Crystale Lim Siew Ying, PhD earned a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Biomedical Sciences in 2005 and a PhD in  Molecular Medicine in 2010, both from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).  She worked on the molecular mechanisms of the opportunistic fungal pathogen Candida albicans in host-pathogen interactions, which earned her the inaugural L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Fellowship in 2006. 

Upon completing her Ph.D. in 2010, Crystale joined UCSI University as a lecturer at the Faculty of Applied Sciences. She is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, UCSI University, and also serves as Chairperson of UCSI’s Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC). During the pandemic, Crystale served as a volunteer in UCSI University’s Covid-19 testing lab as a qPCR technician and lab manager. Later, she also volunteered at UCSI’s vaccination management center.

Crystale is currently active in research into host-microbiome interactions, antimicrobial resistance and nucleic acid detection methods. She has actively published nearly 30 research and review articles, with a H-index of 9. She has accumulated several internal and external grants amounting to ~RM1.5 million, graduated more than 15 postgraduate students as main supervisor and won multiple awards, including the MAKNA-ASM Cancer Research Grant Award 2012 and the prestigious John David Williams Memorial Award 2013 from the International Society of Chemotherapy. 

Crystale is currently a fellow of the Malaysian Institute of Medical Laboratory Scientists (MIMLS) since 2022.