Academic Leaders

Prof Bibiana holds a Bachelor of Business in Information Systems from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and earns a Master of Science in Education Technology and PhD in Learning Sciences, both from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). Her academic credentials are complemented by professional certifications in Strategic Management from the University of Oxford, UK and Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. Before her current role at Southampton Malaysia, Bibiana served as the Head of the Learning and Teaching Unit and Associate Professor in School of Business at Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus.

Prof Bibiana has two decades of experience being an academic whose career is defined by an excellence in innovative teaching, high-impact research, and institutional service. Her work has been recognized globally, earning multiple awards at national and international standing. For example, she has consistently secured and involved in high-level research grants with over MYR 1 million in research funding, including funding from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) for the Sarawak Child Wellbeing Index and substantial tourism research grants from the Sarawak State government.

Prof Bibiana serves on the editorial review boards of several international journals and frequently contributes as a keynote speaker and scientific committee member for global conferences in education, business and management. Highlighting her commitment to intellectual property and digital innovation, Bibiana has secured multiple copyrights through MyIPO from her research, including the 'Metaverse Trails' tourism project, a Kaleidoscope Model for Construction 4.0 policy, and a Virtual Homestay Web Application for Rural Sarawak. Beyond the classroom, her service to the academic community is exemplified by the 2024 Vice-Chancellor’s One Swinburne Award for collaborative impact, showing her commitment to improving educational access and driving innovation across the higher education in Sarawak.

Bibiana’s research portfolio is centered on behavioral studies, organizational behavior, and sustainability, with specific expertise in SDG, leadership, and the broader domains of management and marketing. Additionally, she is a proponent of innovation in higher education, focusing her pedagogical research on educational technology, mobile learning applications, and the strategic use of social media in content delivery.

Bibiana has published extensively in high-impact, internationally refereed journals indexed in SCOPUS (Q1), ABDC, ERA, and MyCite. Her work is featured in leading titles such as Global Business and Organizational Excellence, British Food Journal, Young Consumers, and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration. A complete list of Bibiana’s publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Dr. Ching is an Associate Professor and the Head of School – Foundation at the University of Southampton Malaysia. She brings extensive experience in academic leadership within transnational education. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Reading Malaysia, where she held key leadership roles including Campus Director of Academic Tutoring and Deputy Director of the Research Management Centre. 

She earned her PhD in Engineering Sciences from the University of Southampton (UK) in 2014, supported by the University’s Postgraduate Research Scholarship. She holds an MSc in Chemistry and a BSc in Industrial Chemistry from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Ching also gained valuable industry experience as a Plating Development Engineer at Seagate Technology.

In addition to her academic roles, Dr. Ching serves as a Panel of Assessor for Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) and as a Visiting Professor at Shandong Key Laboratory of Biophysics, Dezhou University, China. She is a Chartered Chemist of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Professional Technologist of Malaysia Board of Technologists and Fellow of Advance HE.

Dr Ching specialises in polymer science and nanotechnology, with a focus on developing sustainable polymeric materials. Her current research centres on designing polymer systems for high-voltage electrical insulation. By utilising recyclable polypropylene-elastomer systems, her work aims to offer an eco-friendly alternative to conventional crosslinked polyethylene, supporting the transition toward greener electrical infrastructure.

In a parallel line of research, Dr. Ching develops biodegradable bioplastics for packaging applications. She explores the use of bio-based polymers and plant-derived epoxidized oils to engineer packaging materials with enhanced mechanical performance, biodegradability and environmental compatibility.

With strong expertise in the design and engineering of polymeric materials and nanoscale characterisation using Atomic Force Microscopy, Dr Ching has established active research collaborations with partners across Malaysia, the United Kingdom and China.  

Dr. Ching has published over 50 ISI- and Scopus-indexed journals. A complete list of her publications can be found on Scopus Author ID: 55879320100.  

Assoc Prof Dr Kuan Yong Ching

University of Southampton Malaysia,

C0302, Blok C Eko Galleria,

Jalan Eko Botani 3,

Taman Eko Botani, 79200

Iskandar Puteri, Johor

Malaysia

Email: KY.Ching@soton.ac.uk

Phone: +607-5602481

Room Number: 3L015

Suan Hui Pu received the MEng (First Class Honours) and PhD degrees from Imperial College London in 2006 and 2010, respectively. He is currently a Professor and Head of School (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) at the University of Southampton Malaysia (UoSM). Prior to joining UoSM, he was working with Infineon Technologies as a semiconductor manufacturing engineer.

Professor Pu is the leader of the newly established Smart Manufacturing and Systems Research Group (SMSRG) at UoSM. He has successfully completed more than ten research grant projects as either principal investigator or co-investigator and examples of funding bodies include the Ministry of Higher Education (Malaysia), Collaborative Research in Engineering Science and Technology Centre (CREST), and the National Research Foundation (NRF, Singapore). His current research interests include printed electronics and sensors, wearable sensors for health monitoring, MEMS sensors and actuators, and energy harvesting.

Between September and December 2023, Professor Pu was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a visiting academic staff in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton, UK. His current research collaborations are with UTM and MIMOS in Malaysia, A*STAR SIMTech in Singapore and MIT in the USA. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and he has served as a reviewer for leading journals, including IOP Smart Materials and Structures, IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, Sensors and Actuators A and IOP Flexible and Printed Electronics, amongst others.

Professor Pu has extensive experience in senior academic leadership especially in the context of transnational education. He has led various undergraduate and PhD programmes in engineering. He has chaired several institution committees, including the Academic Advisory Board and the Special Considerations Board. As a committed educator, he is a Fellow of AdvanceHE UK (FHEA) and he supports the university's Quality, Monitoring and Enhancement Framework.

Research Interests:

Printed electronics and sensors, Wearable sensors for health monitoring, MEMS/NEMS sensors and actuators, Energy harvesting

Grants:

• PI, MOHE Malaysia, FRGS/1/2022/TK10/USMC/02/1
• PI, UoSM/SDG2022/4
• Co-I, MOHE Malaysia, FRGS/1/2021/TK0/USMC/03/4
• Co-I, MOE Malaysia, FRGS/1/2018/TK10/USMC/03/1
• Co-PI, Essilor Amera Pte Ltd, Singapore, 2016
• Co-PI, NRF Singapore, NRF2014NRF-POC002-035, 2014 to 2016
• PI, CREST Grant, Malaysia, 2014, PC01C2-14
• PI, MOHE Malaysia, FRGS/2/2014/TK03/USMC/02/1
• Co-I, MOHE Malaysia, FRGS/1/2014/TK01/USMC//1
• PI, UoS Internationalisation Fund Award, 2012
• PI, MOHE Malaysia, FRGS/1/2012/TK02/USMC/03/2

Research project(s):

• Wearable technology for sensing human dehydration
• Printed sensors for wearable health monitoring
• Triboelectric nanogenerators for energy harvesting
• Wearable technology for myopia prevention

PhD Supervision:

• Ishant Patil (2027) – Inkjet printed sensor materials
• Rou Xuan Goh (2026) – Laser-induced graphene
• Xue Chen (2025) – Smart composite materials
• Deborah Carey (2025) – Wearable technology for health applications

I am actively seeking qualified candidates to work on a PhD project along my research interests. Funding is available for outstanding candidates.

Consultancy:

• Printed/flexible sensor development
• MEMS fabrication process development
• MEMS/NEMS modelling and design

Dr Jo-Han Ng is currently the Director of Research at the University of Southampton Malaysia, after relinquishing his previous duties as the Head of Academic Quality & Innovation and Director of the Foundation Programme & Head of Quality Assurance. He is a Green Engineer (or Greengineer as he would like to call it) with research interests on green technologies.

He obtained his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (Honours) with First-Class classification in 2007 from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and was offered a fully-paid research scholarship to conduct his PhD research in the same university. The nature of his PhD led him to conduct research work in the trans-disciplinary field of mechanical/automotive and chemical (kinetics) engineering.

His research interest lies in the field of renewable energy with particular interest in biodiesel lubricity, renewable fuel productions, chemical kinetics of transesterification reaction, combustion reaction mechanisms, CFD simulation of diesel engines, experimental studies on performance and emissions characteristics of biodiesel fuelled diesel engines. His collaborations have also led him to be a visiting researcher at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in 2014-2015. He is also currently an Associate Research Fellow at UTM-Centre for Low Carbon Transportation in cooperation with Imperial College (LoCARTic). In 2023, he founded the Carbon Neutrality Research Group, leading a group of scientists to battle climate change.

He also serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Society of Automotive Engineers Malaysia (JSAEM) and Carbon Neutrality (Springer). He was also part of the team that won the Japanese TORAY (Malaysia) Science Education Award six times in 2015-2022 for their contribution in innovating science education, and won the UoS’ ILIAD PCAP award 2015. He has obtained his Fellowship under the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy and serves the faculty by providing training to other new academics as the USMC Leader of Postgraduate Certificate for Academic Practice. He is also a Fellow of the Advance Higher Education Academy (UK).

Dr Ng has published around 100 original peer-reviewed research articles, involved in 20 research grant/industrial projects and has won awards from SEAMEO (ASEAN), Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), World Federation of Scientists (Switzerland), Falling Walls (Malaysia/Germany), Autoliv (Sweden/USA), PILC (China), Al-Dabbagh (Saudi Arabia), TORAY Foundation (Malaysia) and Elsevier. In 2022, he also won the Best Award Energy Cluster in PECIPTA ’22.

Dr Jo-Han’s research primarily revolves around both technical and pedagogical research.

A) Technical Research

His primary research interest revolves around:

• Sustainable biofuels (biodiesel, biojet fuels, pyrolysis oil, and syngas)
• Energy-water-food (EWF) nexus
• Life cycle assessments (LCA)
• Design of Experiments (DOE) and advanced Statistical Analysis methods
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of reactive flows
• Combustion of engines and swirling flow studies
• Microwave-assisted chemical reactions (including transesterification)

Prospective PhD students and collaborators are encouraged to discuss about potential research by dropping a line to J.Ng@soton.ac.uk. Funding is available for selected projects.

B) Education Research

Jo-Han also works on pedagogical research covering themes such as:

• Science-themed Escape Rooms through the Creative and Playful Learning (CPL) pedagogical approach.
• Game-based learning through Minecraft (He was also the first Malaysian to be a Microsoft Minecraft Global Mentor in 2017.)
• Gamification of education through the use of phone app. (Quizona Chemistry)

He encourages fellow educators at all levels (K-12 to university) to collaborate on modern pedagogical techniques in reaching out effectively to students from the digital native generation.

Presently teaching the following modules:

• FEEG1003 Thermofluids
• SESM2017 Thermodynamics
• SESM1016 Mechanical Systems Analysis
• MATH1054 Mathematics for Engineering and the Environment

Previously taught the following modules:

• SESG1005 Fluid Mechanics
• SESM1015 Professional Engineering and Functional Materials
• FEEG2006 Engineering Management and Law
• MATH1055 Mathematics for Electronic and Electrical Engineering
• PGCAP-Prep UoSM

Dr. Siow Yong Low is an Associate Professor and Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton Malaysia, overseeing the Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechatronics, and Computer Science programmes. He was funded by Australian scholarships for both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Curtin University, WA, Australia. From 2005–2010, he held a variety of post-doctoral and research engineer posts in Western Australia before joining the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Curtin University, Sarawak campus as a Senior Lecturer. He has taught broadly across the EEE curriculum, including electrical systems, circuits, signals and systems, communications and software technology.

His research expertise is in acoustic signal processing, with a particular focus on speech enhancement, microphone array processing, compressive sensing and assistive listening devices. His work centres on developing intelligent algorithms that extract and enhance speech signals in noisy, real-world environments. He has published extensively in these areas and his research has found applications in hearing aids, forensic audio analysis and telecommunications. His full list of publications can be found at Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=flF2umAAAAAJ&hl=en

Speech and hearing are the two fundamental blocks in verbal human communication. It takes two to tango and if either one fails, verbal communication collapses. For instance, conversations will be difficult if there is background noise or there is some form of hearing loss from the persons involved. For people with normal hearing capability, tackling the noise will not be a problem. In fact, with good ears, our brains are capable of filtering out the speech from the noise to a certain extent. But the big challenge here is when you have hearing impairment and environmental noise at the same time. We live in a noisy world, so the aim is to electronically reduce the environmental noise and simultaneously compensate or amplify the speech signals according to one’s hearing profile. Naturally, the processed signal must be seamless, intelligible and void of electronic artefacts. That way, people with hearing impairments will have no issues with conversations in noisy settings.

Specific areas of Siow Yong’s research interest are signal processing for acoustic applications, compressive speech enhancement, blind signal extraction, sensor array networks. His full list of publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=flF2umAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao 

• Electronic Circuits
• Electronic Systems
• Mathematics