Dr Lim Yee Hwee
Director, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, ISCE
2
Yee Hwee heads the division of Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry at A*STAR's Institute of Sustainability for Chemicals, Energy and Environment (ISCE
2) to develop integrative technologies at the interface between chemistry, materials and biology for applications in therapeutics, biotechnology or pharma manufacturing. She is also the Director of Graduate Affairs (SERC), editorial member of the A*STAR Research Publications and Programme Co-Lead for the new A*STAR Strategic Research Program in Synthetic Biology.
Yee Hwee obtained her joint PhD/DPhil from The Scripps Research Institute, USA and
University of Oxford, UK where she was trained in natural product total synthesis (Prof.
KC Nicolaou) and fluorination radiochemistry (Prof V Gouverneur) respectively. Since
starting her career in 2010 as a scientist A*STAR's former Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences
(now known as ISCE
2), she has been working on harnessing the synergistic power of
both chemical and biological systems to innovate and find solutions to problems through
inter-disciplinary lens. Some of her achievements include the co-invention of *Phine ligand
and catalyst platform (licensed to Aspira Scientific in 2015), the development of fluorinase
and its application in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging, and most recently,
the discovery of auroramycin, a highly potent anti-infective, doubly glycosylated
macrolactam natural product.
Research expertise and interests:
- Biocatalysis
- Chemoenzymatic synthesis
- Complex molecules synthesis
- Fluorination
- Radiochemistry
- Sustainable natural molecules discovery and characterisation