Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Professor Nazia M. Habib is Founder and Director of the Centre for Resilience and Sustainable Development (CRSD) and holds professorial appointments at the University of Cambridge. Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, her work focuses on advancing action-research methodologies that integrate collective intelligence, technology, and open innovation to improve decision-making. Her approaches have benefited leaders in over 57 countries and informed policy advice to more than 20 governments on sustainability and climate change. Recognised at Commonwealth Day 2023 at Buckingham Palace, she also established a regional food systems leadership academy with FAO. She is an Honorary Professor at the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya.

Professor Patarapong Intrakumnerd is based at the National Graduate Research Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, where he teaches Master’s and PhD programmes and researches the economics of innovation and innovation policy. He earned his BA (First Class) from Thammasat University, MPhil from Cambridge, and DPhil from SPRU, University of Sussex. He is Editor-in-Chief of the SSCI-indexed Asian Journal of Technology Innovation and serves on several international editorial boards. His research covers national innovation systems, industrial clusters, and technological capability in Asia. He is a founding member of ASIALICS and has advised organisations including the World Bank, OECD, UNIDO, and ERIA.

Professor Lakhwinder Singh is Professor at the Thapar School of Liberal Arts and Sciences (TSLAS) and Visiting Professor at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi. He previously served as Professor and Head of Economics at Punjabi University, where he founded the Centre for Development Economics and Innovation Studies. A former senior economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, he has received the Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship and Asia Fellowship (IIE, New York). With over 32 years of teaching and supervision of 21 PhDs, he is Coordinator of Indialics and founding editor of Millennial Asia, a SCOPUS-indexed journal.

Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr. Osman Bakar is the Rector of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) and Al-Ghazali Chair of Epistemology and Civilizational Studies at ISTAC-IIUM. He is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Malaya. He previously served as Distinguished Professor in Brunei, Malaysia Chair at Georgetown University, and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at UM. A leading authority on Islamic science and philosophy, he has authored over 40 books and 300 articles. Listed among the world’s 500 most influential Muslims since 2009, he holds national honours from Malaysia.