Rukumani Devi Velayuthan

Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Associate professor Dr. Rukumani Devi is a senior lecturer in the medical microbiology department of the Faculty of Medicine, the University of Malaya since 2011. She is a full-time consultant clinical microbiologist and mycology diagnostic head unit coordinator of the Mycology laboratory of University Malaya Medical Center (UMMC), since 2014 till present. As a clinical microbiologist, she has been actively involved in the antibiotic membership stewardship in the hospital whereby she was part of the integral committee member to set the antibiotic guidelines for UMMC. She has established efficient, rapid, and advanced molecular work and automated system-based methods for fungal identification in UMMC especially to identify the pathogens that are associated with nosocomial transmission for instance the newly emerged Candida auris. Due to all these successful advancements, she has managed to establish UMMC mycology laboratory as a Mycology Reference Centre that has a high number of fungal stock cultures for teaching, examination, and research purposes in Malaysia. Currently, the Mycology Unit of the aforementioned laboratory at UMMC is the center referred by most government and private hospitals for the identification of fungal pathogens. Apart from my teaching and clinical duties, research is another aspect that she is assiduously engaging. This is reflected by the 21 publications in both ISI and SCOPUS journals.