Advancing visual understanding, vision-language models, object detection, and multimodal AI for real-world applications.
Malaya AI Research
Malaya AI Research is the artificial intelligence research centre of the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
Research spans computer vision and multimodal AI, medical imaging and healthcare AI, natural language processing and vision-language models, explainable and trustworthy AI, human-robot interaction, graph learning and smart systems, and optimisation. The centre exists to connect that work across the faculty and to carry it into practice through clinical, industrial and educational applications.
An artificial intelligence research centre at Universiti Malaya
Malaya AI Research brings together academic members of the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology working on artificial intelligence, from fundamental methods to applications in healthcare, robotics, language and intelligent systems.
Research
Fundamental and applied artificial intelligence research spanning computer vision, medical imaging, natural language processing, trustworthy AI, robotics and computational intelligence.
Translation
Moving research into healthcare, robotics, language technologies, intelligent systems and industry applications, including through Universiti Malaya spin-off companies.
Community
Connecting researchers, postgraduate students, faculties, external collaborators and industry partners around shared research problems.
Research areas
Academic members work across interconnected areas that span fundamental artificial intelligence research and applied work in healthcare, robotics, language and intelligent systems. Most members appear under more than one.
AI-powered medical imaging, clinical risk assessment, segmentation of medical scans, and digital health innovation.
Research in NLP, large language models, vision-language models, ontology engineering and multilingual information extraction.
Building interpretable, transparent, and responsible AI systems — including XAI for agents, robots, and healthcare.
Continual learning, biomedical signal analysis, and explainable robotics for human-centred autonomous systems.
Graph neural networks, generative & responsible AI, AIoT, and intelligent education-domain (AIED) applications.
Particle swarm optimisation, fuzzy systems, early action recognition, and machine-learning-driven optimisation methods.
Flagship projects and spin-offs
Flagship projects group research that spans more than one area. The spin-off companies are the routes through which that research reaches deployment.
Flagship research projects
TrustGuard
AI applications in healthcare, federated learning, explainable AI and medical imaging.
Co-led by Dr. Saw Shier Nee, Dr. Erma Rahayu Mohd Faizal Abdullah
Robotics & Real-Time Analysis
Swarm intelligence, multi-robot cognition and real-time sensor analysis.
Co-led by Dr. Narsimlu Kemsaram, Dr. Zati Hakim Azizul Hasan
Lingua Cognito
NLP and text processing, with inclusive multimodal systems for education and heritage.
Co-led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Norisma Idris, Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Aznul Qalid Md Sabri
Universiti Malaya spin-offs
Fylix
Intelligent chatbot development, with national and enterprise deployments reported in the UM Research Bulletin.
Co-founded by Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Aznul Qalid Md Sabri
UMCH Technology
Connected digital health bridging clinical practice and artificial intelligence, with industry collaboration.
Co-founded by Prof. Dr. Loo Chu Kiong
Selected research milestones
Publications in major venues and events hosted at the faculty. Papers listed here were co-authored by members of Malaya AIR alongside collaborators elsewhere.
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2021
Deep hashing research published at NeurIPS
One Loss for All: Deep Hashing appeared at NeurIPS, co-authored by Prof. Ir. Dr. Chan Chee Seng.
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2023
Survey of explainable goal-driven agents and robots in ACM Computing Surveys
A survey of explainability for goal-driven agents and robots, co-authored by Prof. Dr. Loo Chu Kiong and Dr. Liew Wei Shiung.
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2024
InteractDiffusion presented at CVPR
Work on interaction control in diffusion models, co-authored by Prof. Ir. Dr. Chan Chee Seng.
View publication -
2024
Deep learning for dental CBCT detection in BMC Oral Health
Detection in cone beam computed tomography imaging, co-authored by Dr. Erma Rahayu Mohd Faizal Abdullah.
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2024
Label-free pruning for Text-VQA in Pattern Recognition Letters
An efficiency method for text-based visual question answering, co-authored by Prof. Ir. Dr. Chan Chee Seng and Dr. Lim Chee Kau.
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2024 / 2025
Gastric cancer segmentation in IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems
A reconstructed U-Net approach to gastric cancer segmentation, co-authored by Prof. Dr. Loo Chu Kiong and Dr. Saw Shier Nee.
View publication -
2025
Paper accepted at MICCAI
Medical image computing research accepted at MICCAI, co-authored by Prof. Ir. Dr. Chan Chee Seng.
View publication -
8 September 2025
16th IPIARTI Symposium hosted at Universiti Malaya
Jointly organised by the IEEE Signal Processing Society Malaysia Chapter and the Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, Universiti Malaya.
Read the update
Latest updates
Recent publications, events, awards and collaborations reported by members of the centre.
Dr. Norisma Supports ICGSBT 2026 as Patron and Advisor
Dr. Norisma served as a patron and advisor for ICGSBT 2026, an international conference on sustainable business transformation and next-generation information technology.
Read update: Dr. Norisma Supports ICGSBT 2026 as Patron and AdvisorDr. Aznul Contributes to Openmind AI Brainstorming 2025
Dr. Aznul represented Universiti Malaya in a high-level discussion on industry research, innovation and the future of artificial intelligence in Southeast Asia.
Read update: Dr. Aznul Contributes to Openmind AI Brainstorming 2025Dr. Aznul Leads AiCon 2026 Workshop on Real-World AI
Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Aznul Qalid Md Sabri led an AiCon 2026 workshop exploring how artificial intelligence can address real-world environmental and societal challenges.
Read update: Dr. Aznul Leads AiCon 2026 Workshop on Real-World AIWork with Malaya AIR
Malaya AIR works with other faculties, with industry and with international collaborators. Enquiries about research collaboration are welcome, and are best directed to the address below or to the relevant academic member.
Research collaboration
We are glad to discuss:
- Joint research on shared research questions.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration across faculties and institutions.
- Postgraduate student supervision and co-supervision.
- Technology transfer, including work routed through Universiti Malaya spin-off companies.
- Translational pilots in clinical, industrial or educational settings.
- Industry collaboration on specific technical problems.
If your enquiry concerns a specific research area or project, naming it in your message helps it reach the right academic member quickly.