Principal Investigators

SELVARAJOO Kumar  Senior Principal Investigator Email: kumar_selvarajoo@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Computational Biology & Omics Lab Lab Website: https://www.cbio-kumar.org/home Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kumar-Selvarajoo

Kumar is heading the Computational Biology & Omics laboratory at BII, A*STAR. He is also an adjunct Associate Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS and School of Biological Sciences, NTU. Prior, he was an Associate Professor in Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Japan. He serves the editorial board of Frontiers in Immunology, Genomics (Elsevier) and Scientific Reports (Nature Research). He has lead teams in Computational Biology, Systems Biology, Bioinformatics and Statistical Genetics. In particular, he has used original ideas, utilizing fundamental physical and statistical laws, to investigate multi-dimensional datasets, deterministic and stochastic modelling of complex protein signaling and metabolic networks. He has authored over 80 scientific articles, largely as corresponding author, which includes a single-authored book on Immuno Systems Biology (Springer) and edited book for the reputable Methods in Molecular Biology series. He has obtained several research grants, and has been an international grant reviewer. He has also presented invited/keynote talks at numerous international conferences. In 2013, 2015 and 2018, he founded and chaired the Symposium on Complex Biodynamics and Networks (cBio).

Research Interests

Computational Biology, Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Data Analytics, Genomics, Cancer & Immunology, Synthetic Biology

Group Members

HUBER Roland G.  Principal Investigator Email: rghuber@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Function and Structure of RNA

Dr. Roland G. Huber studied computational biology at the University of Innsbruck and at Yale University. After obtaining his PhD he commenced postdoctoral research at A*STAR in Singapore and was appointed as principal investigator in 2019. His group at the Bioinformatics Institute is primarily interested in the interplay of structure and function of RNA in gene regulation and infectious disease using statistical modeling, multi-omics data, and molecular simulations to reveal the structures and functional mechanisms of folded RNA and RNA-protein complexes. The group has previously worked on a variety of tropical and emerging infectious diseases including Dengue, Zika, and SARS-CoV-2. Other areas of interest are multi-omics and metagenomic analysis, particularly in the fields of animal health & aquaculture, and human immunology & ageing.

Research Interests

Roland G. Huber’s research focuses on the structure and function of RNA. The key focus in on integrating sequence, structural, and computational methods to elucidate key functional regions of viral and human RNA. RNA adopts a wide diversity of structure, but at the same time exhibits a high degree of flexibility and a plurality of interactions. This makes functional RNA structures challenging to approach with classical biomolecular structure elucidation techniques alone, and calls for new integrative data analysis approaches.

Group Member(s)

MAURER-STROH Sebastian  Executive Director, Senior Principal Investigator Email: sebastianms@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group:Protein Sequence Analysis

Sebastian Maurer-Stroh studied theoretical biochemistry at the University of Vienna and wrote his master and PhD thesis at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP). After FEBS and Marie Curie fellowships at the VIB-SWITCH lab in Brussels, he has been leading a group of experts in protein sequence analysis as a senior principal investigator in the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (BII) since 2007. He is Executive Director of BII since January 2021. His protein function analysis skills are supporting A*STAR’s efforts at the public-private interface and through computational analysis and modelling his team is critically contributing to national and global viral pathogen surveillance. He is also adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and infectious disease expert for A*STAR ID labs and the National Public Health Laboratory of the Ministry of Health, Singapore.

Research Interests

Sebastian Maurer-Stroh's research interests lies in mapping the uncharted islands in functional protein sequence space. This includes inferring functions for uncharacterized genes/proteins based on remote evolutionary relationships, prediction of the 3-dimensional structure of proteins, identification of biologically important residues and disease-related mutations, as well as developing predictors for short functional motifs in protein sequences.

Group Members

KOH Winston Assistant Principal Investigator Email: Winston_Koh@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Molecular Innovations and AI Integration

Winston is a bioengineer who obtained his PhD and MS in Bioengineering from Stanford University, after completing his BS in Bioengineering at Imperial College London. After his PhD, Winston joined Molecular Stethoscope, a startup based on his doctoral work, where he worked as a research scientist and scientific consultant.

Research Interests

Returning to Singapore and A*STAR, Winston pursued postdoctoral training in the Molecular Engineering Lab under the leadership of Prof Sydney Brenner. His work in the lab led him to receive the NMRC OF-YIRG award, enabling him to spearhead research on RNA-based liquid biopsies, an emerging field that focuses on non-invasive diagnostic testing, since then Winston's work has been covered applications on prenatal, cancer, and infectious disease diagnostics. He combines liquid biopsies with bioinformatics techniques to achieve accurate and efficient diagnostic outcomes. Alongside his expertise in non-invasive diagnostics, Winston has also delved into machine learning applications for clinical genomics data. He serves as a scientific consultant for local startups, assisting them in operationalizing artificial intelligence for multi-modal genomic datasets, such as single-cell RNA sequencing.

Driven by his commitment to sustainability, medicine, and biological applications, Winston's current research focuses on harnessing the power of generative AI in the field of molecular engineering. The vision is to develop innovative technologies that not only address clinical needs but also contribute to the broader context of sustainability.

Group Members

TAN Yaw Sing Principal Investigator Email: tanys@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Computational Chemical Biology and Fragment-Based Design

Tan Yaw Sing graduated with a B.Sc. (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 2009, with a double major in Chemistry and Life Sciences. Funded by the A*STAR Graduate Scholarship, he proceeded to pursue his postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2014. In the same year, he joined Chandra Verma’s group at the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) as a postdoctoral research fellow. He now leads his own group in BII after he was promoted to the position of Assistant Principal Investigator in April 2021.

Research Interests
Dr Tan’s research interests span the diverse fields of computational chemical biology, computer-aided drug design, and computational structural biology. He hopes to transform current strategies for drug discovery and chemical biology by improving the accuracy of binding site prediction, providing new insights into the structure and dynamics of drug targets, and guiding the rational design of therapeutics and chemical tools.

FAN Hao  Senior Principal Investigator Email: fanh@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Structure-based Ligand Discovery and Design

Hao Fan received his undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences in University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). He obtained his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry in Dr. Alan Mark’s lab at University of Groningen (RUG). He worked as postdoctoral fellow followed by research scientist in both Dr. Andrej Sali’s lab and Dr. Brian Shoichet’s lab at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was appointed Principal Investigator at the Bioinformatics Institute (BII), A*STAR in 2014. Currently He is Senior Principal Investigator at BII A*STAR, Adjunct Associate Professor at NUS Medicine Synthetic Biology Translational Research Program, and Adjunct Associate Professor at DUKE-NUS Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program.

Research Interests

The broad goal is to develop computational techniques to effectively and accurately model protein-ligand interactions, the developed methods will be applied to therapeutic targets such as GPCRs, transporters and downstream kinases, to contribute to a better understanding and regulation of biological processes, to the discovery of new ingredients for food and nutrition, chemical probes, and drug leads, and to the development of an in-silico platform for chemical toxicity prediction.

Group Members

BOND Peter J.  Senior Principal Investigator Email: peterjb@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Multiscale Simulation, Modelling and Design

Peter J. Bond is a Senior Principal Investigator of the Multiscale Simulation, Modeling and Design (MSMD) group at the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) A*STAR, Singapore, and Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS). His research interests include host-pathogen interactions, receptor signaling, and virus dynamics. Following his graduation in Biochemistry at the University of Oxford in 2001, Peter moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics to read for a DPhil, supported by a Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship, and was subsequently awarded an EMBO Long-Term Fellowship hosted at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. In 2010, he became a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, before moving to Singapore in late 2013.

Group Members

BEREZOVSKY Igor N.  Senior Principal Investigator Email: igorb@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Physics and Evolution of Biological Macromolecules

Igor Berezovsky studied physics at the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MSc, 1993) and obtained PhD in physics and mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1997). He started his scientific career at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology (Moscow) where he conducted his MSc and PhD research, then worked as a research fellow (until 1998). After postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science (1999-2002) and the Harvard University (2003-2006), Igor was a senior scientist/group leader at the Bergen Center for Computational Science, University of Bergen (Norway) before joining the Bioinformatics Institute in January 2014.

Group Members

VERMA Chandra S. (Head) Deputy Director (Research), Senior Principal Scientist III Email: chandra@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Atomistic Simulations and Design in Biology

Chandra Verma joined the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) A*STAR, Singapore, in November 2003. He heads the division of Biomolecular Modelling and Design and leads a group that applies physics-based models to understand the links between protein sequence, structure and biological function. His group works closely with experimental laboratories where the hypotheses generated are tested. In addition, the group is also involved in designing peptides and small molecules (through virtual screening) both for interrogating biology as well as for therapeutic purposes. Prior to joining Singapore, he worked at the Structural Biology Laboratory in York, UK. He obtained his undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, India and his D. Phil at the University of York. He has cofounded two spinoffs: Sinopsee Therapeutics combines a yeast-based platform and modelling with colleagues in A*STAR at IMCB and BTI to screen for and develop new molecules against targets in oncology and opthalmology. Series A funding is being explored for a novel potential therapeutic (eye drop). & Aplomex (design small molecules, peptides, proteins/enzymes and antibodies).

Group Members

Bhanu Prakash K.N.   Principal Investigator Email: bhanu_prakash@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Clinical Data Analytics & Radiomics

Bhanu Prakash K.N. obtained Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2002. He was a Senior grade lecturer in Visvesvaraya Technological University before joining Biomedical Imaging Lab in Institute of Infocomm Research (Agency for Science, Technology and Research – A*STAR, Singapore) in 2003 and later moved to Bioinformatics Institute in 2004 as Research Scientist. He then moved to Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC, A*STAR) in 2005 and was part of the Biomedical Imaging Lab. Later in 2012, he moved to Laboratory of metabolic imaging and was promoted as Group Leader of Signal & Image processing Group in 2006. He has more than 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals and 13 patents granted (4 patents have been licensed to a spin-off company and 2 patents to a start-up) and about 70 abstracts along with a few media releases.

His main interests are in Biomedical signal & Image analysis, Pattern Recognition, AI, Clinical decision support systems, Differential diagnosis, Radiomics and Population based studies in Neuro and precision medicine. He is actively involved with RadiologyAsia and SGCR-WIRES activities and a member of ISMRM and IEEE. He has delivered many lectures and seminars in Singapore and overseas. In addition to his scientific contributions, he has organized and chair-ed several symposiums and seminars over the years. He serves as a reviewer to Neurotrauma, IJCARS, Scientific Reports, MDPI, Journal of Electronics, MAGMA and many other journals. He is the guest editor for “Novel Technologies on Image and Signal Processing” a special issue by MDPI Electronics and a member of Editorial board for Artificial Intelligence in Medical Imaging (AIMI). 

Group Members

YU WeiMiao  Principal Investigator Email: yu_weimiao@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Computational Digital Pathology Lab

Yu Weimiao is an image processing and AI/ML expert in bioimage informatics and computational digital pathology. He is currently a joint Principal Investigator and group leader of IMCB and BII, leading two groups to address different challenging problems in the field. Dr. Yu obtained his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2007. He joined Agency of Science, Technology, and Research(A*STAR) in 2007. His research interests are Computational Biomedical Image Analysis and Quantitative Imaging Informatics based on AI and machine learning. His research outcomes were published in top international peer-reviewed journals, such as Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communication, Breast Cancer Research, Bioinformatics, Current Biology, etc. Dr. Yu and his teams focus on pushing the quantitative and reliable cellular/ molecular image analysis and diagnosis solutions from academic research to clinical decision making. The previous research and R&D projects with hospitals, biotech, and pharmaceutical companies equipped his teams with solid skills and expertise in medical algorithms development and validation. His teams integrate methodologies from multiple fields, such as signal processing, image processing and computer vision, optimization, machine learning, pattern recognition, mathematical modelling, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Deep Learning (DL) with the input of pathologists, oncologists, and cell biologists. Dr. Yu is not only active in academic research; he is also an entrepreneur. He co-founded a biotech company, known as A!maginostic Pte. Ltd. Dr. Yu has established close collaboration with the Pathology Division/Department of three clinical research centers, Singapore General Hospital (SGH), National University Hospital (NUH) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), to ensure a smooth R&D pipeline and data source of developing the computational digital pathology solutions. Dr. Yu established a world-class joint lab of excellence for immunodiagnosis at the tissue level. Such a platform allows the researchers, clinicians, and pharma to profile the patient immune signature for diagnosis, prognosis and drug response study, etc.

Group Members

LOO Lit Hsin  Senior Principal Investigator Email: loolh@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Complex Cellular Phenotype Analysis Lab Website:  http://web.bii.a-star.edu.sg/~loolh

Loo Lit Hsin is a Senior Principal Investigator at the Bioinformatics Institute (BII), A*STAR, Singapore. He is also an adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Dr. Loo’s background is in computational and systems pharmacology/toxicology. He was the recipient of the Lush Prize – Science Award (2016), Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research (2010) and the Alfred Gilman Award (2009) by the University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center, and the Doctoral Award in Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (2005) by Drexel University. Dr. Loo was a postdoctoral fellow in the Bauer Center for Genomics Research at Harvard University (2005), and then in the Department of Pharmacology at the UTSW Medical Center, USA (2005-2010).

Research Interests

Dr. Loo’s background is in computational and systems pharmacology/toxicology. He is leading an interdisciplinary team of scientists developing in vitro and computational models for predicting the effects and/or targets of chemical compounds with diverse or unknown structures. Dr. Loo is also leading A*STAR’s participations in the International Workgroup on Accelerating the Pace of Chemical Risk Assessments (APRCA) and the associated Point-of-Departure case study. His research team has developed novel imaging-based phenotypic profiling methods and tools that led to the first high-throughput and predictive in vitro platform for nephrotoxicity prediction. They also develop and manage the HPA Platform and ImmunoAtlas portal to promotes open science and collaborations that can accelerate the adoptions of phenotypic profiling and/or multiplex IHC technologies in immuno-oncology.

Group Members

LEE Hwee Kuan (Head) Deputy Director (Training and Talent), Senior Principal Investigator Email: leehk@bii.a-star.edu.sg Research Group: Computer Vision and Pattern Discovery

Lee Hwee Kuan is a Senior Principal Investigator of the Imaging Informatics division in Bioinformatics Institute. His current research work involves developing of computer vision aglorithms for clinical and biological studies. Hwee Kuan obtained his Ph.D. in 2001 in Theoretical Physics from Carnegie Mellon University with a thesis on liquid-liquid phase transitions and quasicrystals. He then held a joint postdoctoral position with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) and University of Georgia where he worked on developing advanced Monte Carlo methods and nano-magnetism. In 2003, with an award from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Hwee Kuan moved to Tokyo Metropolitan University where he developed solutions to extremely long time scaled problems and a reweighting method for nonequilibrium systems. In 2005 he returned home to join Data Storage Institute, investigating novel recording methods such as hard disk recording via magnetic resonance. In 2006, he joined Bioinformatics Institute as a Principle Investigator in the Imaging Informatics Division.

Research Interests

Lee Hwee Kuan’s current research focuses on for analysis of tissues, histological and cellular images. These images are obtained from light microscopy, including image data sets from high-throughput screens.

Group Members