- 7 weeks ago
Four distinguished Malaysians share their remarkable journeys in physics, marine science, neuroscience, and photography at Khazanah Megatrends Forum 2025. Their stories reflect Malaysia’s growing contribution to global knowledge and innovation. Each exemplifies how purpose and perseverance can drive national progress.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:00Music
00:00:04Music
00:00:06Music
00:00:10Music
00:00:14Music
00:00:20Music
00:00:28Music
00:00:40Music
00:00:42Music
00:00:46Music
00:00:49Music
00:00:52Music
00:00:55good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome back to kmf we begin this afternoon with a kmf
00:01:21staple malaysiana stories of spectacular malaysians these malaysians in the face of uncertainty
00:01:29have inspired us by the positive impact they create not only benefiting the communities
00:01:36they serve but usher in a future that is certainly exciting our change makers featured today have
00:01:45pushed the boundaries of knowledge creativity and conservation these malaysians remind us
00:01:52that navigating risk often begins with the will to see to ask and to protect without further ado
00:02:00please put your hands together for our introducer edmund goh vice president research at kazana
00:02:08next you know good afternoon ladies and gentlemen so you had your lunch your network and treated
00:02:20yourself to some delicious ice cream and now you're seated comfortably here so much so that you may
00:02:25even feel like closing your eyes no you're not going to do that because this next session is going to be
00:02:31exciting and truly inspiring speakers no pressure this year once again i have the great privilege of
00:02:40introducing four spectacular malaysians who are pushing the bound the frontiers of knowledge creativity
00:02:46and conservation their stories will highlight the power of passion resilience and purpose and remind
00:02:54us that navigating risk often begins with the will to ask to see and to protect our first speaker
00:03:04brings us to the farthest frontier the universe itself his life has been shaped by a love of fantasy
00:03:12literature with fencing and archery as his longest sporting pursuits i'm not sure if he was training for the
00:03:19hunger games back then now living in the alps he has treated them for cycling and skiing a physicist
00:03:28with the atlas experiment at cern the world's largest physics lab located in geneva he's also a research
00:03:36assistant with the humble university of berlin today he will share what exactly physicists at the large
00:03:44hadron collider have been doing since the hicks discovery in 2012 he hopes malaysia will continue
00:03:52progressing towards a sustainable future by developing talent and serving the needs of our diverse and
00:04:00energetic society let's put our hands together to welcome dr ku ting jen
00:04:05hello is it on okay perfect thank you so much edmund let me first say it's an immense pleasure to be here
00:04:24speaking to you about my research not least because this is also a 20th anniversary for me since i left
00:04:30these shores to study overseas so i'll share with you a little bit today about what it means to use the biggest
00:04:37machines in the world to study the smallest pieces of the universe
00:04:42i spent the last year at cern outside geneva on the french swiss border as a scientific associate
00:04:52cern is europe's and the world's premier particle physics laboratory home to the largest particle
00:05:00physics particle accelerator large hadron collider with its four major experiments colliding
00:05:07protons and ions these deliver data to over 10 000 physicists worldwide and especially in malaysia
00:05:14speaking about smashing protons may sound a little primitive and unfortunate i'd like to use a slightly
00:05:19different analogy we deconstruct roja to understand what makes it up i'll tell you about what i mean by
00:05:28this let's start with the central question it's been a pervasive and universal question for the ages
00:05:35what are the basic ingredients of the universe what are the smallest pieces of matter and through the
00:05:4219th century we developed the ability to investigate some of this starting to identify the chemical elements
00:05:49thought then to be immutable and then understood later through the lens of atomic theory to be more
00:05:56more divisible and in the 21st century we can investigate particle physics not by speculation we can measure
00:06:07the picture that we have of particle physics is a dance of the particles of matter interacting with one another
00:06:15through force carriers also particles and i'd like to illustrate this with the classical picture of the atom where in the nucleus this strong positive
00:06:23electrical attraction holds on to the electrons in their shells in our language they're exchanging a
00:06:29constant stream of messengers the photons carriers of the electromagnetic force mirrored deep inside the nuclear
00:06:37structure and the structure of the proton is another universe with a trio of quarks held together by the strong nuclear
00:06:47interaction through the exchange of gluons and the similar particle interpretation can be put on
00:06:53the weak nuclear interaction responsible for radioactive decay as well as the gravitational force
00:07:00i'm only going to show you one equation today don't be intimidated
00:07:04this is in a very abbreviated form the lagrangian formulation of the standard model of particle physics
00:07:11it's our mathematical description about of how all the particles interact with one another through
00:07:16the language of quantum field theory this is the most precisely tested theory in physics
00:07:23our role as experimentalists is to try and find flaws review something that lets us go beyond
00:07:31the content of the standard model is illustrated on this slide all of the matter particles those are on the left
00:07:38there are 12 of them but everything you see around you everything you know and love is made up of only three
00:07:44the up quark and the down quark as i've mentioned make up the protons and neutrons and the nucleus
00:07:49and the electron those are the only stable ones that we actively interact with all the rest of these are
00:07:57surprising curious because for reasons that we don't fully understand there are multiple copies yeah
00:08:03um the second and third generation of uh these particles are very heavy very short-lived unstable
00:08:11so we create them they instantly decay falling back down to these stable particles of normal matter
00:08:18on the right side you see the force carriers the bosons i've spoken already about the photon carrier of
00:08:24electromagnetic force and the glue on for the strong nuclear interaction
00:08:27the weak nuclear force is carried by the less poetically named w and z
00:08:31as of yet we don't fully integrate gravity into um our theoretical picture uh in the sand model
00:08:41given pride of place however is the higgs boson it's neither a force carrier nor a matter particle
00:08:48it is um intrinsically linked with the mechanism by which other particles gain mass and the 50-year quest
00:08:56to demonstrate the existence of the higgs boson is what put the capstone on this complete theory
00:09:01uh so the observation was in 2012 to exacting statistical standards five sigma our judgment that
00:09:08there's less than one in a million chance that this was a fluke
00:09:14here's an animation of collisions in the lhc
00:09:21the collider is a series of thousands of magnets that steer beams and focus them down squeezing them
00:09:26down to a less than half the width of a human hair before they collide we need these high energies to
00:09:31access the internal structure of the proton and effectively collide the quarks when they come
00:09:36together in an interaction point in one of the uh detectors such as this one is my home experiment
00:09:43atlas we're using einstein celebrated e equals mc squared translating that high energy into heavy massive
00:09:50particles it's like we we smash together two little langsat and get out a jackfruit a durian something huge
00:09:57that immediately collapses into rambutans that's the fruit salad the roja okay but these interactions
00:10:05they're quantum mechanical they're full of randomness but behind that randomness there are rules and so
00:10:10we analyze billions of collisions to understand the patterns and correlations between what we get out
00:10:14and that is how we test the standard model but the collider is not enough we need a detector and these
00:10:20detectors are huge my detector atlas it's hundred meters underground it has the footprint of an
00:10:25uh olympic-sized swimming pool or in height terms it's almost as tall as the pagoda it also it functions
00:10:35like 100 megapixel camera okay not very impressive a phone got 50 megapixels now but these are specialized
00:10:43sensors in three dimensions built to be extremely tolerant to intense radiation and unlocking the particle
00:10:52properties as they pass through so in this graphic you see we're colliding it's a cross-section of
00:10:56the detector we're colliding the beams in the center and the particles are spraying out they first pass
00:11:01through our inner detector a lightweight high precision device mostly made of silicon that allows us to
00:11:06track these particles through their lines as they move through the detector and then they slam into heavy
00:11:14metal calorimeters bill of lead and steel which are meant to stop the particles entirely and measure their
00:11:19energies a few select particles passed through them most important visible ones being the muons this
00:11:25red line here and that's why we need this huge volume to track them as they continue going and hit
00:11:30these specialized detector elements but this equipment needs operators um atlas is a uh complex uh experiment
00:11:40needing a ton of expertise and therefore we rely on a global collaboration look around the room it's 600
00:11:45people here multiply that by five for the number of signing physicists and then double it again for
00:11:50the technicians and engineers who help us operate this um of course i'm extremely proud to be one of
00:11:55the members uh otherwise faceless but we're a global community and therefore we face global challenges
00:12:01the energy crises supply chain disruptions tightening borders limit academic um mobility and of course
00:12:09financial strain uh it disrupts our work as well nevertheless we persevere uh and now i'm going to move
00:12:16on to the question what are we doing these days you found the pigs 13 years ago job done now we've got
00:12:22for this machine we have plans until the 2040s and let me just give you a taster of recent work
00:12:28in the decade since the higgs um observation we've amassed more than 10 times the amount of data that's about
00:12:35about as much as we have fully analyzed and with that we push forwards our understanding of this
00:12:40particle in high precision great detail let me show you one of the key results
00:12:46it shows us this line shows us that the higgs boson plays favorites because it's tied to the mass
00:12:52generation it loves to interact with heavy particles more than it does with light ones
00:12:58so if we correlate the strength of this interaction with the mass of the particle regardless of what kind
00:13:03of particle it is the force carriers different types of matter particles quarks or leptons they all
00:13:09lie on this line one of the triumphs so far of the center model we're not only colliding protons
00:13:17we also collide lead ions oops sorry went too far
00:13:23um in these heavy metal collisions they're the big heavy nuclei it's very messy so you know where we got
00:13:29rojard before this is more like nasi kanda that's how i like it so then you you make this fluid of
00:13:38quarks and gluons and swimming in that curry all the different particles interact differently and
00:13:43therefore by measuring them we can probe the interactions we can understand different in
00:13:47in this context how the strong force behaves
00:13:53but they're not homogeneous these collisions this is also a lead ion collision or an almost
00:13:59collision it's like ions passing in the night exchanging particles of light the photons like almost
00:14:05like something out of star wars they're bouncing off each other right you wouldn't imagine that from
00:14:09light um and that gives us an incredibly clean signal whoops um nothing seen in the detector except
00:14:19these two pinpricks extremely characteristic lastly i want to get on to some of the work that i've been
00:14:27doing for the last five years a search for pair production of higgs bosons buy one get one free
00:14:33it's an extremely rare mode of production one thousand times less common than single higgs
00:14:37production we look for this in the correlation of pairs of particles two photons in this case in
00:14:42this a candidate event and two bottom quarks but it's a long-term project it'll be another 10 years
00:14:47before we can uh extract this from the backgrounds and so we're progressively building up um evidence for
00:14:53this process let me move on to the other major element of my research in the last five years
00:14:59this is the trigger system for atlas it's how we select the data that we collect these collisions
00:15:04they're not one and done we're colliding continuously for hours and the rate is 30 million collisions per
00:15:10second if we look at the data rate it's as though you had kpop demon hunter streaming 4k on 30 000 tvs at
00:15:17once we need 50 terabytes per second and if you're buying uh consumer hard drives that's 50 5 000 ringgit
00:15:24per second we can't afford that we're publicly funded so we need to cut that data rate by a factor of 10 000
00:15:31when you use a different analogy as though we're putting up a camera trap in daman nagara forget about
00:15:35the higgs for now we're looking for charismatic megafauna tigers and tapirs if we're indiscriminate in
00:15:42recording every animal that passes by what do we get
00:15:49so we have to filter and for that we use a series of selections first fast electronics operating
00:15:58and deciding in two microseconds we have um handcrafted as well as machine learning algorithms on
00:16:04them they assess whether there's a high energy or many particles in an event and if successfully
00:16:11selecting then pass it on to a dedicated cpu farm um processing about a hundred thousand events in
00:16:18parallel with about half a second on average to refine that picture and decide if we've got a tiger
00:16:23and get rid of our pesky backgrounds my role in the trigger um actively started in uh at the end of
00:16:312018 when we were wrapping up the second run of the lhc we are now into the third and i was
00:16:35responsible for triggering around jets jets are these messy objects they're sprays of particles in the
00:16:39detector they tell us about quarks and gluons but it's quite hard to reconstruct them so my work was
00:16:45on algorithms that combine the information from the inner tracker with the calorimeter to improve the
00:16:51precision of the measurements and one of the effects that we need to collect uh correct for is that
00:16:55we're not colliding protons one at a time we've got on average 65 every time we record an event so you've
00:17:01got to just pull these pieces apart we were making solid progress in 2019 aiming for 2021 start and then
00:17:07like everyone else we were hit by covet multiple living through successive lockdowns our hardware got
00:17:15stuck in transit we didn't have contact with our collaborators and uh of course like everyone else we
00:17:21learned to work from home learned to live on zoom and uh deadlines were slipping but we had to pick up
00:17:28the base of uh you know our solitary software development i took on larger responsibility that of planning and
00:17:34implementing a trigger strategy for all of the atlas physics program balancing our resources between
00:17:39the needs of different types of analyses like the ones i was showing to you before so we carried on
00:17:43our work got vaccinated and gradually the world came back to life and so did the lhc i was extremely
00:17:51proud it's one of my proud moments to be in the atlas control room uh overseeing the reactivation of
00:17:56our trigger system as the collisions came in first with the hardware trigger and then a couple of days later
00:18:01with the software trigger and everything ran beautifully smoothly we've been taking data for
00:18:05three years now in 2023 i was elected the atlas trigger coordinator for two years and i was
00:18:11managing 250 people in our trigger group serving on the executive board the highest decision level
00:18:18decision-making body in the experiment and it's a curious leadership challenge because we're responsible
00:18:24for a group that we don't pay they're employed by institutes all of the world you don't see them
00:18:30so how do we do this we build a community united by a common purpose of delivering the best possible
00:18:35data to atlas and in that we improve we address challenges adapting to the new hardware capabilities
00:18:44evolving priorities of the experiment and also building up our documentation and robust procedures
00:18:49to ensure resilience over three years the the collider has delivered us twice as many collisions as in the
00:18:56second run of the lhc using the trigger improvements we've doubled the yield for physics and the
00:19:01success is going to fuel the future analysis that we'll be carrying out but i would hate to leave you
00:19:07thinking that this is a singular story i'm not the only malaysian out there doing particle physics there
00:19:11are the really excellent individuals i'm only going to share two a couple of my close friends and
00:19:17contacts first of all um i took this selfie with fikri just a week ago at cern uh he's really a true homegrown
00:19:25talent he started out um you know his degree at um he was on the cern summer student program and then
00:19:31he went to further education in london and oxford he's now in helsinki finland where he's a leading
00:19:37light in the cms experiment a counterpart to atlas on the other side of the lhc ring and he uh leads
00:19:44their studies of jet physics kim siang is a fellow pinangite he's he went east and then he went west
00:19:51he now settled down in shanghai as associate professor at shanghai jiao thong university
00:19:56and the tsongdao li institute he is a pioneer in the physics of muons using these highly penetrating
00:20:03heavy cousins of the electron not just doing precision physics but also using them for
00:20:08non-destructive imaging he has a mission to train malaysians in all aspects of particle physics
00:20:13and he's really interested in collaboration so get get in touch with him if you might
00:20:17uh be interested now a little quiz for you how far do you think it is to the closest active particle
00:20:24physics room 20 minutes by car um hosts the national center for particle physics it has um uh participation
00:20:35from ukm and utm as well and they've been the center of our partnership with cern since 2013
00:20:41um working on the cms experiment um besides analyses in cms they also uh participate in experiments uh
00:20:50beltu and comet at the premier japanese uh accelerator laboratory kek and scuba um so you can find them
00:20:57on facebook i got in touch with them learn more support them a little more okay so that brings me to
00:21:04my closing statements a bit of an outlook on the future of particle physics the lhc is just one of many
00:21:11global scientific projects with lifetimes in the decades and now we are trying to plan and uh
00:21:18set up the collider project for the second half of the 21st century where will this be cited a couple
00:21:25of the prospects certain or china the regional physicists are building support for this but we
00:21:31need to persuade governments to be involved one thing i can assure you is that malaysians as individuals
00:21:38will be contributing should could how could malaysia do so as a as a nation one of the essential
00:21:47elements will have to be sustained funding for local students to get involved and learn for local
00:21:53research groups to develop their their capabilities um that could be public it could be private um but
00:22:01the you know where's the opportunities we're huge consumers of technology very custom technology so
00:22:07partnerships are essential um i think one of the obvious places that we think about it would be
00:22:12for competition for tenders would be in the silicon uh domain because we need a ton of custom silicon for
00:22:17these devices so with that i'm close let me say once again thank you for your appreciation and uh yeah the future is
00:22:26open
00:22:36our next speaker has dedicated her life to protecting studying and protecting marine mammals in malaysia
00:22:43she co-founded the marisat research organization the country's only ngo focus on marine mammals
00:22:50you see her great great grandfather tycoon leong chun chong built the leaning tower of teluk intan in 1885
00:23:01while she herself in her own way is building pathways for a new generation of malaysians in marine science
00:23:09and conservation she aspires to see a malaysia committed to biodiversity and environmental sensibility
00:23:18where people and nature can thrive together here to share her journey of swimming into a zone many
00:23:25thought too risky and pointless let's welcome our very own aqua woman dr louisa ponampalum
00:23:40thank you edmund good afternoon everyone so from small tiny particles we will talk about large living
00:23:46organisms what's going on in this photograph here well i think this octopus was basically being hunted by
00:23:54this indo-pacific humpback dolphin and it decided that to avoid being eaten it would take the risk
00:24:00and climb onto its predator's body and cling onto it so that there was no way that this dolphin could
00:24:05get to it right so risk is everywhere even octopuses take risk
00:24:09i would like you to meet some spectacular malaysians my study subjects all photographs that you see
00:24:18of marine mammals in this presentation were all taken in malaysia
00:24:24i'm almost 43 i turned 43 in december i've been studying marine mammals in particular dolphins for
00:24:3021 years now yeah thank you
00:24:33but i actually only saw my very first live dolphin when i was 18 years old but it was at 13 that i fell
00:24:44completely and obsessively in love with dolphins for a reason that i have no i don't know why
00:24:51um but i fell in love with the sea even before that in my early childhood from many school holidays
00:24:59spent in trangano by the seaside i was 10 when i told my mom that i want to be a marine biologist
00:25:05and she just looked at me and said okay but i could i i still remember she was probably thinking
00:25:10what is that so this love affair goes back um a really long way this is my scrapbook i kept as a
00:25:19teenager um in the 90s and into the early 2000s i was so obsessed with marine life that i would keep
00:25:26articles of anything marine life uh into this scrapbook and it was even during that time that
00:25:32i already noticed um i saw pictures of dolphins being entangled in fishing nets i saw i remember
00:25:39a picture of a leatherback turtle stranded on the beach with a plastic bag in its mouth and i recall
00:25:45feeling anxious and feeling like i want to do something to protect these animals and i said to
00:25:50myself someday when i grow up that's what i want to do some of you may remember these posters from the
00:25:5890s um uh a lot of my classmates and schoolmates had posters like that plastered on their room walls
00:26:06and on their school desks i still remember the day when take that broke up there were girls in school
00:26:11crying um but i didn't care about any of that because on my room walls and on my desk at school
00:26:19i had these literally these photographs ripped out from um the calendars of the previous year and
00:26:25i had them stuck on my table um byras my schoolmate she's here in the audience and she can attest to
00:26:31that so a lot of people thought i was a bit crazy like what's with this girl sticking dolphins all over
00:26:37the place and when i told my classmates that someday i'm going to be a dolphin researcher they laughed at
00:26:42me and just thought what what is that it was during this time in the 90s that i um was trying to
00:26:48find more information about dolphins in malaysia and i couldn't find anything and i thought to
00:26:53myself maybe there's a niche that i can fill you know because if we don't have information how can
00:26:58we know what to do for them but there were no opportunities back then for me to experience
00:27:03whether this was a passing phase or if this was something i really wanted to do um anyway i went with
00:27:10my gut feeling and um i managed to go abroad and i always said that i would want to go abroad to get
00:27:15trained because there didn't seem to be opportunities here back then and then i want to bring all that
00:27:20skill set back and start something of my own to help build marine mammal science and conservation in
00:27:26the country my parents were nervous um that i was going down this path but they supported me fully
00:27:33and i was able to go to hawaii to get my undergraduate degree and then i went on to study spinner dolphins in
00:27:38the arabian sea in oman for my phd this is me fresh off of my phd i'm on a research expedition in the
00:27:47south china sea this was the moment was like this is it i'm finally qualified i'm back in malaysia i can
00:27:53finally roll out this long term long time plan that i've had to become this dolphin scientist and study
00:27:59dolphins for the rest of my life and protect them in malaysia but what i didn't know was that there were
00:28:05people who actually thought that this was a stupid idea um there were actually learned people who said
00:28:11to me you should just keep this dolphin watching thing as an annual hobby you should go and do
00:28:16proper science and i was taken aback at first and of course hurt and offended and i almost gave into
00:28:23that belief that oh this is uh maybe not the right thing to do because they thought are there even
00:28:29dolphins in malaysia for you to study but i of course i didn't listen to them i i said i've given too
00:28:34much of my life up to this point to stop now and so i didn't and um a little while after that i met
00:28:44this chap here his name is viral and we got to work on a project together and we realized that we both
00:28:50had the same interest for marine mammals and we both had the same mission to develop this work here
00:28:56in malaysia so together we established marisette in 2012 and again people laughed at us they thought
00:29:03are there even whales and dolphins for you to protect how you're going to get this funded
00:29:08you're going to shut down in six months you might as well just join the larger ngos that are already
00:29:12out there but we were determined to do our own thing and carve our own path and we really started
00:29:18with nothing we needed money to open our bank account and we didn't have money so what did we do over
00:29:24six months we collected people's unwanted unwanted items uh i collected so much stuff that my mom even
00:29:31threatened to throw me out of the house she said please get this out of here now over three days we
00:29:36ran a jumble sale and um we raised five thousand ringgit which is about twelve hundred dollars and um
00:29:43we used that as our seed funding to start our operations and to open our bank account so we really
00:29:49started small and um went from there one of the earliest stumbling blocks of doing this work is
00:29:57that the level of awareness is very low here lots of people didn't know that there are marine mammals
00:30:02in our country so of course if people don't know how can they like relate to it how can they empathize
00:30:07and how can they care so we decided that never mind the big environmental problems that are out there
00:30:12but this is so fundamental we needed to tell people that we have marine mammals in the country
00:30:18we often get asked these questions even till today but at a much lesser extent so to help answer some
00:30:24of these questions i want to show you are there whales and dolphins in malaysia
00:30:32this is not bali this is not tahiti this is not hawaii this is right here in johor these are
00:30:38pan-tropical spotted dolphins living their best lives and they share this habitat with other species of
00:30:45marine mammals um along our malaysian coastline what about these guys these guys are whales they're
00:30:53called brutus whales or eden's whales this is in kadha and i tell you they are just as malaysian as
00:31:00you and i why i don't know if you can see from where you are but what they're eating actually is ikan
00:31:05bilis they're eating anchovies right malaysians love ikan bilis these guys love ikan bilis ikan bilis
00:31:11bilis the quintessential ingredient in so many of our malaysian cuisine right the most one of the
00:31:18most important ingredients in our beloved nasa lemak okay so they're just as malaysian as me as you and
00:31:25they live right here this beautiful footage that we took in kadha shows a female whale and her calf
00:31:34feeding on small fish a sign that our waters can support this large marine mega fauna it's important
00:31:42feeding grounds for them and it's an important place for them to bring their young to nurse them
00:31:47to teach them how to hunt and to to live as as a whale or as a dolphin out here yeah we've been studying
00:31:54them since 2019 and for me it's a dream come true because i always thought i would just study
00:31:59dolphins in malaysia and i never thought we'd have the opportunity to study these guys anyway
00:32:06why is this all important in a study of a global review that i was a part of two years ago
00:32:12we found that one in four species of cetaceans whales dolphins and porpoises are threatened with
00:32:18extinction and when we zoom into on the map southeast asia including malaysia is a global hot spot with
00:32:26the highest extinction risks of these species and three of the most commonly occurring species that
00:32:32are found along our malaysian coastline make have made it into the top seven list of cetaceans with the
00:32:39highest by catch extinction risk sorry so basically they are endangered and we need to protect them
00:32:46this is happening here in our waters this is also happening here in our waters right these animals
00:32:56do get caught in fishing gear illegal or legal some make it out alive and some don't this is also
00:33:03malaysia this is happening here what we do on land impacts marine life and ecosystems out at sea
00:33:10whether or not we can see right doesn't matter but we've observed this we've saved
00:33:16turtles from um these debris we've seen the whales that we study be entangled with ropes that was
00:33:21inhibiting its diving and feeding behavior so there are there are issues out there and one of the
00:33:29things that we do is try to find solutions for them so why do marine mammals matter is it just because
00:33:34i'm biased and because they're cute no marine mammals matter because your seafood matters okay
00:33:42the sea can only give us seafood if it's healthy the sea the ocean covers about 70 of our earth's
00:33:52surface right and it produces a lot of the oxygen that we breathe again we don't have to be by the
00:33:58coast we could be inland but the sea provides and the sea provides a lot of food resources and all kinds of
00:34:04ecosystem services and these animals act as indicators of ocean health yeah so if the sea is able to
00:34:12support them it means that there's still enough resources for us to take as well and that's why they're
00:34:19important we use them as mascots for conservation we use them for as indicators we've been talking to
00:34:25local fishermen some who tell us that they no longer go fishing because there's no more catch
00:34:29and actually coinciding with that we have been seeing in certain areas lower encounter rates with
00:34:35these dolphins it's probably a sign that because there isn't much for them to eat and so they've
00:34:39moved away or they've simply died out so we need to look into that how do we study marine mammals well
00:34:47we spend many hours at sea scouring the sea for signs of life we look at their distribution their
00:34:55abundance their behavior how they're using the habitat are there overlaps with human activities
00:35:00we put in acoustic recorders into the water to um to record their sounds to to figure out how is
00:35:07underwater noise affecting them here's a sample of um what a malaysian dolphin sounds like i hope i can
00:35:15oh sorry is it okay if you help me click on the just on the sound please on that box
00:35:25so we can record these sounds and we can compare them when they are just by themselves and when
00:35:33there's human activities around and figure out what's going on we also study what they eat how
00:35:38they're using their habitat where they are feeding what's important for them are there areas that we
00:35:43need to protect because protecting these areas means protecting our own natural resources as well
00:35:48we use drones to monitor them from the air to look at their behavior we attend to cases of stranded
00:35:57animals we try to ascertain the cause of death we collect important samples to run tests in the lab
00:36:03to figure out what what went wrong and we do some molecular work in the lab as well to look at genetics
00:36:10to look at population structure genetic diversity to understand if inbreeding could be an issue impacting
00:36:16these animals we work with local fishermen to put acoustic pingers on nets to help deter
00:36:22dolphins from the nets so that they don't get entangled and die and fishermen don't get their nets
00:36:28damaged we run a lot of workshops with local communities teaching them how to safely disentangle
00:36:34dolphins we run a lot of workshops as well to train local community members government agencies
00:36:40students on how to deal with a stranded marine mammal if they found one on the beach yeah so someone
00:36:46always has to volunteer to be a dolphin it's always quite fun yeah we have a program called the sea
00:36:53science and schools program where we take kids into schools we've traveled with our whale truck all over
00:37:00the country to bring the ocean into people's minds and into their hearts and we share a lot of our research
00:37:07work with government agencies policy makers local stakeholders to try and find solutions for
00:37:12coexistence essentially we've established marset as a platform to learn together to explore i didn't
00:37:19get those opportunities back in the 90s and i wanted to create a platform as well for young malaysians to
00:37:25to participate in this fire online started out as two people we were laughed at in the early years
00:37:32we relied really only on volunteers and over time our team grew and it grew a little more
00:37:38and it pretty much grew now this is the size of the team today so i'm really so proud of how far we've
00:37:44come our field sites are now internationally recognized as important marine mammal areas based
00:37:50on all the research we've done we've had recognition on various platforms we've had we've been able to bring
00:37:57our work to the international stage that's me at a plenary in spain speaking to about 2 000 people
00:38:04about our work and i'm here speaking to you at the kazana megatrends forum so i'm really grateful for
00:38:10today and just at the end of last month we signed a mou for a strategic partnership with the malaysian
00:38:16government the department of fisheries to streamline conservation efforts and research efforts for marine
00:38:22mammals in the country so it was a huge milestone for us and i just want to close off quickly by saying
00:38:27please join us in this mission please invest in our collective future it is important that we keep
00:38:35marine mammals swimming in our seas because if the ocean dies we die too we can't eat money we can't
00:38:41eat steel we can't eat plastic food comes from the sea it gives to us and we need to protect it at all
00:38:47costs and these animals are indicators of how the sea is doing so i'll just end again coming back to the
00:38:54theme of the forum about risk and uncertainty by saying just because something is unusual or never
00:39:00been done before doesn't mean it cannot be done and just because somebody thinks it's crazy idea and
00:39:05it's bound to fail doesn't mean you shouldn't try risk and uncertainties are all part of life so please
00:39:11where possible take a chance on the treasure on the kazana that is malaysia thank you so much
00:39:28our third speaker has spent his career unlocking the mysteries of the human brain along the way he was
00:39:35instrumental in reconstructing the face of the perak man the oldest human skeleton ever found in malaysia
00:39:42giving us a glimpse of our ancient past apart from being a neurosurgeon he is professor of neurosciences
00:39:49and chairman of brain and behavior cluster at university science malaysia this afternoon he will
00:39:56tell us the story of how one of east coast states in malaysia rose to prominence in brain mind and
00:40:04neurosciences he yearns for a malaysia where institutions across the country work together
00:40:11to develop talent and pursue national excellence regardless of ideologies or backgrounds please don't
00:40:18get shocked when he comes on stage later he looks a bit different than usual like professor x in x-men
00:40:25wearing his cerebral helmet ladies and gentlemen please welcome professor jaffrey malin abdullah
00:40:40can you start the video please i'm not using powerpoint i'm on 18 minute video
00:40:46so forgive my klater english if i talk about klater english but i hear from kota baru kelantan where we have a
00:40:56school of medical sciences there and we are the only hospital pakar usm outside of kuala lumpur in west
00:41:06malaysia of course so i'm very adamant because um and very stubborn-headed person because that's why i put the
00:41:16the topic just now not everything good happens in kl so 30 years ago when i arrived back from
00:41:27my training overseas sent by the government of malaysia i was training in gun university i went to
00:41:34karolinska and university of florida for my training in neurosurgery and i had to do a phd in neurosciences
00:41:45coming back to malaysia i had to change coming back to klater i had to change i had to change my
00:41:51mentality my mentality talk live what talk say what talk work what you know to something boleh buat not
00:42:01what tapi kena plan kena semayang banyak doa banyak pray banyak i have to push and i have to innovate and
00:42:11collaborate so when you look at what i did i had to make myself into a good and
00:42:21trusted neurosurgeon in the state of kelantan or east coast catchment area 4.5 million people
00:42:29lots of sick people tumors are six centimeter in size in where i train the brain tumors are maybe
00:42:37one centimeter or even less i remember calling my professor i said prof you never taught me how to remove
00:42:43huge brain tumors yeah he forgot about that because in belgium all tumors in in in sweden tumors are small
00:42:53yeah yeah so my my my comrades did not trust me because i'm a neurosurgeon with a phd so they said
00:43:01i must be a very bad neurosurgeon that's why i'm running to phd or if i'm doing phd i must be a very bad
00:43:09scientist because i'm operating people but they did not know that being a hybrid person is very
00:43:15important and so i had to plan to get staff equipment i had to establish a department the first department of
00:43:26neurosciences in southeast asia thanks to prof dr zabidi azhar muhammad hussein the dean at that time
00:43:35thanks to arwah dr ramley saad the pengarah hospital of hospital usm who agreed to tolerate me buying
00:43:44neuroscientific equipment in a hospital university including of course the surgical equipment as well
00:43:50and thank you to mahadid muhammad because our alumni wrote a letter to him he tabled that letter in
00:43:58parliament and suddenly we received funds about 40 million ringgit to move forward
00:44:07and what i had to do now was to get the human resource and the space so we had to take spaces in our
00:44:16hospital that was not unused and explain to my engineering friends and using certain budgets
00:44:24modify the four walls the roof to make a class 100 you know that it's not easy to make a special
00:44:33operation theater it's not easy but we managed to go through and you see from 1995 to the year of 2000
00:44:41we did that and i had to find human resource so i said where do i get my human resource so i went to see 10
00:44:52institutions i said to them give me your best student in biology your best student in physics your best
00:45:04student in chemistry etc etc and the gate the dean gave me this boy or girl and i promised the dean that
00:45:13i would take care of this person until he did his phd in neuroscience overseas so we sent them overseas
00:45:23i met with the professors i chose where they should they should go but they should go to switzerland uk
00:45:29sydney australia and many other countries germany and switzerland and then when they came back we wanted to
00:45:38start the first course our own local course in kota baru klater not in kuala lumpur my dear
00:45:49very stubborn-headed you know so we started the first course in masters of surgery neurosurgery
00:45:57when i remember when when when we wanted to start the course my comrades were saying oh you're going to
00:46:03produce stupid malaysians who do not know how to operate the brain but now the the course has run for
00:46:11more than 25 years it has been graded by the world federation of neurosurgery to be on par and we tie
00:46:21together with the south korean residency course in neurosurgery and oh and we started then to think
00:46:28we kept reading newspapers politicians saying oh kita tak cukup psychologists kita tak cukup psychiatrist
00:46:35kita tak cukup neuroscientists but we never do anything so we decided to do it in klater we started our
00:46:43master of cognitive neurosciences the neurosciences cognitive course overseas is usually one year or two year
00:46:50course and when the person graduates he cannot do very much for the community so we revamped the
00:46:56whole syllabus i went to see 10 deans from the school of social sciences to business to economics to uh
00:47:06you know veterinary sciences and we decided to have our rojak mama course of the master of cognitive
00:47:12neuroscience because you use the brain for everything you use the brain to buy and sell you use the brain to
00:47:20fall in love you use the brain to go to the toilet you know so there's some so much we do not know
00:47:26about the brain in malaysia and we started other courses as well and we we the last five years we
00:47:33started clinical neuropsychology and psychology and we wanted to get lots and lots more students so many
00:47:41students now get confused when they fill up the upu form or they thought you're coming to usm penang
00:47:50or usmkl but now they have to oops
00:47:54kata kota baru well you know oh my god that's it again that's the grabu you know that's the only thing and
00:48:00flats lots of banjir you know that's what they think but now you know this is a totally different
00:48:08uh cup of tea when you come to kota baru kelantan you get surprised and then another thing that we did
00:48:16over the years with so much data that we gathered from the neuroimaging the eeg cap now you see my brain
00:48:24is being activated on my left it's getting excited as a wireless uh being transmitted to the to the screen
00:48:32uh so we started a brain bank where we stored eeg data mri data fmri data meg data because even
00:48:43scientists love banks you know and then we were thinking oh we have to go further we have data but
00:48:52we don't have enough smart people to work with the data so we wanted to go international so we worked with
00:49:00united states of america we worked with china we worked with mcgill in canada and even thanks to
00:49:08dato mahadeh we work with cuba and in those times the south south collaboration so the cubans flew all
00:49:17the way from havana to kota baru and they were so surprised to see oh do you have this equipment
00:49:24amongst the pedophiles you know oh interesting and then they sent their postdoc you know to work
00:49:31with us in fact one of their postdoc fell in love with one of our forgot why science you know
00:49:38and they were very annoyed they say oh you're trying to steal our scientists you know no no no love is
00:49:44blind love is blind you know so we we work with um we work with americans where we started uh uh i joined
00:49:52the brain economy hub the brain capital alliance and i have been recently uh elevated from a global
00:50:01brain consortium international now there's a global brain consortium southeast asia that i've been charged
00:50:07of which i have now to improve neuroscience in southeast asia and recently we joined world economic forum
00:50:14where we with the topic of brain economy and brain capital we are trying to push in malaysia the concept of
00:50:23brain capital and brain economy where brain health is so important to run the economy of malaysia without good
00:50:32brain health from baby till the elderly population your economy is not going to move one single inch so that's very
00:50:42important so with this collaboration what we did we also had to share data with other countries those
00:50:50countries that we mentioned just now united states america china canada and cuba we shared the data
00:50:57and we have come out with papers unimaginable q1 papers together with collaboration
00:51:06malaysia boleh malaysia boleh share our brain data with the americans with the chinese with the cubans
00:51:14the europeans and we can come out with useful big brain data that we can use now to see how
00:51:23we can help people with dementia with strokes epilepsy and other diseases so just imagine
00:51:33uh kota baru kota baru kota baru bukan kuala lumpur we are able to do that and this is not alone we
00:51:40collaborate with many other people within ratio as well our colleagues from ukm um uh usim as well is
00:51:48involved uia and now our next generation of our young people that are younger than me
00:51:57uh louisa say she's 43 i'm going to 63 soon so uh i have to prepare the next generation of malaysian
00:52:08neuroscientists to move forward so i have to take this hand take young people that you see on on the
00:52:15stage on the screen to work with colombia university looking at neuroclimate you know that when something
00:52:22goes wrong with the climate your brain health is not good you know that pollution increases the
00:52:29incidence of dementia you should know and we work with the chinese looking at big data we work with the
00:52:37germans we work with so many other countries and we hope that this young generation because
00:52:43orang orang orang muda ni dia tak ada network so kita kena tolong networkkan mereka dengan these people
00:52:53so that they will jump start this is the grasshopper thing of course but after that they will work like
00:53:00an end lah they have to because when you collaborate internationally with important data this is what happens
00:53:07so we hope that all these people the photos that you have you see on stage are not only from usm
00:53:14they are from utm they are from kuala lumpur the universities local and we hope that these people will
00:53:22do multi-center international activities that will make us proud and we hope that they will be able to publish
00:53:31papers even now as we speak last year the last two years we've been publishing papers in international
00:53:37journals as collaborators whether we are the principal investigator or whether they are co-prinsipal
00:53:48investigators so kota baru is not a bad place you know
00:53:54betul tak siapa oklatel sini tak ada oklatel ada angkat tangan okay be proud be proud and please come back to
00:54:02please come back to kota baru not to come back during higher raya of course but to come continuously
00:54:12and come and visit our campus and see within that walls that you see hospital pakar usm you will see the
00:54:19people behind it that work very hard to improve brain science and neuroscience psychology and neuropsychology
00:54:31people don't think that they don't think that they can happen and you will not when you walk in the
00:54:37campus you will not see people walking around like with cats like me you know we we do these experiments
00:54:43in in in the lab and i just want to tell you that the journey that i just mentioned to you has been
00:54:49published in a live book by a doctor neurologist from penang her name is dr yogi abby where she has
00:54:57uh there's a there's a chapter dedicated to the journey of how we started from not many things to
00:55:04what how we are today and we hope that if you can google this you might get it on on on the internet
00:55:12there's a chapter that summarizes what i just showed you on the slide about how we travel from
00:55:20nowhere to somewhere and my talk today is just to tell the young people out there including you
00:55:29those on the internet is that if you have a dream don't make it into a nightmare
00:55:38bring the dream to reality
00:55:40uh that susah lah because you're young as i was young many years ago i call myself the neural man or
00:55:49the neural gardener and like i said everything begins with a dream to make a dream a reality do the
00:55:56impossible never say never never say no do not give up and follow up until the end and another thing i have
00:56:04to mention is uh which is important when my wife is here at the back and my my youngest boy is here
00:56:12never forget your family when you're climbing up the mountain okay sometimes you're
00:56:16to tinggal-tinggal and even good things other than nasi kerabu nasi lemak nasi
00:56:23dagang nasi tupai can happen in the state name kelantan okay and the current count today we have 146
00:56:32neurosurgeons working everywhere including kuala kerai including miri tawau sabah so they're
00:56:41everywhere we have 120 scientists they are working in uh ntu nus stanford but they get stolen you
00:56:50you're you're not chai kerja kat malaysia ni susah sikit there's no industry we have uh produced more than 50
00:56:56clinical psychologists some of them are working in the private hospitals in kuala rumpur maybe some of
00:57:01you are hiring them i'm not very sure and most importantly the number of the female gender
00:57:09constitution of these specialists have gone up from 22 percent and increasing because the ladies are
00:57:17theoretically smarter than the boys even even as surgeons even as surgeons you know i'll get a
00:57:28lady neurosurgeon to operate my brain tumor anytime so um but being a neurogardener is not easy and you
00:57:41will be gardeners in your own right when you can push your dream to become true and when when you want to
00:57:48plant the seed and the seed grows into a pokok and in this case the pokok is hybriscus because
00:57:56hybriscus is the national flower of our country uh i wear white that's why this uh ai generation
00:58:04the hospital is not black today like today so you'll see in this video
00:58:10if you work very hard you work like an end but actually once in a while you jump like a grasshopper
00:58:17you can get your dream will become true and you will have a nice bunga raya blossoming colorful
00:58:26and i think you'll be a very happy person and this is what our contribution has been for the last 30
00:58:37years to this country and i hope this message to all of you online and in this hall is never give up
00:58:46give up and teruskan mimpi jangan jadi nightmare sebab kadang-kadang jadi nightmare tapi things will look
00:58:54bright and things will work thank you very much
00:59:00our fourth and final speaker is a national figure skater turned documentary and sports photographer
00:59:16and the co-founder of women photographers malaysia she has captured defining moments on global stages
00:59:23from the olympics to time and national geographic today she's here to show how photography is a
00:59:33universal language one that transcends boundaries empowers voices and creates opportunities for all
00:59:40beyond her lens she once taught english and math and orphanage and she also practices muay thai for fun
00:59:47so don't simply mess with her at heart she hopes for a malaysia where every voice and story is valued
00:59:55and opportunities are not defined by privilege but by passion and purpose please give your warmest welcome
01:00:02to annis lin
01:00:13hi everyone when was the last time you actually came across a photo that makes you stop and look
01:00:20on social media or anywhere not because it's beautiful but because it makes you feel something so deeply
01:00:28that you can scroll past it they say picture is worth a thousand words which is great because i'm much
01:00:35better behind the camera than with the microphone so yeah but today i want to try using both
01:00:43to talk about something a photograph can when words can't
01:00:49this is a photo of an elderly man wrapped in the shredded remains of our national flag
01:00:55it was taken back in june 2021 when i was on the assignment during the white and black fact
01:01:00movement amidst of the pandemic and yet i came across a tattered flag and i call it tattered hope
01:01:07it was taken back in june 2021 for many it reflects the state of our nation the state of emergency at that
01:01:13time a hung parliament a rising employment unemployment families going hungry and a search of suicide
01:01:22during the pandemic weeks after weeks malaysian raised the white flags as in desperation of hunger
01:01:29and the black flag symbolize the frustration and a plea of leadership
01:01:33as a photojournalist i spent years chasing moments like that moment that speaks the truth
01:01:42hold memories and reminds us of our shared humanity
01:01:46humanity because photography at its heart isn't just about what we see but about what we remember and what it makes us feel
01:01:55as you sit here today friends amongst of the greatest minds you know there's like
01:02:03literally three doctors behind uh before me your peers your mentors your bosses
01:02:08and as you continue to network your way through life and career progressions i want you to remember this
01:02:16you guys are not here to prove you're here to improve and as for me as well it's the same
01:02:23i'm not here to impress but i'm also to express because when we start performing we finally start asking
01:02:31the 5w1h who are we when the lights are off and when no one's watching what are we really doing here
01:02:41and does it still move us what are you doing here when was the last time we pause just to breathe
01:02:49to listen and to feel and also question yourself when was the last time you guys do something for the first time
01:02:56and where do we find meaning in all that we do in your successes and why do we keep showing up and why
01:03:04are you here why are you here today and at the end how do we keep creating loving growing even when the
01:03:13world feels heavy now
01:03:18so the moment we stop trying then we prove ourselves we make space to truly be our own self
01:03:24where authenticity connections begin and where the real story begin this is me by the way when i was
01:03:31young growing up i was raised by two parents who were social workers my dad is with us today amongst there you are
01:03:46my parents showed me what it meant to live in humanity and purpose
01:03:49i had growing up i had a lot of grandparents and majority of my childhood friends are from the orphanage
01:03:55homes
01:03:57and for both of my parents they are the same people they could be one day on daytime they could be
01:04:03giving sponge bath for an old folks for an elderly council single mothers helping broken families
01:04:10and in the evening put on a suit and raise funds for a cause
01:04:14from them i learned the importance and the fundamental of life because they always told
01:04:19me get your abc's right
01:04:24it's the simplest things really you know now we are going back to school right now
01:04:29which are just let even though it's just letters because that's the foundation we have to get our
01:04:33foundations right of how we show up to the world as early as we learn from the kids abc's right
01:04:39in my desk uh which is abc which is attitude behavior and character that's how we get our abc right
01:04:48everyone can you say that with me attitude behavior and character and then that's what sets you apart
01:04:57and for me photography becomes the way i show up and over time i believe that the effects you harder
01:05:03you have the effects you have on others are the most valuable currency there is
01:05:07and what you say how you make others feel and i see myself a lot in my parents
01:05:14before photography i started architecture i thought i'll design buildings not stories but photography
01:05:21found me and gave me a purpose because when you're amongst your amongst extrovert parents and you
01:05:26become the introvert one and aside from being trained in architecture i was also a former figure skater
01:05:34right there there and pursuing winter sport in a tropical equatorial equatorial climate and this
01:05:41experience allowed me to challenge the norm and start taking photographs framing stories through
01:05:46lens by documenting a group of malaysian in ice skating community so all in all it tied together being an
01:05:53architecture graduate a figure skater and a photographer and these three have something in common which is
01:05:58discipline balance and a pursuit of form and expression between technicality and other street
01:06:07over the years true plenty of trials and arrows in photography so aside from graduating graduate in
01:06:13architecture i also partly graduate photography from the university of google and youtube which is
01:06:20self-taught and this was the one of the many first photos i've taken is rachel leong one of the national
01:06:28figure skater back in 2015 i believe and then fast forward as you learn you know to try and ever
01:06:34explore and this is the photo i've taken in 2022 paging of gauri sakamoto a japanese figure skater
01:06:45what i love about photography and i think majority of you that the importance of documentation is that
01:06:50photography holds no boundary in regards to anyone's social status it makes people feel seen
01:06:58heard and feel and to provoke understanding to give voice to the unheard be it an indigenous boy
01:07:07or a world-class badminton player
01:07:11speaking another world-class um this is an actress michelle yor so during at that time i was tasked to
01:07:17photograph to cover her when she the word homecoming when she come back to malaysia and then you get
01:07:23the statue you get her and then you get like you know where's wally and there is she and i was very
01:07:29impressed by this lady as well with that selfie sticks right there
01:07:37and again like i said photography holds no boundary to anyone's social status it is a really great
01:07:42achievement and even more so for us malaysia you know they say malaysia boleh the lens doesn't care
01:07:48whether if it's an oscar or a nearly finished empty plate with just lentils and rice it demands us to
01:07:55pay attention with what's happening around us this is mr m and his family a rohingya refugee i document back
01:08:03in 2021 july i was tasked by npr to photograph the the food insecurity when it comes to covet
01:08:13so mr m allowed me to in his home actually cook for me and his family and you can see what we're
01:08:19seeing right now the hygienic of the hygienic situation or the lack of provision and with using
01:08:27chili powder lentils long beans just to add a little bit of flavor and i remember one of the
01:08:33questions interview question i asked him if money and not is not an issue at that time what would you
01:08:39get for yourself and he say i really want kfc so soon enough after one month when the work is published
01:08:49i bought kfc for him
01:08:50and then he actually said i bought kfc for him enough that to actually last him for three four
01:08:57days for leftovers you know leftovers are always the best so i like leftovers but he invited me to
01:09:03sit down and actually shed the other three buckets i bought with a doctor coming into the uh to the to
01:09:09the village he shared the three other buckets to the all the flatmates and the children
01:09:14photography has taken me to places where borders are blurred one week i might find myself via the
01:09:22olympics capturing glories of world champions positions triumphs and a history being made
01:09:28and days and weeks later i might be deep in the borneo covering the complexity of rural vaccinations
01:09:36and in both words i ask myself you know what what does this mean it means that to document not just
01:09:43what's happening but also what's the state of humanity here is a quiet opening ceremony that keeps
01:09:50the world in in times of uncertainty which centers around this year's team risk and uncertainty where
01:09:57we seek to explore the delicate between stability and adaptability in navigating global transition
01:10:06with empty seats where no one is there as well
01:10:08i was there to cover our malaysian contingent and our our very own athletes such as farah and our
01:10:17gymnast and their resilience when no one is watching but still knowing that everybody is cheering back
01:10:21home pandalela pandalela a match between this is a match between uh chen lung from china and our national
01:10:31badminton player lee zizia at the time evan and so where they managed they managed to grab home a bronze
01:10:40medal for the men's double and also this tiny moments that i encountered that we used to we used to be
01:10:46conquered by japanese during the japanese occupation and how years have passed you will see a japanese
01:10:52officer actually carefully holding our jala gemilang this is coach wong chun han when he sees our flags up
01:11:02and also a portrait of azizu awang our national rocket man for securing occurring silver
01:11:08and then off to quarantine for two weeks and then one week just to go back home and recalibrate
01:11:17and three weeks later
01:11:21i was by foot on ground to cars on a bumpy roads with our love with our our lovely doctors to helicopter flights
01:11:32and by sea by boat in the visual in the efforts of documenting the complexity of rural vaccination
01:11:45and to document the efforts of it in our country's ministry of health
01:11:51and here you can see how the doctors themselves working tirelessly to obtain vaccines and then here
01:11:57we go as in a deep uh in the deep island of sabah mabu island when keeping your distance is not it
01:12:05doesn't apply to them as well and we have see a malaysian doctor making sure that villages are in order to
01:12:10receive vaccination i particularly really resonate with this photo where i think that can end a life
01:12:19and then there's a pregnant woman here where life begins seeing that nine family members living in a
01:12:26house under the pandemic in pulau gaia a son carrying his father to lay to lay on on the sofa for the vaccine
01:12:37although i'm really impressed with the hello kitty collections right here
01:12:44and to humorize every subject we point at it
01:12:49in times of uncertainty
01:12:56so on these kind of moments there are like little little great moments that appears my children
01:13:01makeshift on the on their own have their own imaginations or a photo of a mom receiving
01:13:08vaccination but then there's like a cute foot right here
01:13:16so in terms of making sense of this i'm still trying to at that time so it was just
01:13:21from july and august and then september and i believe that rather if it's olympic or through
01:13:28the corners of malaysia documenting the rule of vaccination it requires the same energy the
01:13:33same camera the same spirits to do so
01:13:38so every voice and story matters be it a child
01:13:42a girl a girl a mom or even an olympic gold medalist iman khalif an algerian boxer
01:13:53she stands as a resilience figure at a time of controversy ongoing debate over gender identity
01:13:59and fairness in sports at a time i was on an assignment with the association national olympic
01:14:05where we where we that we were there to photograph portraits
01:14:09and then she was here she have all this thing going on with the ongoing controversy going on her
01:14:14and then she looked down when i was photographing her and i told her iman
01:14:18you're like i get inspiration from the tethered for the tethered man there's the man with the tethered hope
01:14:25and i say why not you just put on your national flag and then actually look up
01:14:32so it's the same thing but it's just a little tweak and different and it really
01:14:35depends how you see things in life sometimes photography also sometimes represent and cast
01:14:42narrative on like the legacy of a national leader turning 100 years this year i was tasked to
01:14:49photograph three days before to shadow him and it gave us a glimpse that he's not just a political
01:14:54figure going up knowing it or how the media writes it or how he portrayed but a friend a father a
01:15:01grandfather a husband or even showing a long lasting love story
01:15:08and even an individual what i see is at the age of 100 who is still able and willing in all that he does
01:15:17and then we have our current leader as well
01:15:22so we as photographer we are accountable to what we put out there in the world
01:15:26and in the meantime to hold those in power accountable as well and here is our prime minister
01:15:32it was at the country the time he was leading he was looking into he was there for the batangkali
01:15:37landslide in 2022 where unfortunately 31 people were killed
01:15:45and i was there to cover the it was sort of like a beautiful mess what i'm seeing but it was devastating
01:15:51so photography is a tool for change to preserve the past and construct the future and it's a little
01:16:00tool to inform reform and unite people and with that too we can claim credibility alone i can claim
01:16:10credibility credibility alone with all the photos we just seen which or we just go through we have to
01:16:15work together to paint the bigger picture like you guys as well the world doesn't need more photographers
01:16:24it needs more storytellers be it using your pen your voice and whether you're in the right position to do
01:16:31so to challenge the norm and create opportunities for others and in one such project 12 malaysian and
01:16:38i back in 2021 from february and april uh we have the privilege to work with malaysian artist
01:16:44red hongi who used 55 000 green tip matchsticks to craft a powerful artwork on climate change
01:16:55a reminder that even the smallest sparks can ignite big conversation so never underestimate what you do
01:17:01as time went by earth blossomed into a beautiful natural vastness of green
01:17:14our human curiosity led us to discover its hidden beauty and its promise of the future
01:17:31but in our strive to forward the human race
01:17:43our earth suffered the consequences of our choices
01:17:57the pandemic has shown us what it is like to go through a dangerous emergency
01:18:25to go through a dangerous emergency
01:18:30that could happen if climate change accelerates
01:18:45we destroyed earth
01:18:56we destroyed earth
01:19:00but it is also us who can restore it
01:19:15a photograph is more than just an image
01:19:21it's an evidence that someone or an issue matters
01:19:25and if a single frame that holds that kind of power
01:19:28imagine what can we do and what can we create when we use our all voices
01:19:34friends here's the cover of the time magazine april issue in 2021
01:19:38and there's a saying that from the great uncle ben from spider-man
01:19:44with great power comes great responsibility
01:19:47but actually with great platform comes great responsibility as well
01:19:52and here are the incredible malaysians behind the cover
01:19:55malaysia is truly a home truly our home and a beautiful country
01:20:00like what uh dr jeffrey just said and for some reason we are somehow not content
01:20:05we always often feel the grass is always greener on the other side
01:20:09of the world but the grass is also green at your backyard if you choose to water it to nurture it and take
01:20:15a look at the talents that amongst ourselves because we really really malaysia boleh right
01:20:21right guys yes thank you
01:20:27so with that we come back to this very much like the elderly man we saw earlier
01:20:33we love our country and still clothe ourselves in a tethered hope because hope no matter how bruised
01:20:41is what keeps us standing hope is what motivates us to turn crisis into an opportunities and hope
01:20:49is what drives us to believe that change is still possible if we navigate global transition
01:20:56and that the malaysia we continue to fight for you continue to fight for and to build only not just
01:21:01to build only on pride and progress but on empathy resilience and understanding
01:21:09together we can do a malaysia where stories matters and then also a malaysia
01:21:15where every voice is value thank you
01:21:24there you have it four malaysian superheroes is charting a path of discovery and preservation
01:21:31and showing us that courage is not the absence of uncertainty but the will to move forward despite
01:21:37it may the journeys inspire us to take our own lips into the unknown in advancing malaysia ladies and
01:21:45gentlemen please join me once again in showing our deep appreciation to our four amazing speakers for
01:21:50sharing their amazing journeys with us on that note thank you very much for your time and please
01:21:56enjoy the rest of the forum thank you
01:22:08what thank you
Recommended
5:01
|
Up next
3:30
17:33
2:18
1:59
1:00
1:00
1:00
1:17
0:54
1:35
1:20
0:54
Be the first to comment