Dr Alia Johari is what you get when science and a sense of adventure collide. Her energetic nature belies immediately her ability to say “yes” to spurs of the moment, and as you speak to her, the undeniable penchant for details – that allows her to immerse herself in her chosen field of biomedical science – rises to the surface.
It was this drive to rummage for details, to understand the triggers of her eczema, and uncover the cascade of reactions that her skin was going through, that started her on her scientific studies. It was a step that her family had initially hoped would lead her to become a medical doctor, but she says with a laugh: “I did become a doctor – a PhD.”
At 34, Alia has collected an impressive array of experience. She joined the IMU in 2015 at the age of 24 as a lecturer, and since then has become the Biosafety Officer (BSO) for the IMU Institutional Biosafety Committee (IMU-IBC), was appointed the head of the IMU AMRCL in 2019, and is also now a senior lecturer. She has published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as the medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases (PLOS NTDs), an open-access journal that focuses on research related to NTDs.
Where the journey began
Having specialised in global health in her undergraduate studies at Imperial College London, she learned to see things on a larger context level, looking into questions such as risk factors for diseases, who were affected the most and how to get the right treatments to the people who needed it. “I found it most fascinating,” she says, adding that she likes “understanding how diseases spread and the context around it”.
As she went on to pursue her Master of Public Health at the same university, she also picked up the skills to map diseases using geographic information systems (GIS) which she used to analyse the data of 90,000 children in Yemen who had Schistosomiasis – a disease that affects the intestines and urinary tract caused by parasitic flatworms. “I couldn’t go there because of the civil unrest during the time of the Arab Spring,” she says knowing full well that she would have gladly been on the ground if she had the chance.
Published together with colleagues from the Yemen Ministry of Public Health and Population, the study presented the first national picture of the anaemia burden in school-aged children in Yemen.
Back on home soil
She then returned to Malaysia to join the IMU where she finished her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Medical and Health Sciences. Her doctorate was focussed on dengue epidemiology in Malaysia, researching the interconnected web of risk factors involved. This was when she found herself collecting mosquito larvae twice a month for a year, from 18 households in the Klang Valley. She became such a familiar face in the communities that one of the children nicknamed her ‘mosquito jie-jie’ (older sister) and her car was known as the ‘mosquito mobile’ filled as it was with hundreds of mosquito larvae samples.
Studies like these are important as they add to the knowledge base of a particular disease, in this case, dengue in Malaysia. This is the common thread in the work she does which is to assess and understand disease burdens in specific regions with the aim to inform nation-wide control programmes and allow the planning of effective context-specific public health interventions.
“This was something I had wanted to do – to take my knowledge and skills and use it locally,” she says. She explains that as public health is especially context specific, everything from the concepts to interventions needs to be adapted to suit the community. “As locals we would be in the best position to do this,” she says.
Life skills
Her research supervisor was, as Alia describes her, a very strong woman, Prof Patricia Lim and it was from her that Alia learned the importance in being steadfast in what you want to do. Alia explains that this encompassed being patient and yet strong-willed and vocal. “Say what you need to say, and express your opinions clearly. Speak up, be heard and make a difference” she adds. These were skills that helped her to hold her own when she joined a research expedition to Antarctica.
“Working in such an isolated place, where I was the only female on base, I found I had to be direct with the team whenever there was anything that made me uncomfortable, or perhaps improved upon,” she says adding that her own mother had also always reminded her to be vocal and steadfast growing up.
To the bottom of the world
In 2019, a colleague approached her to ask if she was interested to join an expedition to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as a field scientist.
Being true to her nature, and inspired by the late Prof Chu Wan Loy, who pioneered polar research at the IMU, she jumped at the opportunity to be part of the project. The Antarctic is like a natural laboratory, she says. With little human activity, it is considered an ideal place to observe how bacterial communities interact with each other.
She was assigned to the Signy Research Station for the 2019/2020 Summer Season with six other station members – all of whom were men. “When travelling south on the ship, the RRS James Clark Ross, there were other female scientists, but I was still the only Asian (and Malaysian) travelling south with BAS at the time. It was really a life-changing experience,” she says.
She describes how they had to learn to live on base, chip in with the manual labour such as painting and repairing structures as well as cook for each other. She even introduced her fellow team mates to rendang and nasi lemak by adapting recipes: “I would replace asam keping with lime juice, and serai with lemongrass tea”.
Learning to survive
There were other more necessary survival skills in play as well. Prior to the trip, she spent a week in the outskirts of Cambridge at the British Antarctic Survey UK headquarters, getting certified on personal survival techniques. “They had a facility where they simulated waves and rain, and they taught you how to jump to abandon ship from a three-metre platform, how to flip over the life raft in the water,” she recalls joking that she often wondered if she’d even survive the freezing water.
She also had a steep learning curve in mountaineering skills: “I had to train to travel over ice and glaciers using crampons (a traction device that is attached to footwear) and ice axes while carrying full gear of about 20 to 25 kg. When I came back I was very fit!”
One of the bigger challenges though lied not in the physical but in dealing with the different personalities on the team. “We were in contact with each other 24/7,” says Alia. She learnt that one had to be quite upfront about things while keeping it professional and not personal. They all left as good friends and she remembers fondly one of the team members, a former sailor who could be quite brash, who became a good friend: “He was a man of few words so at the end of the trip it meant a lot when he said “You’re welcome back here any time. You did a great job.”
Dealing with the unpredictable
Yet even through the ups and downs of the Antarctica trip, perhaps the most unpredictable thing was yet to come – COVID. When Alia had left for the pole in November 2019, the virus had not taken a hold of the world yet. She returned to Malaysia just three days before the movement control order (MCO) was put into place.
Although one might imagine wanting to indulge in the comfort of a soft bed and pillows after five months of harsh cold weather, Alia had already signed up to be part of the IMU’s COVID testing team as she made her two-week journey home on the ship. She explains that at the time, the national public health laboratory did not have enough capacity to handle the mounting number of samples, so they called on other facilities for help. “We were the first private institute to volunteer to help out with the testing,” she says. “It was quite scary because we had limited understanding of the disease. We had to be extra cautious and everyone had to wrap themselves up in PPE.”
Staying on top
Alia continues to expand her horizons and recently, in December 2024, she was named a winner of the Young Investigator Award for one of the top submissions at the 11th Asian Congress of Paediatric Infectious Diseases held in Hong Kong. She had been there to present the IMU’s preliminary findings (of which she was the coordinating co-principal investigator) on a study of Streptococcus pneumoniae among young children in Malaysia.
One has to ask: What motivates her? “Learning new skills that I can incorporate into the projects that I have in mind,” she says. “You have to keep learning – things move so fast!” she adds. The areas are broad though and she knows she cannot master everything. This is where working with others is key – she looks for other experts, and finds a platform for them to come together in a cohesive collaboration.
Women in science
Today, women like Alia are not a rarity in science-based fields. As she says, “Women are already major contributors in science and technology, and we bring just as much value to the field as everyone else. We are all scientists and researchers regardless of gender, with our own different strengths and skills that can contribute to the advancement of science.”
For the young women out there on the cusp of deciding their future careers, she has this to say: “The possibilities really are endless, and science has now broadened a great deal with the rapid advancements in technology including AI and the use of big data.
“Going into the field and finding that area that you’d like to focus your efforts on, can take time while you explore what each field involves and if they suit your interests. Once you do it’s a matter of diving headfirst and turning those ideas and thoughts into reality, and that’s where it gets exciting.”
As Alia has proven, science isn’t about musty laboratories and eyes glued to microscopes. It’s an adventure and an opportunity to explore – all while making the world a better place. Her story is a reminder that heroes don’t just wear capes. They can wear lab coats, and hiking boots too.
 at the IMU University, shares snippets of her adventures – in the hope that it will inspire other young women to take up the challenge of science){kind=link}