Prof Uma Palanisamy is a trained biochemist and has been a biomedical researcher for over 30 years. She has carried out substantial work in establishing centres, securing grants and publishing extensively to aid the growth of natural product research in Malaysia.  She has to her name a number of innovation awards, patents and numerous publications in this area of research. She is on the editorial board of a number of prestigious nutrition journals including Trends in Food Science & Technology.

As a pre-clinical medical educationist and researcher, she has been actively involved in health promotion research and education with marginalized populations for over 10 years. As coordinator of the Community engagement program at the School of Medicine (2009-2012) and School of Pharmacy (2011-2018), and currently the Campus Community engagement program, she saw the development and implementation of numerous student-led health promotion projects.  She founded the HEARD (HEAlthcare needs of the Deaf) program at Monash and leads a number of research projects, in collaboration with the Deaf community and industry. She was recently awarded prestigious Nature Health Award for inclusive health research in 2023 Winners (nature.com) for her work pertaining to Health care access of the Deaf community in Malaysia.

• Health benefits of Polyphenols, Ellagitannins in particular
• Polyphenols as prebiotics and its modulation of the gut microbiota and SCFA
• Postbiotics produced from polyphenol consumption
• Projects to address the healthcare needs of the Deaf in Malaysia, particularly their healthcare access

• Prebiotic potential of polyphenols and identifying novel methods to postbiotic production
• Research related to the Deaf community; Healthcare access, Healthcare resources etc

An advocate of the Deaf community in Malaysia; with particular interest to improve their healthcare access