Lai Yen Lung

Name: Lai Yen Lung
Nationality: Malaysia
Current Role: Assistant Professor at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR)

Please tell us about your role in your current organisation.

Plan and deliver university students' specialist subject teaching. This includes developing teaching materials, preparing for tutorials/seminars, and grading students' work, in addition to direct instruction.

Conduct research on their topic by attending conferences and writing articles, books, and other materials to share their knowledge.

If applicable, please tell us briefly about your postgraduate research (including potential applications).

Cryptography employs a primitive secret/password to ensure the security of data sharing between multiple parties. Encrypting the data with a secret/password can provide the desired security properties such as confidentiality, data integrity, and authentication. On the other hand, noisy sources with high entropy, such as biometrics, are inextricably linked with individuals. As a result, it provides a strong non-reputation guarantee for a valid body to be authenticated into a system. Given the fact that biometrics and cryptography are highly complementary, in my postgraduate research, I focused on the integration of biometrics and cryptography, namely the biometric cryptosystem, which was motivated by the desire to achieve a higher level of security and privacy protection for biometric authentication system.

The findings of my study are expected to benefit society through a variety of commercial applications. Our findings can easily apply to any electronic system or application that requires multi-factor biometric authentication features, such as industry 4.0.

For example, to name a few, our technology can be used to protect security and privacy in the following areas:

  1. Banking/Finance: login of the personal account
  2. Mobile: users may wish to lock/unlock his/her smartphone
  3. Military: users may want to access confidential documents/areas
  4. Healthcare: doctors may want to access a patient's database/medical record
  5. Smart home: users may want to enter his/her house
  6. Smart grid: utility companies may want to check the power usage of each household
  7. Electric car: users may want to start their car's engine
  8. Cloud: users may want to sync his/her files

Why did you choose to pursue your postgraduate studies at Monash University Malaysia?

Monash University is a world-class international education institution. Monash University has a global presence. It was the first foreign university to open a campus in Malaysia, and it offers prestigious, internationally recognised Monash University degrees. The Malaysian Ministry of Education and the Malaysian Qualifications Agency recognise it, and Monash University Australia and the Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency certify its quality (TEQSA).

What type of opportunities did you participate in at Monash? (E.g. student exchange, clubs and societies, field trips, conferences, competitions, etc.)

Through studying at Monash, there are a lot of opportunities that could enrich our postgraduate student’s research life. Those opportunities included participate and help in organizing an international conference, and secondment at EU countries, opportunity to spend time as an exchange student at Monash University Australia, or to transfer after completing at least one year at Monash University Malaysia.

What did you enjoy most about your student life at Monash? 

Besides from academic and research opportunities Monash offered, I enjoy the most about my student life at Monash is that it includes a variety of extracurricular, sporting, and recreational activities.

The tea time and gathering sessions we had. Those were my best memories and joyful time that reminded me “we should steal a moment of leisure from our busy life”.

What is your biggest career goal, or what is the difference you’d like to make?

Throughout my career, I planned to publish more novel research in areas such as machine  vision, information forensics and analysis, and biometrics and information security. It would be  fantastic if I could make significant enough breakthroughs to be recognised for my work  through awards and invitations to speak at local/international conferences. To achieve this as  needed in response to the ever-changing conditions of modern life, it will be a lifelong learning  process for me, with the ultimate goal of promoting each individual's self-fulfillment in my  research path.