OUR LEADERS

Professor Chong Yap Seng is the Executive Director of SICS and the Founding Director of the A*STAR-NUS Singapore Centre for Nutritional Sciences, Metabolic Disease, and Human Development. He is also a Senior Consultant in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology with the National University Health System (NUHS), and the Dean of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in the National University of Singapore.

A clinician-scientist with special interest in foetal growth and early development, Professor Chong is the Lead Principal Investigator for Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) – a nationwide birth cohort study on pregnancies and early childhood development. Key discoveries on gestational diabetes and its impact on children has made systemic changes towards Singapore’s public health policy in a matter of months. Professor Chong was awarded the National Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award by the Ministry of Health in 2017.

Professor Chong received his MBBS, MMed (Obstetrics & Gynaecology) and MD from the National University of Singapore.

Sir Peter Gluckman is SICS’ Chief Scientific Officer and previously served as Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister. He originally trained as a paediatrician with an interest in endocrinology, but very soon realised his calling in research – particularly in the fields of developmental endocrinology and neuroscience.

With a strong interest in children’s growth and development and understanding how a baby's environment between conception and birth influences its childhood development and lifelong health, Sir Peter’s research has made significant contributions to the fields of perinatal physiology and biology, developmental neuroscience and neuroprotection, and paediatric and experimental endocrinology. His work has been instrumental in translating biomedical research discoveries into improvements in long-term health outcomes.

In addition to holding honorary chairs at the University of Southampton, University College London and the National University of Singapore, Sir Peter has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Bergen in Norway, for extraordinary accomplishments regarding science advice and science diplomacy.  He has also been recognised as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and a member of the National Academy of Medicine (USA). Among his notable accolades are New Zealand’s prestigious Rutherford Medal in 2001, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) award in Science Diplomacy in 2016, and his appointment as a Knight of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2009 for his contributions to medicine. 

Sir Peter Gluckman received his MBChB from the University of Otago and his MMedSc from the University of Auckland.

In addition to his roles as Deputy Executive Director and Programme Director of Clinical Nutrition at SICS and Director of CNRC, Professor Christiani Jeyakumar Henry also serves as a professor at NUS’ Department of Biochemistry. Previously serving on Tufts University’s International Obesity Consortium committee and the Food Standards Agency’s (UK) General Scientific Advisory Committee, Singapore Food Agency (SFA), Health Claim Advisory Committee. He even had a regular spot as scientific commentator on Mediacorp Channel 5’s popular health and lifestyle TV series The Food Detectives.

A trailblazer in food science and nutrition, he played an integral role in the inauguration of the UK’s first dedicated Functional Food Centre at Oxford Brookes. Formerly the Head of Food Sciences and Nutrition at Oxford Brookes University, he developed the “Henry Equations” – now widely used to calculate Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) – during his time there. With over 360 papers and 380 lectures to his name, Professor Henry also pioneered the disruptive science that explores how food structure can be manipulated to influence physiological and nutritional properties.

Harnessing a keen understanding of glycaemic control, the role of glycaemia in body weight regulation, food-nutrient interactions and functional foods, Professor Henry has worked in both Europe and Asia with the academic, industrial, governmental and United Nations agency sectors, providing expertise on global nutrition, product development and food policy. Thanks to his passion and expertise in the field, CNRC has attracted international food companies including Beneo, Nestlé, General Mills, Tate & Lyle to collaborate on cutting-edge research.

In 2010, he was awarded the British Nutrition Foundation prize for his outstanding contribution to nutrition and was subsequently made a Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology. In 2018, he was the Grand Prix winner at the Niigata International Food Awards – often referred to as Asia's version of the World Food Prize award. In 2019, he received the prestigious W.K. Kellogg International Food Security Award from the Institute of Food Technology (IFT) USA for his pioneering contribution to international food and nutrition research, and the NutraChampion Award at the NutraIngredients-Asia Awards 2019 which honours the best and brightest in the nutrition and dietary supplements industry. 

Professor Jeyakumar Henry graduated with a Food Technology degree from the University of Bombay, and received his MSc and PhD in Human Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Currently a practising senior consultant obstetrician at the National University Hospital (NUH), Singapore, Associate Professor Chan Shiao-Yng is also a Deputy Executive Director at SICS and a clinician-scientist at NUS. 

Before moving to Singapore in 2014, Associate Professor Chan was a consultant obstetrician in the UK with special interest in the management of pregnant women with medical disorders. After completing her PhD in 2004, she was subsequently awarded a prestigious five-year Health Foundation Clinician Scientist Fellowship and grant funding from the Medical Research Council (UK) and other research charities to establish a basic science research group at the University of Birmingham, UK. 

Her research work at NUS now focuses on endocrine and metabolic dysfunction in pregnancy and their impact on maternal and child outcomes as well as on placental development and function. She’s also extensively involved in world-class birth cohort studies like GUSTO and S-PRESTO, and is the Lead Principal Investigator in Singapore for the multinational NiPPeR (Nutritional Intervention Preconception and during Pregnancy to maintain healthy glucosE levels and offspRing health) trial.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Cambridge, received her PhD from the University of Birmingham, and is a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (UK).

Professor Johan Eriksson is the Programme Director for Human Development at SICS, and a full professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. A specialist in internal medicine and general practice, Professor Eriksson was last full professor at the faculty of medicine, University of Helsinki, and chief physician at Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland. He holds clinical interests in diabetes and related metabolic diseases.

His research focuses on the early programming of health and disease, as well as on the prevention of type 2 diabetes and related metabolic outcomes by lifestyle interventions. He is in charge of the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, a unique birth cohort study with a follow-up of over 20,000 individuals from birth until the age of over 80 years. Furthermore, he has been involved in the gestational diabetes prevention study RADIEL, in which a lifestyle intervention was shown to successfully reduce gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM); and the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS) – the first randomised study to show that lifestyle intervention is effective in the prevention of type 2 diabetes.

Professor Eriksson received his medical degree and specialist qualifications from the University of Helsinki.

Besides serving as Programme Director for Translational Neurosciences at SICS, Professor Michael Meaney is also a James McGill Professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Neurology, and Neurosurgery at McGill University. Renowned for his research on stress, maternal care and gene expression, his scientific work focuses on epigenetics and the mechanisms by which adversity in early life might alter neural development and render certain individuals at risk of mental illnesses and/or learning disabilities later in life.

In addition, he also oversees the Core Molecular Laboratory and Bioinformatics programmes at SICS. The main focus of the Core Molecular Laboratory is to facilitate clinical research by providing specialised expertise and protocols in tissue and cell culture, biochemistry and molecular biology, while the Bioinformatics Core integrates expertise in computer science with biology and mathematics to support analytics with large and/or multi-dimensional data.

One of the world’s most cited scientists, he has been invited to present his findings at research institutes, government health agencies, and scientific meetings globally. Through his work, he hopes to holistically depict what vulnerability to mental illnesses looks like, what constitutes resilience or risk, and what interventions can help stop these debilitating conditions before they take root in adolescence and early adulthood.

In 2014, Professor Meaney was awarded the prestigious Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize for his work on how parental behaviour affects children’s brain development and lifelong function. He was also elected to the Royal Society of Canada, named a Knight of the National Order of Quebec and awarded the Order of Canada.

Professor Meaney graduated from Loyola College (Montreal), and received his PhD from Concordia University (Montreal) with post-doctoral training at The Rockefeller University in New York.