Prof. Dr. Rosnah Binti Mohd Zain

Dr. Rosnah Binti Zain is currently the Dean, Faculty of Dentistry and Senior Director of Industry, Placement and Employment Committee, MAHSA University in Malaysia. She was with the University of Malaya for more than 35 years with more than 15 years as an administrator including as Dean at the Faculty of Dentistry (2010-2014). Her role in these positions involved managing curriculum and its development; and managing the dental services centre (including management of human resource and dental patients’ services). Her experiences in the education area entails being involved as the Chair of Document Preparation for Assessments in preparation for the University of Malaya ‘Self-Audit’ for Programme accreditation; Evaluation Panel for the Accreditation of Dental Programme for the Malaysian Quality Agency (MQA) and a pro-tem committee member of the Professional Qualifying Examination for Dentistry and a member of the National Board for the Accreditation of Specialty Postgraduate Programmes. As the Dean at University of Malaya, she is responsible for initiating and developing Research in Dentistry in general for the University; and Oral Cancer Research in particular for the University of Malaya and Malaysia.

She has extensive research experience in the field of Oral Potentially Malignant Disorders (OPMD) and Oral Cancer. In the research setting, she strongly believes in collective efforts so as to gather a wider scope of ideas benefiting others as well. Through this belief, she had embarked on numerous projects with numerous co-researchers within the country and from countries of the region. One major research endeavour is a collaborative research project with colleagues from Oral Health Division Malaysia and Aichi-Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan in 1993/1994. This nationwide project on the prevalence of oral mucosal lesions produced the first population-based prevalence data on oral cancer and OPMD in Malaysia. This study emphasises her leadership and organisational skills where fund limitations, with national and international support, she was able to successfully manage and organise human resource infrastructure and logistics towards the successful completion of the project.

As the Founding Director of Oral Cancer Research and Coordinating Center at University of Malaya (OCRCC), she had led OCRCC from 2005 to 2015 in ensuring the standardisation of lesion criteria and methodologies, quality control for research on oral cancer. Dr Rosnah Zain’s another significant contribution in the field of oral cancer is the establishment of the Malaysian Oral Cancer Database & Tissue Bank System (MOCDTBS), which is coordinated by OCRCC. The MOCDTBS was initially funded by a ‘Top Down’ grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology under the ‘Intensified Research in Priority Areas (IRPA/RMK 8)’. Under the framework of this biobank which is a multi-institution collaborative effort, data and specimens from oral cancer patients were collected in a standardised manner from participating hospitals all over the country to facilitate research in various areas. This biobank also serves as a repository for future research endeavours, contributing to advancement of research in this area. Availability of data and specimens from the biobank facilitates postgraduate training and undergraduate industrial attachment, thus contributing to development of human resources for the nation. She continues as the Advisor to OCRCC from 2016 till now while currently taking up the post as the Dean of Faculty of Dentistry, MAHSA University in Malaysia. Dr Rosnah Zain’s research interests on Oral Cancer in the Asia Pacific Region includes studies on established risk factors for oral cancer with her current focus being screening and intervention for betel-quid chewing as one of the risk factors. She is also very much involved in international research collaborations since 1993 and more recently led a clinical project involving Malaysia, India and Indonesia on the use of an adjunctive tool for early detection of oral cancer with funding from a High Impact Grant from the Government of Malaysia/University of Malaya. In recognition of her wide range of research areas, she also serve on the Panel for the evaluation and monitoring of Higher Education Centre of Excellence (HiCOE) of the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia as well as on the Evaluation Panel For Research Grants of The Ministry of Science and Technology Malaysia and in the last 5 years is also serving as one of panel for the Evaluation and Monitoring of Grants from Ministry of Higher Education.

Throughout the organisation of these researches and in collaboration with Japanese, Swedish and German colleagues, she has developed calibration and training packages/programmes and booklets. These packages and booklets are aimed at tackling methodologic issues such that data on oral mucosal lesions will be standardised for meaningful global comparison. This training programme (OralDETECT) is currently being used widely in Malaysia and also in Cambodia. Since 1993, Dr Rosnah Zain has been training dentists using clinical oral/visual examination (COE) for early detection of oral cancer. Using her structured training package ‘OralDETECT’ which has been validated through many training sessions and is currently being used by the Ministry of Health Malaysia and some Dental Schools in Malaysia. This training method has also been used to train dentists in Cambodia. She is now very much involved in training-of-trainers (ToT) using the ‘OralDETECT’ training package in Malaysia and Indonesia with potential extension of the ToT to Nepal.

Dr Rosnah Zain has published more than 150 research and consensus papers. Her research expertise and experience lead her to receive the ‘Top Research Scientists Award 2014 (TRSM 2014) and in 2016, she has been inducted as the ‘Distinguished Fellow for Asia, International College of Dentists (FICD)’.