Hanoi (organized by UNDP) and Jakarta (organized by the United Nations Department of Economic & Social Affairs, UNDESA). Being an active proponent of environmental care issues, she was awarded the Most Esteemed Order of the Defender of the Realm (A.M.N.) by His Majesty the King of Malaysia in 2015, and Setia Mahkota Pahang (S.M.P) in 2018.

Under Sharmila's supervision, Yayasan Inovasi Malaysia (YIM) was appointed Project Lead by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation (MOSTI) on January 13th, 2021, for the Malaysia Tech Summit (MITS) 2021 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), a marquee event for the Malaysia Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. She was part of a global triumvirate of grassroots innovations advocates, including renowned Dr Anamika Dey of Gujarat Grassroots

Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) in India and Dr Anthony C. Sales of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in the Philippines.

She and her team were then entrusted with developing a Social Innovation Roadmap to create a 5-year plan for social innovation in Malaysia, as well as building the skills of Grassroots Innovators through the Grassroots Enrichment Program (GEP). Under her supervision, YIM has actively contributed to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sharmila, who obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Business Management (Marketing), a Diploma in Banking Studies, and an Advanced Diploma in Accountancy, began post-graduate studies in September 2018. She has received MSc to PhD conversion accreditation. She received her Senate Letter on 15 November 2022 and obtained her PhD for the thesis title - The Influence of IoT Usage on the Grassroots Innovators’ Sustainability in Malaysia - from The Faculty of Business and Management, UiTM Shah Alam. She is the second Malaysian to receive the “Global Innovation Management Institute Level 4” and now a ‘’Certified Chief Innovation Officer.’’