Academician Professor Emeritus Dato’ Dr Khalid Yusoff FASc

Elected as Fellow in 2002 under the Medical and Health Sciences Discipline

Academician Professor Emeritus Dato’ Dr Khalid Yusoff FASc was the UK trained cardiologist who spent three decades promoting excellence in medical research in Malaysia, leading positions in three Malaysia’s leading universities and being a trusted adviser to the Government.

He was trained as a cardiology expert and started his medical career in the late 1970s as a student at the University of Melbourne, Australia, before conducting his training at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom. Upon returning to Malaysia after his training in medicine, he began to teach and cultivate the practice and scientific investigation of his speciality. He initiated The Institute for Medical Molecular Biotechnology (IMMB) and the Centre for Translational Research and Epidemiology (The CenTRE), which quickly became a substantial research centre in Malaysia. He moulded strategic international partnerships linking UiTM’s medical faculty to a wide range of global universities and research institutes (including developing formal partnerships with the University of Melbourne and Bio21). These initiatives appreciably expanded the Malaysian medical workforce and national medical research.

He has been the Vice-Chancellor and President of USCI University, Malaysia, since 2013. Under his leadership, USCI has achieved various academic recognitions. The most notable one was that USCI University was ranked as the nation’s best private university two years in a row from 2019 to 2020, according to QS World University Rankings. As a leader, he also bought up UCSI to the world stage when he successfully created a strategic collaboration with prestigious universities, including Harvard University, to strengthen the medical students with the opportunity to pursue research programs with high impact.  

His most remarkable list of national and international recognitions were in particular, the top academic awards from both UKM (2002) and UiTM (2011), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Malaysian Society of Hypertension (2013), the Royal College of Physicians of London (1995) research award, the Hewlett Packard International Award (1998), the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal (2001) and the Royal Awards from the Sultan of Kelantan (1999 & 2000). In 2019, he was appointed as a Senior Fellow of ASM for his contribution to the field of cardiology through practice, teaching and research, as well as championing research integrity in Malaysia. His motto throughout his leadership at USCI University was “Go Beyond; Be profound: Make a difference”.