Siti Pauliena Mohd Bohari is a senior lecturer in the Biosciences Department, Faculty of Science, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. Her undergraduate and master’s studies were at Universiti Putra Malaysia from 1999 to 2006. Pauliena started her career as an academician in 2006 then furthered her Ph.D. in the UK in 2007. Her Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham was supervised by Prof. David Hukins and Prof. Liam Grover who focused mainly on the mechanical stimulation (therapeutic ultrasound) of cells encapsulated in the hydrogel. This work was aimed to providing an alternative treatment rather than using biochemical stimulation to encourage extracellular matrix production, and cell proliferation for cell therapies. In 2016, Pauliena applied for a postdoctoral position at Nanyang Technological University (School of Materials Science and Engineering), supervised by Associate Professor Tan Lay Poh. She spent two years on a project funded by Malaysian Higher Education (MOHE). This time, her focus is more on the development of polymer fibers for wound dressing, and she has developed expertise in electrospinning and controlling drug release to encourage wound healing. In particular, she became interested in designing nonfibrous mats incorporated with a phytomedicine for chronic wound purposes.
Her research interests lie in phytomedicine, antidiabetic drugs, cell biomaterial interactions, and biopolymers for chronic wound dressing, ranging from 2D to 3D culture. She has collaborated actively with researchers in several other disciplines of chemistry, biomaterials, and proteomics on identifying the potential of phytomedicine for treating diseases and designing a suitable scaffold.
She was an academic research program coordinator from 2013 to 2015 before being appointed as a research manager from 2015 to 2016.Then continue to be the Biotechnology Mixed Mode Coordinator (2020–2021) before being appointed as an associate research fellow at the Institute of Bioproduct Development (IBD), UTM. Currently, she is the head of the cosmetics and fragrance unit at IBD.
