Dr. Avelinah Binti Julius

Being passionate about plants has led me to become a plant taxonomic researcher. Our flora in Malaysia has often been studied by foreign researchers and very few local experts in botany. I am afraid of the time when foreign researchers will almost retire. To fill the gap, I aim to become one of Malaysia's prominent and promising local researchers. Being a researcher enables me to travel locally or abroad and lets me visit the natural forest and work in different environments with leading institutions to support my career path. We are in a situation where the international treaty that restricts the export/import of biological resources will become stricter in the near future, and international collaboration may be limited in some respects. Until then, I should furnish myself by enriching and enhancing my knowledge and gaining new skills/techniques to facilitate my conducting research using our resources to contribute to science in Malaysia. This has led me to join Forest Research Institute Malaysia as my first career as a researcher, mainly under the project Flora of Peninsular Malaysia. The flora of Peninsular Malaysia is being actively documented currently, but not for the flora of Sabah and Sarawak. If it is there, the information is scattered and mostly done by non-local researchers. Sadly, no local researcher has taken the lead or anchored our flora's documentation/taxonomic work after Prof. Engkik Soepadmo passed away. Thus, as a lecturer/researcher at ITBC, I hope to contribute something towards flora documentation and produce new, young, and energetic local plant taxonomists to continue plant taxonomic research using my previous experiences.