Leadership Team at ISCE²

Mr Wang Peiyi
Division Director
Strategy

Mr Wang Peiyi is the Division Director (Strategy) and oversees the Strategic Planning and Communications roles.

Peiyi started his career with A*STAR in the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (pre-cursor of ISCE2), where he supported national strategy efforts in Joint Industrial Sectorial Planning and Industry Transformation Mapping (Energy & Chemicals). Subsequently, he had contributed to the establishment of A*STAR’s first international partner’s centre in Suzhou Industrial Park for deep tech startups to enter the China market. He had also established multiple innovation programmes to foster Singapore’s deep tech ecosystem, such as the A*STAR-NHG-NTU biomedtech incubator co11ab, FTIC Food Tech Startup Challenge, and the A*STAR Advanced Manufacturing Startup Challenge.

Peiyi graduated with a BSc in Chemical Engineering (Cum Laude) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship from A*STAR.

Ms Radiana Soh
Division Director
Business Development

Radiana Soh is Division Director of Business Development at ISCE2. Her role involves identifying and nurturing strategic partnerships, collaboration projects, and guiding the institute's efforts in translating research breakthroughs into real-world industry solutions.

Additionally, Radiana is also the Director of Chemicals, Materials and Sustainability at the Agency for Science, Technology & Research’s (A*STAR’s) Innovation & Enterprise Group. With more than a decade of experience in technology development and commercialisation, she leads a team that focuses on ideation, marketing, technology commercialisation, productization, business model and venture co-creation, licensing and collaboration to build ecosystems from SMEs to MNCs.

Her areas of interest include creating new innovations and start-ups and seeing through new product launches that flourish into viable businesses. She places particular importance on being able to comprehend and execute solutions for complex business and technical requirements.

Dr Lili Zhang
Division Director
Catalysis and Green Process Engineering

Assistant Prof. Lili Zhang received her B.Eng. and Ph.D. degree from Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2004 and 2011, respectively. Prior to joining A*STAR in 2012, Lili was a process engineer at Micron from 2004 to 2006, and a research fellow in Professor Ruoff’s group at The University of Texas at Austin from 2011 to 2012.

Lili's expertise is in green and sustainable catalysis, electrocatalysis, clean energy production, carbon-based materials and their applications in energy storage and catalysis. She is a Global Highly Cited Researcher, and her research works have led to over 100 publications with more than 25,000 citations (H-index: 50, by Web of Science).

Research Interests and Areas:
- Advanced materials and sustainable processes for clean energy solutions
- Fundamental materials chemistry and physics, and electrochemistry
- Reaction mechanistic study
- Waste upcycling

Dr Ng Wai Kiong
Acting Executive Director

Dr Ng Wai Kiong is the Acting Executive Director at A*STAR's Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE²) where he also leads the Strategy & Development division. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Singapore and Diplom Ingenieur (Chemical Engineering) from the Technical University of Clausthal in Germany supported by the GlaxoSmithKline-Economic Development Board (EDB) scholarship. Upon graduation, he joined the Chemicals group of EDB Industry Development Division. During the formative years of A*STAR's former Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (re-organised as ISCE² in April 2022), he was assigned to the institute and subsequently headed the Industrial Programme Development group. He has also previously managed the Applied Process Technology group of Sulzer Chemtech.

Research Interests and Areas

• Novel formulations: amorphous solid technologies via mesoporous materials, co-extrusion, co-milling, and co-precipitation using supercritical fluids
• Particle technology: micronisation, granulation, powder flow, fluidisation, advanced characterisation, process analytical technologies
• Mass transfer technologies in oil & gas industry

Dr Calum MacBeath
Director, Formulation Technologies, ISCE²

Dr Calum MacBeath is a technologist with almost 20 years of global experience in the consumer products industry. He received his D.Phil in Chemistry from the University of Sussex in the UK. After completing a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the University of Murcia in Spain, he joined Procter & Gamble in its research centre in Pescara, Italy, and relocated to Singapore in 2011. During his time in P&G, Calum managed technology development programmes across the company's business units, bringing new technologies from the lab to the market.

Dr Armando Borgna
Director, Special Projects, ISCE²
 
Dr Armando Borgna is Director, Special Projects at the Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE²). He also holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina (1983) and his Ph.D. from the same University (1987). From 1987 until 1990 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse (IRC- CNRS), Villeurbanne, France. In 1991 he was appointed Professor and Researcher of CONICET (National Research Council of Argentina) at the Institute of Research on Catalysis and Petrochemistry (INCAPE), Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Argentina. From 2001 to 2004 he worked as a Senior Research Associate at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), The Netherlands. He was Visiting Professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of Oklahoma (USA) and in the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering at the Universidad of Zaragoza (Spain). He was awarded an ACS fellow (1997) and Fulbright Fellow (1999). He has been involved in research on Catalysis and Materials Science for more than 15 years. His research interest is in the area of heterogeneous catalysis and the goal of his research is to understand the relationship between the catalytic performance and the microscopic structure and composition of the catalytic materials.

Research Interests and Areas

The goal of Dr Borgna's research is to understand the structural/electronic characteristics of catalytic active sites and the structure-catalytic performance relationships. Achieving this goal requires multidisciplinary studies involving materials synthesis, materials characterisation under reaction conditions, and precise measurement of the catalytic performance.

Research interests in the area of heterogeneous catalysis:

• Gas-to-Liquids (GTL), Fischer-Tropsch, C1 chemistry
• Biomass to Chemicals and Fuels
• Catalysts for Clean Fuels
• Molecular sieves
• Metal Catalysts, Catalyst Deactivation and Regeneration
• Nanostructured Materials: Advanced Mesoporous Materials Nanoalloy Clusters, Carbon Nanotubes
• Catalyst characterisation: Characterisation under working conditions, X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy: EXAFS and XANES, X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS)
• Kinetic Modeling

Dr Brendan Burkett
Director, Scientific Infrastructure & Analytics, ISCE²

Dr Brendan Burkett leads the Scientific Infrastructure & Analysis division at the Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE²). He is a PhD graduate in Chemistry from the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University and has held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Southampton's Combinatorial Centre of Excellence, and in the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. After a brief stint in academia at the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, he joined A*STAR's former Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in 2008 where he has been involved in the development of antifouling additives for marine coatings and establishing capabilities in the area of stimulus responsive molecular systems.

Research Interests and Areas

• Thermally promoted molecular fragmentation reactions
• Programmable molecular architecture
• Multifunctional additives for care chemicals
• Mechanistic organic chemistry
• R&D Strategic Planning

Personal Affiliations

• Member of the American Chemical Society (ACS)

Mrs Eleanor Ng
Director, Corporate Services, ISCE²

Eleanor joined A*STAR in August 2007 as Head (Finance) at the former Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences. In that capacity, she was responsible for the company’s finance and procurement functions. In 2009, she joined Science and Engineering Institutes (SCEI) SERC Shared Services and had undertaken a number of key roles in shared services finance. During her tenure, she was involved in improving systems and processes in a number of Research Institutes as well as growing the capabilities of finance and procurement within SCEI.

Eleanor is a Chartered Accountant of Singapore. She has more than 20 years of working experience in the private and public sectors.

Mr Norhazry Johari
Director
Special Projects

Norhazry is a Chemicals and Energy industry professional, with over 20 years’ experience in the private sector, holding various positions and leadership responsibilities in Technology Licensing, Mass Transfer Technologies and Plant Operations. He has resourcefully guided Multinational company start-ups in Singapore to successfully build regional Asia Pacific presence. This has allowed him to cultivate a unique ability to manage multi-disciplinary initiatives and projects. 

Before joining A*STAR's former Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (now known as ISCE²), Norhazry plied his expertise for equally established companies such as Honeywell UOP, Koch Glitsch, GTC Technology, Sulzer Chemtech and Shell Chemicals. Apart from his core passion for sales, Norhazry is similarly adept in the areas of Commercial Excellence, Business Development and Mass Transfer Technologies. He holds a Bachelor of Business Degree from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and majored in Economics and Finance.

• Biocatalysis
• Chemoenzymatic synthesis
• Complex molecules synthesis
• Fluorination
• Radiochemistry
• Sustainable natural molecules discovery and characterisation