RESEARCH STAFF

David Cameron-Smith is a senior principal investigator at SICS and he leads research on dietary protein and lipid metabolism at CNRC. He earned his professorship at The University of Auckland where he was the Chair in Nutrition at the Liggins Institute.

As the author of over 230 peer-reviewed publications in the areas of nutritional clinical interventions (with complementary analysis of health impacts in areas of obesity, diabetes and ageing, using advanced analytics including lipidomics, metabolomics and transcriptomics), his research work aims to decipher how nutrition regulates genes and the biochemical pathways that are essential for optimal human health. He has led significant clinical trials that have shed light on the role of protein in the diet of the elderly, the differences in metabolic response to differing proteins, and the differences between intolerances to dairy, as compared to lactose intolerance.

At SICS, Cameron-Smith’s research group is focused on building the scientific evidence for Future Foods, a part A*STAR funding and expansion of the Singapore Food Story. This is a research strategy to extend Singapore’s capabilities in advanced biotech-based food manufacturing, with the aim of providing clinically validated food solutions that improve health in the face of challenges such as rising metabolic disease and an ageing population.

He received his PhD in nutritional biochemistry from the Deakin University in Australia. Following postdoctoral training at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, he returned to an academic appointment at the School of Health Sciences in Deakin University.

PUBLICATIONS

• Intramuscular inflammatory and resolving lipid profile responses to an acute bout of resistance exercise in men.
  Physiol Rep. 2019 Aug;7(13):e14108. doi: 10.14814/phy2.14108.

• Altered Dairy Protein Intake Does Not Alter Circulatory Branched Chain Amino Acids in Healthy Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
  Nutrients. 2018 Oct 15;10(10). pii: E1510. doi: 10.3390/nu10101510.

• Impact of dairy protein during limb immobilization and recovery on muscle size and protein synthesis; a randomized controlled trial.
  J Appl Physiol (1985). 2018 Mar 1;124(3):717-728. doi: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00803.2017. Epub 2017 Nov 9.

Bobby Cheon is a principal investigator at SICS, as well as an assistant professor in the School of Social Sciences (Psychology) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

His research examines how cultural, social and psychological influences affect human appetite and eating behaviour and lead to a diverse range of processes and behaviours linked to appetite, such as cognitions and expectations about foods, food preferences, portion selection, taste-based perception of foods, and food consumption patterns.

He is particularly interested in the psychological and behavioural processes that contribute to social disparities in obesity and diet-related chronic diseases. As an experimental social psychologist, Cheon also conducts research pertaining to social cohesion and resilience in response to perceived threats to one’s group.

Among his most significant research are studies are how the mere experience of low subjective socioeconomic status stimulates appetite and food intake and how implicit goals of satiety guide portion selection and food intake patterns. In 2017, he was awarded the Michael Harris Bond Award for Early Career Contributions by the Asian Association of Social Psychology, and the Rising Star Recognition by the Association for Psychological Science (APS).

He completed his PhD in Psychology at Northwestern University, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Culture Science Institute of Nanyang Business School prior to joining SICS.


PUBLICATIONS

• Avoiding hunger or approaching fullness? Implicit theories of satiety guide portion selection and food intake patterns.
  Appetite. 2019. (128): 10-16.

• Low subjective socioeconomic status stimulates orexigenic hormone ghrelin: A randomized trial.
  Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2018 (89): 103-112.

• Mere experience of low subjective socioeconomic status stimulates appetite and food intake.
  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Jan 3;114(1):72-77. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1607330114. Epub 2016 Dec 19.

Mary Chong is a principal investigator at SICS and an assistant professor at NUS’ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. A clinical dietitian by training, she is the nutrition lead for the GUSTO study and a co-investigator and collaborator on three adult weight loss dietary intervention studies.

Specialising in the area of nutrition through the life course, her research focuses on maternal and infant nutrition and nutrition related to metabolic diseases and cardiovascular health. She also has a special interest in eating behaviour and appetite regulation, and has been exploring this aspect in both children and adults in the GUSTO study and weight loss studies respectively.

In 2019, she was presented with the NUS School of Public Health Faculty Young Researcher Award 2018/2019 and The Nutrition Society Silver Medal Award for scientific excellence in the field of nutrition (International award).

She pursued her PhD studies at the University of Oxford, U.K. in the area of lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, where she conducted feeding studies and used stable isotopes to trace the metabolism of various sugars and lipid fractions. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Hugh Sinclair Human Nutrition Unit of the University of Reading, U.K., she conducted a large-scale dietary intervention study, investigating the impact of flavonoids in fruit and vegetables on cardiovascular risk markers.

PUBLICATIONS

• Relationships of maternal folate and vitamin B12 status during pregnancy with perinatal depression: The GUSTO study.
  J Psychiatr Res. 2014 Aug;55:110-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2014.04.006. Epub 2014 Apr 16.
  

• The association of maternal vitamin D status with infant birth outcomes, postnatal growth and adiposity in the first 2 years of life in a multi-ethnic Asian population: the Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort study.
  Br J Nutr. 2016 Aug;116(4):621-31. doi: 10.1017/S0007114516000623. Epub 2016 Jun 24.
  

• Adherence to a healthy eating index for pregnant women is associated with lower neonatal adiposity in a multiethnic Asian cohort: the Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) Study.
  Am J Clin Nutr. 2018 Jan 1;107(1):71-79. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqx003.

Maria De Iorio is a principal investigator and senior biostatistics consultant at SICS, a professor of science at Yale-NUS College, and a professor of biostatistics in the Department of Statistical Science at the University College London. Her previous appointments were as a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Oxford and lecturer/senior lecturer at the Imperial College London.

De Iorio’s research interests include Bayesian statistics and how to apply Bayesian methods to analyse data, Bayesian nonparametrics, biostatistics and computational methods, medical statistics, genomics, and metabolomics. She boasts an impressive track record in modelling complex biomedical data and analysing high throughput data in genomics and metabolomics.

She obtained her undergraduate degree in economics from Bocconi University, Italy, and her MSc and PhD in statistics from Duke University in the U.S.

PUBLICATIONS

• Monte Carlo co-ordinate ascent variational inference. 
  Stat Comput 30, 887–905 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11222-020-09924-yA

• Simulation Approach for Change-Points on Phylogenetic Trees.
  J Comput Biol. 2015 Jan 1; 22(1): 10–24. doi: 10.1089/cmb.2014.0218.

• Bayesian inference for duplication-mutation with complementarity network models.
  J Comput Biol. 2015 Nov;22(11):1025-33. doi: 10.1089/cmb.2015.0072. Epub 2015 Sep 10.

Marielle Valerie Fortier wears many hats. Besides her role as principal investigator at SICS, she’s also a clinical associate professor with Duke-NUS Medical School, as well as a senior consultant and the Head of MRI and Paediatric Ultrasound, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging at KK Women's and Children's Hospital.

She’s involved in research work for the GUSTO and S-PRESTO cohort studies, which involve imaging to assess neurocognitive development and to determine early markers for metabolic disease such as diabetes mellitus. In addition, she has an interest in advanced CT and MRI techniques that contribute to management of children with vascular disorders and congenital heart disease.

Fortier obtained her Doctor of Medicine from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and was subsequently board certified as a diagnostic radiologist in the U.S.

PUBLICATIONS

• Mismatch between poor fetal growth and rapid postnatal weight gain in the first 2 years of life is associated with higher blood pressure and insulin resistance without increased adiposity in childhood: the GUSTO cohort study.
  Int J Epidemiol. 2020 Aug 27;dyaa143. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyaa143. Online ahead of print.

• Inflammatory modulation of the associations between prenatal maternal depression and neonatal brain.
  Neuropsychopharmacology. 2020 Jul 20. doi: 10.1038/s41386-020-0774-0. Online ahead of print.

• Maternal glycemia during pregnancy and offspring abdominal adiposity measured by MRI in the neonatal period and preschool years: The Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) prospective mother-offspring birth cohort study.
  Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Jul 1;112(1):39-47. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqaa055.

Neerja Karnani is a senior principal investigator and systems biology lead at SICS. Her postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia, in association with the ENCODE consortium (NHGRI) involved understanding the epigenetic landscape and instability in human genome.

Her research work is focused on identifying diagnostic markers and interventions related to women and child health adversities. She uses multi-omics approaches (genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, metagenomics and lipidomics) and integrates big data to develop better molecular insights into metabolic diseases, micronutrient deficiencies, and mental health adversities.

Besides helming the systems biology and biomarker research group at SICS, Karnani is also an executive committee member of the GUSTO and S-PRESTO birth cohorts, a part of the science management group for EpiGen consortium – a collaboration between Singapore, New Zealand and the U.K. – and a key member and contributor of Singapore’s National Precision Medicine programme that aims to study human genetic variation for population stratified risk prediction of health adversities. Her group’s research findings have attracted major nutrition, pharma and diagnostic industries and fostered translational programmes.

Karnani received her PhD from the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, where she worked on multidrug resistance in pathogenic yeast. During her graduate studies, she was a recipient of the C. R. Krishna Murti Memorial Young Scientist Award.

PUBLICATIONS

• Mitochondrial oxidative capacity and NAD+ biosynthesis are reduced in human sarcopenia across ethnicities.
  Nat Commun. 2019 Dec 20;10(1):5808. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-13694-1.

• Determinants of intramyocellular lipid accumulation in early childhood.
  Int J Obes (Lond). 2019 Aug 28. doi: 10.1038/s41366-019-0435-8. [Epub ahead of print].

• Analysis of two birth tissues provides new insights into the epigenetic landscape of neonates born preterm.
  Clin Epigenetics. 2019 Feb 11;11(1):26. doi: 10.1186/s13148-018-0599-4.

Brian Kennedy is a senior principal investigator at SICS, a professor at Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, a distinguished professor in Biochemistry and Physiology and Director of the Centre for Healthy Ageing at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

His primary research focuses on translating research discoveries into new ways of delaying, detecting, preventing and treating human ageing and its associated diseases. The approach is multifaceted. Animal models are used to make new discoveries about ageing biology and also to develop translational interventions targeting ageing pathways, and uman studies are then used to validate and extend the discoveries, as well as the interventions.  

Through his work, Kennedy seeks to demonstrate that ageing interventions can be successfully employed in humans to extend healthspan – the disease-free and highly functional period of life. His goal is to produce world-class preclinical research to better understand the biology of ageing and community-based approaches to improve health quality with ageing in Singapore.

Kennedy received his PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center.

PUBLICATIONS

• Muscle-specific 4E-BP1 signaling activation improves metabolic parameters during aging and obesity.
  J Clin Invest. 2015 Aug 3;125(8):2952-64. doi: 10.1172/JCI77361. Epub 2015 Jun 29.

• Rapamycin reverses elevated mTORC1 signaling in lamin A/C-deficient mice, rescues cardiac and skeletal muscle function, and extends survival.
  Sci Transl Med. 2012 Jul 25;4(144):144ra103. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3003802.

• Quantitative evidence for conserved longevity pathways between divergent eukaryotic species.
  Genome Res. 2008 Apr;18(4):564-70. doi: 10.1101/gr.074724.107. Epub 2008 Mar 13.

Evelyn Law is a clinician-scientist specialising in the area of developmental and behavioural paediatrics. In addition to her role as a principal investigator at SICS, she’s also an assistant professor in the Department of Paediatrics at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and a consultant in the Department of Paediatrics at Khoo Teck Puat-National University Children's Medical Institute, National University Hospital (NUH).

Law’s research interests centre on the life course of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from preschool to adult years and the influences of family and child factors, including socioeconomic status (SES), parental psychopathology, and health on developmental outcomes of children. Her current studies and grants examine a prediction model of ADHD diagnostic stability in preschoolers and trajectories of executive functioning among children from different SES and family backgrounds in the GUSTO birth cohort study.

She received her Bachelor degree in Biological Sciences with cum laude and departmental honours from Northwestern University in 2002, and then pursued research in germ cell development at the Division of Reproductive, Stem Cell and Perinatal Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine before continuing her medical training. She completed residency in Paediatrics at the Harvard Medical School/Boston University School of Medicine joint programme in 2010, and completed subspecialty medical training in Developmental-Behavioural Paediatrics at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital. During her subspecialty training, she also completed the Clinical Effectiveness (Biostatistics and Epidemiology) Programme at the Harvard School of Public Health. 


PUBLICATIONS

• Gut microbiota changes in children with autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review.
  Gut Pathog. 2020 Feb 3;12:6. doi: 10.1186/s13099-020-0346-1. eCollection 2020.

• The parenting experiences and needs of Asian primary caregivers of children with autism: A meta-synthesis.
  Autism. 2019 Nov 13:1362361319886513. doi: 10.1177/1362361319886513. [Epub ahead of print]

• Television viewing and child cognition in a longitudinal birth cohort in Singapore: the role of maternal factors.
  BMC Pediatr. 2019 Aug 16;19(1):286. doi: 10.1186/s12887-019-1651-z.

Lee Yung Seng is a paediatric endocrinologist practicing at Khoo Teck Puat-National University Children's Medical Institute, National University Hospital (NUH). He’s also the head of NUH’s Department of Paediatrics, a professor at the NUS Yong Long Lin School of Medicine, and a principal investigator at SICS – an appointment he has held since 2009.

Intrigued by the increasing numbers of obese young children visiting his clinic, Lee’s research interests lie within paediatrics and endocrinology, particularly in monogenic forms of childhood obesity, complications of childhood obesity, developmental origins of adiposity and obesity risk. He’s one of the lead investigators for the GUSTO birth cohort study and led a study on sleep in children in association with adiposity.

Over the last decade, he and his team(s) have successfully identified rare and common genetic variants in their paediatric cohort with early-onset obesity using a candidate gene approach, with the pathogenic roles supported by in-vitro functional studies. They were the first in the world to report an MC3R (a protein in humans encoded by the MC3R gene) mutation associated with human obesity. He has won awards for scientific papers such as Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity in Chinese Preschoolers in Singapore and Normative Data for Quantitative Calcaneal Ultrasound in Asian Children.

Lee received his MBBS, MMed (Paediatrics) and PhD from the National University of Singapore, and his MRCP and FRCPCH from the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health respectively.

PUBLICATIONS

• A POMC variant implicates beta-melanocyte-stimulating hormone in the control of human energy balance. 
  Cell Metab, 2006 Feb; 3(2):135-40.

• The role of melanocortin 3 receptor gene in childhood obesity.
  Diabetes. 2007 Oct;56(10):2622-30.

• Effect of maternal glycemia on neonatal adiposity in a multiethnic Asian birth cohort.
  J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2014 Jan;99(1): 240-7.

Melvin Leow is a senior principal investigator at SICS, the Deputy Director of CNRC, an associate professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), a clinical associate professor at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, an adjunct associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, and a senior consultant endocrinologist affiliated to the Department of Endocrinology at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Leow's scientific work focuses on energy metabolism and metabolic physiology, in particular understanding the control over energy balance, neuroendocrine function and metabolism that is exerted through the critical centres of the brain and feedback loops involving the intricate network of the gastrointestinal tract, pancreas, adipose tissue, liver and skeletal muscles.

His research interests include looking into the metabolic effects of the thyroid hormone, brown adipose tissue and browning of white fat, mathematical modelling of endocrine physiology, functional foods and nutraceuticals as interventions for obesity, diabetes, ageing and cancer. Notably, he has done significant research on brown adipose tissue, thermogenesis and the browning of white adipocytes with nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and endogenous peptides and hormones.

Leow received his MBBS and MMed from the National University of Singapore, and obtained his PhD from the Nanyang Technological University.


PUBLICATIONS

• Brown Adipose Tissue: Multimodality Evaluation by PET, MRI, Infrared Thermography, and Whole-Body Calorimetry (TACTICAL-II).
  Obesity (Silver Spring). 2019 Sep;27(9):1434-1442. doi: 10.1002/oby.22560. Epub 2019 Jul 13.

• A new method of infrared thermography for quantification of brown adipose tissue activation in healthy adults (TACTICAL): a randomized trial.
  J Physiol Sci. 2017 May;67(3):395-406. doi: 10.1007/s12576-016-0472-1. Epub 2016 Jul 21.

• Desensitization and Incomplete Recovery of Hepatic Target Genes After Chronic Thyroid Hormone Treatment and Withdrawal in Male Adult Mice.
  Endocrinology. 2016 Apr;157(4):1660-72. doi: 10.1210/en.2015-1848. Epub 2016 Feb 11.

Tan Ai Peng is a principal investigator with SICS and a consultant neuroradiologist at the Department of Diagnostic Imaging, National University Hospital and National University Cancer Institute Singapore. She also holds the appointment of assistant professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine – NUS.

Her subspecialty is in the field of pediatric neuroradiology, with special interests in foetal and neonatal neuroimaging, radiogenomics, oncologic imaging and craniofacial malformations. Besides being actively involved in leading international conferences and multiple collaborative research studies, Tan has numerous publications and invited review papers in peer-reviewed international journals. She has also been invited on numerous occasions to give talks at local and international conferences in her areas of expertise.  

Tan obtained her medical degree in 2006 from the National University of Malaysia,  and completed her postgraduate neuroradiology training at the National University Hospital, Singapore. She obtained her Master of Medicine (Diagnostic Radiology) in 2012 and was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists (FRCR) in the same year. She was awarded the Academic Medicine Development Award (AMDA) in 2016 and completed her fellowship in paediatric neuroradiology at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust in 2017. In 2019, she was awarded the European Diploma in Neuroradiology (EdiNR) by the European Society of Neuroradiology (ESNR).

PUBLICATIONS

• MRI Protocol for Craniosynostosis: Replacing Ionizing Radiation-Based CT.
  AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2019 Dec;213(6):1374-1380. doi: 10.2214/AJR.19.21746. Epub 2019 Sep 18.

• Venous pathologies in paediatric neuroradiology: from foetal to adolescent life.
  Neuroradiology. 2020 Jan;62(1):15-37. doi: 10.1007/s00234-019-02294-x. Epub 2019 Nov 9.

• "Restricted Diffusion" within the Splenium of the Corpus Callosum: A Potential Pitfall in Young Infants on 3T Imaging and Marker of Normal Myelin Maturation.
  Neuropediatrics. 2019 Jun;50(3):146-151. doi: 10.1055/s-0039-1679899. Epub 2019 Mar 15.

Elizabeth Tham is a principal investigator with SICS, a consultant and Head of Division, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology at Khoo Teck Puat – National University Children’s Medical Institute, and assistant professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine – NUS.

In her clinical practice, she sees all general paediatric conditions with a special focus on children with allergic disorders such as atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, asthma, food and drug allergies. She is particularly passionate about improving the care and quality of life for children suffering from atopic dermatitis or eczema.

Tham is also a clinician-scientist actively involved in research related to the fields of allergy, immunology and the skin microbiome in atopic dermatitis. She has been awarded several national grants, such as the National Medical Research Council’s (NMRC) Clinician Scientist - Individual Research Grant - New Investigator Grant, the NMRC Research Training Fellowship and the NMRC Transition Award. Her work has been published in many regional and international journals.

A mentor who enjoys teaching medical students and her junior colleagues, Tham was awarded the Annual Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of Paediatrics. As a mother of three, she understands and empathises with many of the parenting struggles that Singaporean parents face today.

Tham graduated with a MBBS from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine – NUS in 2007 and was awarded the Jane Prize in Paediatrics. She received her specialist training in Paediatrics and Neonatology at the National University Hospital and KK Women's and Children's Hospital.

PUBLICATIONS

• Early introduction of allergenic foods for the prevention of food allergy from an Asian perspective-An Asia Pacific Association of Pediatric Allergy, Respirology & Immunology (APAPARI) consensus statement.
  Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2018 Feb;29(1):18-27. doi: 10.1111/pai.12820.

• Low Food Allergy Prevalence Despite Delayed Introduction of Allergenic Foods-Data from the GUSTO Cohort.
  J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. Mar-Apr 2018;6(2):466-475.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jaip.2017.06.001. Epub 2017 Jul 19.

• Erratum to: Antiviral activity of Lactobacillus reuteri Protectis against Coxsackievirus A and Enterovirus 71 infection in human skeletal muscle and colon cell lines.
  Virol J. 2016; 13: 186. Published online 2016 Nov 17. doi: 10.1186/s12985-016-0633-0.
  

An emerging principal investigator at SICS, Cai Shirong’s main research interest is in infant sleep as a modifiable target for health interventions and the risk factors that shape infant sleep.

Presented with the opportunities to access developmental cohorts strategically positions Cai to study infant sleep alongside subsequent developmental stage outcomes such as cognition, mood, behaviours, growth, adiposity and cardio-metabolic health. Aside from infant sleep, she also has a keen interest in multidisciplinary research, linking psychology and neuroscience with metabolic conditions such as gestational diabetes.

She won SICS’ Emerging PI award in 2019, Best Poster award at the 8^th World Congress on Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) in 2013, and the Young Investigator Award (Clinical) at the University Obstetrics and Gynaecology Congress in 2012.

Cai received her PhD from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

PUBLICATIONS

• Maternal hyperglycemia in singleton pregnancies conceived by IVF may be modified by first-trimester BMI.
  Hum Reprod. 2017 Sep 1;32(9):1941-1947. doi: 10.1093/humrep/dex243.

• Sleep Quality and Nocturnal Sleep Duration in Pregnancy and Risk of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus.
  Sleep. 2017 Feb 1;40(2). doi: 10.1093/sleep/zsw058.

• The Influence of Gestational Diabetes on Neurodevelopment of Children in the First Two Years of Life: A Prospective Study.
  PLoS One. 2016 Sep 7;11(9):e0162113. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162113. eCollection 2016. 

Evelyn Loo is an emerging principal investigator at SICS and an adjunct senior research fellow at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Department of Paediatrics.

Her research interests include examining environmental influences during the early years of one’s life – such as nutrition, microbiome and exogenous stressors – that affect epigenetic plasticity and immunological maturation during development. Loo’s work revolves around the study of epidemiology of a child’s health as well as identifying critical periods where environmental microbiome can exert the most influence, identifying factors that can affect environmental microbiome, and understanding the interactions between environmental microbiome and allergens, with outcomes on the skin microbiome and the subsequent development of non-communicable diseases. She hopes that her research will be useful in the implementation of strategies to prevent childhood diseases. 

Loo was awarded the Open Fund – Young Individual Research Grant by the National Medical Research Council to lead a project that looked into identifying the effects of household environmental microbiome in early life on development of allergic diseases in children.

Before joining SICS, Loo was a postdoctoral fellow at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Department of Paediatrics where she studied the epidemiology of allergic diseases in children. She now continues her research in the field of developmental origins of health and disease at SICS with the GUSTO and S-PRESTO birth cohort studies.

She obtained her PhD in biomedical sciences from the National University of Singapore through the NUS research scholarship.

PUBLICATIONS

• Comparison of microbiota and allergen profile in house dust from homes of allergic and non-allergic subjects- results from the GUSTO study.
  World Allergy Organ J. 2018 Dec 5;11(1):37. doi: 10.1186/s40413-018-0212-5. eCollection 2018.

• Associations between maternal vitamin D levels during pregnancy and allergic outcomes in the offspring in the first 5 years of life.
  Pediatr Allergy Immunol. 2019 Feb;30(1):117-122. doi: 10.1111/pai.12995. Epub 2018 Nov 20.

• Effects of infant weight gain on subsequent allergic outcomes in the first 3 years of life.
  BMC Pediatr. 2017 Jun 2;17(1):134. doi: 10.1186/s12887-017-0890-0.

Chen Li is a research scientist at SICS, and her research interests lie in genetics, DNA methylation analysis, lipidomics, metabolomics, gene expression analysis, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), copy number variation analysis, next-generation sequencing (NGS) data analysis and clinical data analysis. In particular, she focuses on the multi-omics studies of gestational diabetes-related research, homocysteine pathway, and telomere length.

Her scientific work includes the pre-processing of genetics, DNA methylation andlipidomics data in the GUSTO and S-PRESTO birth cohort studies – making them ready for multi-omics analysis; and genome-wide association studies of numerous plasma micronutrients such as vitamins B12 and D and homocysteine, and clinical biomarkers like insulin-like growth factors (IGF), insulin-like growth factor-binding proteins (IGFBP), adiponectin, leptin and C-reactive protein (CRP).

Chen obtained her bachelor and master's degrees in engineering from Tianjin University, and her PhD from the National University of Singapore.


PUBLICATIONS

• Analysis of two birth tissues provides new insights into the epigenetic landscape of neonates born preterm.
  Clin Epigenetics. 2019 Feb 11;11(1):26. doi: 10.1186/s13148-018-0599-4.

• The early care environment and DNA methylome variation in childhood.
  Dev Psychopathol. 2018 Aug;30(3):891-903. doi: 10.1017/S0954579418000627.

• DNA methylome variation in a perinatal nurse-visitation program that reduces child maltreatment: a 27-year follow-up.
  Transl Psychiatry 8, 15 (2018). doi: 10.1038/s41398-017-0063-9.

Chen Ling-Wei is a research scientist and an epidemiologist with SICS. He has a passion for disease prevention and a special interest in the Developmental Origins of Health and Diseases (DOHaD).

Intersecting life course, nutritional, and obesity epidemiology, Chen’s current research focuses on the influence of pregnancy and early life environmental pollutants on women’s and child health.

His most significant projects include overseeing a work package concerning growth, body composition, and cardio-metabolic health for a large European Union-funded consortium project (ALPHABET) involving seven European cohorts from five countries (n>65000 mother-child pairs). The research outputs from this project are expected in the coming years and will have major impacts on informing guidelines concerning maternal preconception and antenatal diet. He also led the setup and implementation, data acquisition, and validation of quantitative magnetic resonance for measuring body composition in young children for the GUSTO cohort study, as well as the analysis of relationships between maternal nutrition and offspring birth outcomes, body composition and obesity using longitudinal data analysis approach, leading to over 20 publications – 11 as lead author.

Additionally, Chen has led two systematic reviews and meta-analyses concerning maternal caffeine intakes and pregnancy loss and birth outcomes. These studies have been cited by WHO for guidelines on caffeine intake during pregnancy.

He received the DOHaD Society Travel Awards in 2019 for outstanding abstract presented at the 11th DOHaD World Congress, had an honourable mention at the Emerging Leaders in Nutrition Science Competition 2019, and was awarded the President's Graduate Fellowship from 2010 to 2014 for showing exceptional promise/accomplishment in research.

Chen graduated with a first-class honours degree in life sciences from the National University of Singapore and obtained his PhD in epidemiology from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health – National University of Singapore.

PUBLICATIONS

• Implication of gut microbiota in the association between infant antibiotic exposure and childhood obesity and adiposity accumulation.
  Int J Obes (Lond). 2020 Jul;44(7):1508-1520. doi: 10.1038/s41366-020-0572-0. Epub 2020 Apr 22.

• Maternal dietary inflammatory potential and quality are associated with offspring asthma risk over 10-year follow-up: the Lifeways Cross-Generation Cohort Study.
  Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Feb 1;111(2):440-447. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqz297.

• Associations of maternal caffeine intake with birth outcomes: results from the Lifeways Cross Generation Cohort Study.
  Am J Clin Nutr. 2018 Dec 1;108(6):1301-1308. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqy219.

Candida Vaz has been a research scientist with SICS since 2018. Prior to joining SICS, Vaz was with A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute for almost seven years where she was involved in projects primarily related to next generation sequencing data analysis.

She has brought her wealth of experience in data analysis to her research at SICS where she specialises in RNA-Seq and Small RNA Sequencing data analysis. Her work comprises expression profiling and functional analysis of genes and small non-coding RNAs (miRNA, tRFs and piRNAs) significantly changing due to a treatment/condition.

Her most significant research projects/studies to date include the ‘Role of Sperm SncRNAs (miRNA, tRFs and piRNAs) in mediating Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance’, the ‘Role of SncRNAs in Gestational Diabetes’, and the ‘Study of Maternal Anxiety and Mood Disorder Transcriptomics’.

She holds a MSc in biotechnology from Mohanlal Sukhadia University – Udaipur, and a PhD in bioinformatics and biotechnology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

PUBLICATIONS

• Progressive expression of PPARGC1α is associated with hair miniaturization in androgenetic alopecia.
  Sci Rep. 2019 Jun 19;9(1):8771.

• Embryonic Stem Cells exhibit mRNA isoform specific translational regulation.
  PLoS One.2016 Jan 22;11(1):e0143235.

• Deep sequencing of small RNA facilitates tissue and sex associated microRNA discovery in zebrafish.
  BMC Genomics. 2015; 16: 950. Published online 2015 Nov 16. doi: 10.1186/s12864-015-2135-7.

A senior research fellow at SICS, Keri McCrickerd is a research psychologist specialising in eating behaviour. She’s also a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society.

McCrickerd’s work focuses on the defining the cognitive and sensory factors influencing appetite regulation and understanding the early drivers of eating behaviour. Her research combines behavioural studies with insights gained from the GUSTO birth cohort and partnerships with local schools. Through her scientific work, she aims to understand why we eat the way we do and develop strategies to promote health and well-being through regulation of appetite and food intake.

Since joining SICS in 2015, she has achieved several awards, including the New Investigator Travel Award by the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour in 2017, the first runner-up for the Drummond Early Career Nutrition Scientist Award by the British Nutrition Foundation in 2018, the Rising Star Award by the Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity in 2019, and the A*STAR Career Development Award Grant for her project ‘Testing a bio-behavioural toolbox to promote eating self-regulation in preschool children’ in 2020.

McCrickerd obtained her BSc in Experimental Psychology from the University of Bristol and her PhD in Psychology from the University of Sussex.


PUBLICATIONS

• Associations between inhibitory control, eating behaviours and adiposity in 6 year old children.
  Int J Obes, 2019.  43: 1344–1353.

• Cultivating self-regulatory eating behaviours during childhood: The evidence and opportunities.
  Nutrition Bulletin, 2018. 43(4): 388-399.

• Texture-Based Differences in Eating Rate Reduce the Impact of Increased Energy Density and Large Portions on Meal Size in Adults.
  J Nutr. 2017 Jun;147(6):1208-1217.doi: 10.3945/jn.116.244251.Epub 2017 Apr 26.