Dr. Faridah is one of the forensic pathologists with a subspecialty in Forensic Anthropology in Malaysia. She graduated with a medical degree in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 1988 and subsequently worked as a House Officer in the Ministry of Health Malaysia for a year before joining the armed forces as a Medical Officer for five years. Later, she joined UKM as a trainee lecturer in 1994 and enrolled in the post-graduate master of Forensic Pathology. She graduated as a forensic pathologist in 1999 and became a lecturer in UKM. She then pursued a Ph.D. in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Bradford, UK (2002- 2006), and went for a postdoctoral fellowship in Forensic Anthropology at the University of Oregon, USA (2014-2015). She returned to Malaysia and serves as a forensic pathologist and anthropologist at the Forensic Unit, Medical Faculty UKM. She is currently one of the forensic specialty subcommittees in the National Specialist Registry (NSR) and a member of the Academy of Medicine of Malaysia (AMM).
She is a team member of the Bone Metabolism Research group and Stress Enzyme Research group in UKM. Her special interest is in Forensic Anthropology, which includes stature estimation from postcranial bones, human and non-human long bone histological study, and geometric morphometric study of cranium and mandible for human identification. She has written numerous research papers, books, and chapters in books and university popular magazines, and led several high impact research as a principal investigator. Recently, she has won two gold medals in an International Conference in Indonesia for innovations entitled ‘Human age at death automation’ and ‘Automated human cortical bone analyzer’ and won silver and bronze medals in the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia for innovations entitled ‘Geometric morphometric analysis of Malaysian crania: An important technique for identification of sex and ancestry’ and ‘Geometric morphometric analysis of the mandible’. She is currently leading one of the largest bone researches in Malaysia for human identification focusing on Ct scan of long bones and geometric morphometrics of human bones to assist the police and law enforcement officers in solving difficult forensic cases in Malaysia. Besides, she has strong links with the police and judicial system in Malaysia and had been frequently consulted for the second opinion of difficult high profile cases.