Ms Irene Cheong

Ms Irene Cheong is the Assistant Chief Executive, Innovation & Enterprise (I&E), at A*STAR. She provides operational leadership to the I&E Group and National Platforms and drives I&E's daily operations. She also leads A*STAR's industry engagements, catalysing more impactful A*STAR spin-offs and growing significant value in A*STAR's existing start-up portfolio.

Since joining A*STAR, Ms Cheong has led productisation and alignment efforts in MedTech, while putting in place strong programmes and partnerships to jumpstart A*STAR's venture building and spin-off capabilities. As Acting CEO, DxD Hub, Ms Cheong also oversees numerous collaborations with clinicians, scientists and companies to co-develop medically regulated diagnostics from early-stage biomarker validation through validation into regulatory and manufacturing. Ms Cheong holds core capabilities in biotech, medtech and diagnostics domains as well as industry development and venture creation.

Ms Cheong has prior experience in both the public, private sector and has proven herself to be strong in developing industry-academia partnerships across both the biomedical and physical sciences sectors. She founded and delivered on several noteworthy venture building programmes at the National University of Singapore (NUS), such as the Lean LaunchPad, JUMPStart and Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP). She is experienced in developing start-up ecosystems and early-stage biotech and medtech investments, having been at EDB Investments based in San Francisco, and running sales and marketing for AstraZeneca based in Brussels and London. Prior to joining A*STAR, Ms Cheong helmed the Industry Liaison Office at NUS where she led technology commercialisation, industry collaborations and venture development programmes.

She is currently A*STAR's representative on numerous committees, including the steering committee for the NTU-NHG-A*STAR start-up space, co11ab, board oversight committee for Cardiovascular Disease National Collaborative Enterprise (CADENCE), SIP Joint Steering Committee and a council member of the Singapore-Jiangsu and Singapore-Guangdong Cooperation Councils, as well as selection committee member for the President's Technology Award, and MOE's IEOC Steering Committee.

Ms Cheong graduated with a Global Executive Master of Business Administration from NUS-UCLA, under a dual degree programme and a Master of Science, specialising in Microbiology. She also completed the Harvard Business School General Management Programme in 2023.