President's Science and Technology Awards (PSTA) 2021

Professor Sir Peter Gluckman

Chief Scientific Officer, Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
Visiting Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Director, Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, University of Auckland
Director Emeritus and University Distinguished Professor, Liggins Institute, University of Auckland
President, International Science Council

“For his outstanding leadership in advancing health, clinical and biomedical sciences research, particularly the strengthening of developmental and early life research and enhancing Singapore’s human health and potential R&D capabilities”

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Professor Sir Peter Gluckman is an internationally renowned leader in human early life research, with a distinguished career in paediatrics and perinatal biology, developmental neuroscience, and paediatric and experimental endocrinology. He has made pivotal contributions to Singapore’s early life research landscape since 2007. Prof Gluckman was the scientific architect behind the development of cohort studies that had a strong focus on understanding maternal-infant metabolic development and on neurobehavioral, cognitive and emotional development in early childhood. The research was carried by a consortium of key institutions (National University Health System, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, NUS and A*STAR) and has uncovered findings with important long-term implications. These have also had a positive impact on healthcare policy and practice in Singapore.

Prof Gluckman joined the newly-formed Singapore Institute of Clinical Sciences (SICS) at A*STAR in 2007, and worked with NUS and SICS to develop a research plan to address the rising rates of metabolic disease in Singapore. This included developing the GUSTO birth cohort, clinical studies in metabolism, and forging networks for world class scientists to engage with SICS. Prof Gluckman was subsequently appointed Chief Scientific Officer at SICS and Honorary Professor at NUS, roles that continue today.

Prof Gluckman’s strong background in research commercialisation also attracted industry investment to Singapore. His contributions led to the establishment of the Clinical Nutritional Research Centre (CNRC) in 2012 to further human nutrition research and facilitate collaborations with industry. Today, the Centre has an active pipeline of programmes and undertakes industry collaborations to develop products and formulate diets, which seek to reduce the risk of diabetes and obesity, among other health concerns. He also successfully convinced key food and nutrition companies that Singapore would be an ideal regional R&D hub to undertake research and clinical trials in maternal and infant nutrition.

Over the last 16 years, Prof Gluckman brought together and nurtured a pipeline of talent and notable clinical research scientists. These individuals have gone on to help develop and support the capabilities required for advancing human potential, such as the developmental origins of health, as applied to both brain and metabolic health.

Prof Gluckman has spearheaded numerous studies into developmental perspectives on growth metabolism and neurodevelopment, and published more than 600 peer-reviewed articles which have garnered over 45,000 citations. To this day, he remains an active scientist co-leading the Centre for Holistic Initiatives for Learning and Development (CHILD)¹ in Singapore, which aims to advance emotional and cognitive development in children, and also on major workstreams that are supported by the Wellcome LEAP Fund.

Prof Gluckman was appointed a member of the National Medical Research Council Board from 2010 - 2013, the co-Chair of the Ministry of Health’s Cohort Strategy Review Committee in 2019 and an Expert Panel Member for the Health and Biomedical Sciences International Advisory Council (HBMS IAC) in 2020, providing valuable scientific advice that would shape policies and strategies for human potential research in Singapore.

Prof Gluckman has written and spoken extensively on science policy, risk assessment, science diplomacy, and science-society interactions, and continues to influence international policies and research through notable forums and platforms. He remains the founding Chair of the planning group of the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA), which operates under the aegis of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Prof Gluckman was formerly Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister, and also led the regional network of Chief Scientific Advisors and Equivalents, an extension arm of the Asia Pacific Economics Cooperation (APEC), and the Small Advanced Economies Initiative (SAEI), which brought together Singapore, New Zealand, Israel, Finland, Denmark and Ireland to discuss issues relating to science and innovation in small country economies.

Prof Gluckman is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) award in Science Diplomacy (2016), the Member of the Order of New Zealand (2015), the Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (2009) and the Rutherford Medal (2001).

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¹CHILD’s founding partners include the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Lien Foundation, Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI), and SICS.

Professor Ivy Ng

Group CEO, SingHealth
Clinical Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School
Clinical Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Governing Board Member, Duke-NUS Medical School
Board Member, National Medical Research Council (NMRC)
Member, Human Health and Potential Executive Committee, National Research Foundation (NRF)

“For her outstanding leadership in the development of academic medicine in Singapore through advancing health and biomedical sciences research and innovation, nurturing clinical research talent, and establishing strategic partnerships among academia, healthcare and industry, to improve health and healthcare delivery.”

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Professor Ivy Ng is an accomplished clinician-leader with a strong vision and deep passion for academic medicine. Academic medicine, which encompasses clinical and basic research that is informed by and targets important health problems, is critical for the translation of research discoveries into innovations that improve health and clinical outcomes and contribute to the development of the medical practices of the future. Academic Medical Centres (AMCs) promote an environment which integrates education and research with clinical work, and fosters a culture where clinicians, researchers, educators and staff continually study clinical problems, review data, pursue research and advance innovations that contribute to better care and outcomes.

Prof Ng has played a pivotal role in transforming SingHealth into a thriving AMC since her appointment as its Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) in 2012. This was a very challenging endeavour given the size and complexity of SingHealth, Singapore’s largest public healthcare cluster with four acute care hospitals, five national specialty centres, three community hospitals and a network of polyclinics, with a total staff strength of more than 30,000.

Prof Ng has led SingHealth in restructuring and transforming itself for its academic medicine journey, ensuring that it has the right infrastructure, support and talent to pursue biomedical research, innovation and education. She has been instrumental in driving the advancement of the SingHealth Duke-NUS academic medicine partnership, where she oversaw the formation of 15 Academic Clinical Programmes, 13 SingHealth Duke-NUS Disease Centres, 16 Joint Institutes, and five Academic Colleges – initiatives that integrate research and education with clinical care. These platforms foster the multidisciplinary collaboration among the medical, scientific and education communities that enables care transformation.

Prof Ng places particular emphasis on talent development as this is key to shaping the future of healthcare. Under her leadership, the research and education talent pool expanded tremendously. As of 31 Dec 2020, SingHealth produced 60 national clinician scientists and around 35 budding clinician scientists, with a multi-fold increase in research productivity and research competitiveness, such as publishing more than three times the number of research papers annually, compared to 10 years ago. She has played a pivotal role in recruiting to Singapore top international scientists to spearhead new research areas, galvanise research across different fields and mentor aspiring local researchers. Under her leadership, SingHealth has played a key role in Residency training nationally, with the cluster delivering almost half of the national healthcare and clinical training.

Prof Ng oversaw the development of the 20-year Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Campus Masterplan. Beyond ensuring that the plan would meet Singapore’s future healthcare needs, Prof Ng and her team also sought to develop and support a rich ecosystem that interlinks clinical care, education and research. When fully developed, the campus will include dedicated spaces and purpose-built facilities for the full spectrum of research, from basic science to clinical and translational research, as well as catalyse new innovations and technological advancements.

Prof Ng’s own career has successfully spanned clinical medicine, wet bench research, teaching and academic medicine leadership. In her early days as a paediatrician, Prof Ng set out to elucidate the molecular spectrum of thalassaemia. Her research and subsequent founding of the National Thalassaemia Registry in 1992, which registered index cases and facilitated the proactive screening of at-risk individuals, led to accurate genetic counselling and, where appropriate, prenatal diagnosis. This was a game-changer for the early identification of at-risk couples and resulted in a significant drop in the number of babies born with thalassaemia major, as well as better treatment protocols and better outcomes for such patients.

When she took the helm as the CEO of KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) in 2004, she oversaw key initiatives such as the introduction of a programme to screen babies for hearing impairment so that young children with the condition can have a chance to lead normal lives. The programme was successful in improving the early diagnosis and clinical intervention of hearing impairment, and in reducing the burden of the disease.

Prof Ng’s exemplary leadership and contributions are guided by what is central to medicine – the patient, and the firm belief in the major benefits that advancements in medicine, made possible by high quality research and education, bring to the patient.

Professor Chen Xiaodong

President’s Chair Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
Director, Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices, NTU
Scientific Director, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
Deputy Director, Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation μ-Electronics Centre (SHINE)

“For his outstanding contribution to advanced materials research for soft bioelectronics capable of digitising biological senses and extending human sensing capabilities, and their application to advanced manufacturing and healthcare wearables”

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Over the last 12 years, Professor Chen Xiaodong’s cutting-edge interdisciplinary research has advanced the frontiers of materials science and flexible electronics, and created the potential to disrupt advanced manufacturing, smart wearables, and digital healthcare.

There is ever-rising demand for more seamless human-electronic device integration that will enable consistent data capture and application. However, the major challenge lies in the inability of conventional electronics to pick up reliable biological signals from the human body. This is due to fundamental mismatches such as incompatible surfaces (soft skin vs rigid sensors) and signal reading formats (physical vs digital systems). Determined to overcome these obstacles, Prof Chen directed his research focus on soft bioelectronics to develop solutions that could bridge the space between humans and technology.

Prof Chen has created a wide range of soft composite materials for flexible electrodes which have superior stretchability and electronic conductivity. These electrodes can conform and adhere to human skin and animal tissues and are also easily scalable. Through these efforts, he pioneered an emerging field called mechanomaterials, by establishing a method that proactively programs the functionalities of materials by leveraging the force-geometry-property relationships.

A crucial requirement to advance the application of science and technology in augmenting human performance, is the digitalisation of human senses. Prof Chen has resolved challenges of fidelity, stability, sensitivity, and reliability for biological sensing, using advanced functional materials to build bioelectronic interfaces that can convert biological signals into electrical outputs. Among his latest successes is the creation of the world’s first plant-based robot, which he developed using a soft composite material to pick up electrical signals in plants. This breakthrough research has the potential to enhance the monitoring of the health or crops, and food security.

Prof Chen augmented the sensing capability of soft sensors by mimicking the human nervous system. He raised the accuracy of hand gesture recognition technology to 100% by fusing visual and tactile sensors. Prof Chen also developed an artificial neural network for use in electronic noses, which can assess the freshness of meat at up to 98.5% accuracy, greatly enhancing food safety. As illustrated in his research achievements, the digitalisation of the human senses has great potential to become a technology enabler for the next-generation soft robotics, contributing to improvements in prostheses, wearables for healthcare, and other smart applications.

Prof Chen is a firm believer in fundamental research to benefit humanity. To achieve this, he partners with the private sector and government agencies to accelerate the deployment of his technology. For example, his inventions, such as artificial epidermis based on plasticized silk and wearable tactile sensors, are undergoing validation tests for skincare product development. The stretchable electrodes for the monitoring of long-term chronic conditions have also been licensed to companies for commercialization.

Prof Chen has forged strong partnerships with local and international scientists and helped elevate Singapore’s standing on the global R&D stage. As the Programme Director of the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Programme on Cyber-Physiochemical Interfaces and the Deputy Director of SHINE, Prof Chen helps steer national efforts to build platforms for the manufacturing of next-generation flexible electronic devices and to develop technologies capable of perceiving and analysing human physiological wellbeing.

As a President’s Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NTU and the Scientific Director of A*STAR’s IMRE, Prof Chen’s role has extended beyond the pursuit of science. He is a passionate advocate for the nurturing of talent and leaders who work to solve societal challenges and shape the future of Singapore.

Prof Chen has published over 330 papers that are globally recognized and highly cited, garnering more than 30,000 citations to date. Professor Chen has received numerous accolades for his outstanding scientific contributions, including the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigatorship, Singapore NRF Fellowship, Winner of Falling Walls, and Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award.

Professor Wang Linfa

Professor, Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Medical School
Executive Director, Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Responses (PREPARE), Ministry of Health

“In recognition of his stellar contributions to the field of bat biology and emerging viral diseases, and the successful translation of his discoveries into biomedical innovations that have helped combat several viral outbreaks, including the COVID-19 pandemic”

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Professor Wang Linfa is one of the world’s foremost experts on emerging bat-borne viruses. Through his body of work, published over several decades, Prof Wang has established bats as a new model system for understanding zoonotic transmission of viral diseases. His breakthrough research and biomedical innovations have informed national responses to multiple major outbreaks and pandemics.

Bats, the only flying mammals, have a remarkable ability to host viruses without showing any clinical signs of infection. Over the last few decades, the viruses behind major outbreaks the world has seen, including Hendra, SARS, MERS, Marburg, Ebola, and the current COVID-19 pandemic, are suspected to have originated from bats. Understanding what makes bats an ideal reservoir for so many viruses is a major focus of Prof Wang’s research.

Originally trained in biochemistry and molecular biology, Prof Wang built his expertise in bat biology and emerging viruses by forging an extensive network of collaborations with virologists, immunologists, bat biologists and infectious disease experts across the globe. His team’s surveillance studies of wildlife, livestock and human hosts have been instrumental in identifying bats as major reservoirs of emerging zoonotic viruses.

Most notably, Prof Wang led the international team of experts which discovered that bats were the reservoir for SARS-CoV-1. More recently, he has shown that bats gained their uncanny ability to co-exist with viruses by adapting their host defense mechanisms over 65 million years of evolutionary history. This new understanding will help to better predict, prevent and control future viral spillovers, and may lead to novel approaches for improving human health.

Beyond infectious diseases, Prof Wang’s bat biology research has implications for other diseases, including cancer, inflammatory diseases and ageing-related complications. Two patents and a novel class of anti-inflammatory drugs that is under development have emerged from his work that unraveled the unique inflammatory responses exhibited by bats.

From being the first in Singapore to culture SARS-CoV-2 from a patient’s blood sample to being the first in the world to adopt retrospective serological testing for more effective contact tracing, Prof Wang’s team has made significant contributions to Singapore’s COVID-19 response. To advance serological testing, he developed a novel surrogate virus neutralisation test that detects SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies with high specificity and sensitivity. Developed and commercialised in collaboration with DxD Hub and GenScript, the test was launched in Singapore in May 2020 under the trade name cPassTM. cPass is currently the only FDA-approved test for detecting SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies and is used in more than 50 countries, impacting vaccination strategies as well as deepening our understanding of long-term immunity. It is further being deployed in an ASEAN-wide serological follow-up study of vaccine efficacy, of which Prof Wang is a lead principal investigator.

Prof Wang’s most recent work focuses on designing a third-generation coronavirus vaccine (3GCoVax) that could combat not only known SARS-CoV-2 variants, but also other coronaviruses that may emerge in the future. Currently under development as a generic booster, 3GCoVax is based on Prof Wang’s groundbreaking discovery that SARS-CoV-1 survivors who have been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 produce powerful neutralising antibodies.

As a member of multiple WHO COVID-19 committees, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Singapore’s COVID-19 Research Workgroup, Prof Wang has contributed to policies and roadmaps for identifying emerging zoonotic diseases and preparing national and international agencies to better respond to epidemics and pandemics. He is currently Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School and was recently appointed Executive Director of the recently established National Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Responses (PREPARE).. He has nurtured several young scientists into independent principal investigators and, since joining Duke-NUS eight years ago, trained five MD-PhD students.

Having published over 450 papers, including many in top journals like Science, Nature, and Lancet, Prof Wang’s work earned him more than 36,000 citations and a H-index of 97 (Web of Science 2021). He was also elected to prestigious academic bodies, including the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (2010) and the American Academy of Microbiology (2021) in recognition of his exemplary contributions to the field.

Associate Professor Too Heng-Phon

Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Associate Professor, NUS Centre for Cancer Research, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS)
Co-founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and Non-Executive Chairman, MiRXES

“For his groundbreaking work in developing a method for accurate, versatile detection of microRNA disease biomarkers, leading to the clinical implementation of blood tests for early detection of diseases such as cancer”

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For more than 10 years, Assoc Prof Too has been developing methods and assays for the accurate detection of microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers, the smallest pieces of genetic material. In 2010, he patented and published his work on the development of a miRNA qPCR assay platform technology which was subsequently commercialised and applied to the discovery of biomarkers for the early detection of cancers and other diseases. Notably, the technology has enabled the development of the world’s first molecular blood test for the early detection of gastric cancer, which received the CE mark in 2017 and regulatory approval from Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority in 2019.

The test, developed in collaboration with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), National University Hospital (NUH), and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), is already changing clinical practice in hospitals and clinics in Singapore, and allowing patients with gastric cancer to be detected early, when they have the best chance of survival. Regulatory submissions for the gastric cancer test are underway in Japan and China, countries with some of the highest gastric cancer incidence worldwide.

The gastric cancer diagnostic product’s development process has been documented to form the basis of the standard for the validation of microRNA (miRNA)-based diagnostics published by Enterprise Singapore in 2020. The technology platform has also been validated to have industry-leading sensitivity in data published by MSD Translational Biomarker researchers.

In addition to being a faculty member of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Assoc Prof Too is a scientific co-founder of MiRXES, a leading Singapore-headquartered biotechnology company started in 2014 as a spin-off from A*STAR, which has licensed and commercialised his miRNA detection technology. Today, the company is a global leader in miRNA technology and diagnostics. Apart from the gastric cancer blood test, the technology has been used to develop assays for early detection of lung and breast cancer, with clinical validation studies done in collaboration with clinicians from Singapore and overseas published in high-impact scientific journals in the last two years.

The technology developed by Assoc Prof Too has been made available to life science researchers worldwide by MiRXES as part of the company’s suite of research reagents and services. It has been applied to basic research as well as clinical miRNA biomarker discovery for over 10 cancer types and over 30 disease types. Since its beginnings in Assoc Prof Too’s lab, the mission of MiRXES has been to save and improve lives by translating research discoveries from lab to the clinic, and this continues to be the thrust of his research today.

Assoc Prof Too has published over 100 papers covering a broad spectrum of scientific and engineering disciplines, including translational and basic cancer research, neurobiology, metabolic engineering, gene therapy, molecular assay development, nanoparticles, and stem cell research. He has filed 18 distinct inventions in the field of disease diagnostics, therapeutics, and biotransformation, a number of which have been licensed by the industry.