SELAMAT DATANG

GOH YONG-MENG, DVM, PhD

Dr Goh is currently a Professor of Veterinary Physiology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia. He is a qualified veterinarian and holds a PhD in Nutrition Physiology (Universiti Putra Malaysia), as well as Data Science specialization from the Johns Hopkins University, US. He is currently the Deputy Director for the Grants Division, Research Management Centre (RMC), Universiti Putra Malaysia, and a Minister-appointee to the Animal Welfare Board, an animal welfare oversight body established under the Animal Welfare Act 2015. Prof Dr Goh also chairs the Qualifications and Accreditation Committee, Malaysian Veterinary Council (MVC), a body that regulates the veterinary profession in Malaysia. He has extensive involvement in the area of animal welfare, in drafting committees of act legislations (Animal Welfare Act 2015, Animal Act 2013), code of practices to managing multispecies and multifocal animal welfare research projects. He is currently a member of several institutional and animal use and care committees (IACUC) at the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industries, Malaysian Nuclear Agency, universities and research Institutes. He is very much involved in trainings to promote responsible and ethical use of animals in research nationally, and internationally, as a board member of the Asian Federation of Laboratory Animal Sciences (AFLAS, Japan) since 2008.

His expertise is in the area of lipid physiology in animals, ranging from lipid nutrition, membrane-signalling and metabolic conditions associated with lipids, and how lipid entities influence electro-encephalographic, and pain as well as behavioural response in animal models. He has been continuously involved in multipartite research projects, such as in the utilization of oil palm resource for ruminant nutrition (as European Commission’s AsiaLink project coordinator for Malaysia 2007-2011), methane mitigation and animal production projects (CSIRO Australia, and New Zealand government-funded initiatives 2016- 2020), and investigating animal response to stress by virtue of his acclaimed expertise in veterinary electroencephalography. He completed the European Union-sanctioned project management training in the Netherlands in the mid 2000’s, and this afforded him to have a comprehensive look at the overall research management process. To date, he has published more than 236 articles in leading international peered review journal (h-index 30). Prof Dr Goh has also managed and participated in various multiple international projects in no less than 10 countries. In recognition to his contribution, he was awarded the outstanding international young scientist award by the Japanese Association of Laboratory Animal Science (JALAS) in 2008, and the national achievement award by the Department of Veterinary Services, Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-basedIndustries in 2018.

Current research

Currently, Prof Dr Goh is leading a multidisciplinary research team on the improvement of milk yield, safety and economic value of the dairy goats in Malaysia. He is also investigating bioactive compounds from seaweeds that could be of medicinal value to the human population, as well as using the sea weeds as a potent suppressor of methane emission from ruminants. He is actively involved in various animal welfare and meat quality improvement projects in chickens, and ruminants, as well as nociceptive studies using canine, caprine and murine models, where big data analytics and electroencephalography skills are required.