Pouya Hassandarvish completed his Ph.D. in the field of medical microbiology and was sponsored by the University of Malaya under the Bright Spark scholarship. In addition to his Master’s degree in the field of biomedical science, he completed his bachelor’s degree in the field of marine biology. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at TIDREC@UM. Before this, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at TIDREC, managing the antiviral drug discovery lab at the Universiti Malaya. Over the past 13 years, he has worked on Arthropod viruses such as Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika, and Japanese Encephalitis, in addition to other viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, H1N1, and H3N2; been a TIDREC team member for COVID-19 vaccine development; trained undergraduate and postgraduate students; been exposed to a wealth of experiments and skills related to fields such as immunology, histology, and microbiology; contributed to much research and attended several international conferences; and handled projects related to antiviral, antibacterial, diabetes, wound healing, stomach ulcer, liver cirrhosis, and vivo and vitro cancer study (namely, colon cancer, leukaemia, and breast cancer).