Heartiest congratulations to Prof Dr. Shamsul Azhar Shah!

All UMBIans would like to convey our sincere congratulations to Prof Dr. Shamsul Azhar Shah, who has been appointed Director of UMBI (15th January 2018 – 14th January 2021). Before his appointment, Prof Shamsul served as the Deputy Director of UMBI (Academic and International Affairs) and has been a Principal Fellow of UMBI since 7th March 2014.

Prof Shamsul is a Professor of Epidemiology and Statistics and also a Faculty member at the Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. He is a member of the Ethics and Research Committee, UKM Medical Centre, and also an affiliate member of the Clinical Epidemiology Unit. With more than 100 publications in international and local journals, his research interests are in the fields of non-communicable diseases (cancer, mental health, diabetes) and also infectious disease (tuberculosis, dengue, typhoid), where he investigates gene-environment interaction in diseases and also the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) in medicine and medical sciences. Prof Shamsul is also interested in research on disabled and paralympic sports, he himself an avid player for the Senior Classifier Para-Badminton, Badminton World Federation (BWF) and Classifier for Paralympic Table Tennis (IPTTC). He serves in the Medical and Classification Committee, Malaysian Paralympic Council and has also represented Malaysia in Para Table Tennis from 2001 – 2009.

Prof Shamsul is a member of the Public Health Specialist Association of Malaysia (Persatuan Pakar Perubatan Kesihatan Awam Malaysia), International Epidemiological Association (IEA) and also the Malaysian Society for Environmental Epidemiology. He serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, namely Sains Malaysiana, International Journal of Public Health Research and Journal of Surgical Academia.

All UMBIans would like to warmly congratulate Prof Shamsul on his appointment as our new Director, and we wish him all the best in the course of his duties.