2022-01-12 16:48
Singapore – The 2021 President’s Science and Technology Awards (PSTA) celebrated winners across the fields of healthcare and human early life research, infectious diseases, advanced materials, and cancer diagnostics.
The PSTA is the highest honour conferred upon research scientists and engineers in Singapore whose work has resulted in significant scientific, technological or economic benefits for the country. The awards have three categories: President’s Science and Technology Medal (PSTM), President’s Science Award (PSA), and President’s Technology Award (PTA).
The winners, who were selected by a distinguished panel of representatives from industry, academia, and research, received their awards from President Halimah Yacob during a ceremony at the Istana on 10 December 2021.
This year, there were two PSTM recipients: Professor Ivy Ng, Group Chief Executive Officer, SingHealth and; Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, Chief Scientific Officer, Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, Agency for Science, Technology (A*STAR). Professor Gluckman is also Director, Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures, University of Auckland.
The PSA was awarded to Professor Chen Xiaodong from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) and Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS). The PTA was awarded to Associate Professor Too Heng-Phon from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS).
The Young Scientist Awards (YSA) were presented by Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister For Economic Policies Mr Heng Swee Keat, alongside the PSTA. The YSA, organised by the Singapore National Academy of Science and supported by A*STAR, recognises the accomplishments of researchers under 35, who have shown strong potential to be world-class experts in their chosen fields. Recipients include Dr Sarah Luo from A*STAR, Dr Yvonne Gao from NUS, and Dr Zhang Hanwang from NTU.
The PSTM was presented to Professor Ivy Ng and Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, respectively, for their outstanding contributions in the development of academic medicine in Singapore, and in advancing capabilities in early human life research.
Professor Ivy Ng was awarded the PSTM for her leadership in the development of academic medicine in Singapore, nurturing clinical research talent, and for pushing the boundaries of medicine to improve health and healthcare delivery. She has been a tireless advocate for biomedical research, innovation and education.
Early in her career as a paediatrician, Professor Ng founded the National Thalassaemia Registry, a game-changer for the early identification of couples who are at risk of bearing children with a severe form of this inherited blood disorder. This resulted in a significant drop in the number of babies born with thalassaemia major, along with better treatment protocols and outcomes for patients. As the CEO of KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, she oversaw key initiatives including a programme to screen babies for hearing impairment, which successfully improved early diagnosis and clinical intervention, thereby allowing young children with the condition to have a chance to live normal lives.
Since 2012, Professor Ng has led SingHealth, Singapore’s largest group of public healthcare institutions, in the complex journey of transformation into a thriving academic medical centre. This included setting up the relevant infrastructure and support systems for research, innovation and education in healthcare, and fostering multi-disciplinary collaboration among the medical, scientific and education communities. Her focus on developing people has greatly benefited Singapore’s research and education talent pool, and helped to ensure a robust pipeline of healthcare professionals, clinician scientists and innovators, and healthcare educators for the future. She also oversaw the development of the 20-year Singapore General Hospital Campus Masterplan to meet the evolving and future healthcare needs of Singaporeans.
Professor Gluckman was awarded the PSTM for his outstanding contributions to advancing health, clinical and biomedical sciences research. In particular, he has been instrumental in building Singapore’s early life research landscape since 2007. He was the scientific architect behind the development of cohort studies that had a strong focus on understanding the links between maternal health and early childhood development. These studies, carried out in close partnership with key institutions (National University Health System, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, NUS, and A*STAR), have yielded deep insights into metabolic disease and other major diseases in Singapore. They have, in turn, had a positive impact on local healthcare policy and practice.
Professor Gluckman’s strong background in research commercialisation helped to attract industry investment to Singapore. He successfully convinced key food and nutrition companies of Singapore’s value as a regional R&D hub, and to undertake research and clinical trials in maternal and infant nutrition in Singapore. He has also nurtured a pipeline of talent who have gone on to develop and support scientific capabilities required in the human potential domain, such as the developmental origins of brain and metabolic health in both children and adults.
On the international stage, Professor Gluckman has written and spoken extensively on science policy, risk assessment, science diplomacy, and science-society interactions. He continues to influence international policies and research through notable forums and platforms. He served for several years as the Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister. Professor Gluckman also led the regional network of Chief Scientific Advisors and Equivalents, an extension arm of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), as well as the Small Advanced Economies Initiative (SAEI), which brought together Singapore, New Zealand, Israel, Finland and Denmark and Ireland to discuss issues relating to science and innovation in small country economies.
Professor Chen Xiaodong from NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering was awarded the PSA for his outstanding contributions in soft bioelectronics. He created a wide range of soft composite materials for flexible electrodes which conform and adhere to human skin and animal tissues, and are also easily scalable. Through his endeavours, Professor Chen pioneered an emerging field called mechanomaterials, by establishing a method that proactively programmed materials’ functionalities by leveraging the force-geometry-property relationships. By applying such functional materials, he built bioelectronic interfaces that convert biological signals into electrical outputs. Among his latest successes is the creation of the world’s first plant-based robot, using a soft composite material to pick up electrical signals in plants —a breakthrough with the potential to enhance the monitoring of the health of crops, and food security.
Professor Chen augmented the sensing capability of soft sensors by mimicking the human nervous system, raising the accuracy of hand gesture recognition technology by fusing visual and tactile sensors. Such digitalisation of the human senses has vast potential to become a technology enabler for the next-generation soft robotics, prostheses, wearables for healthcare, and other smart applications.
Professor Chen has also fostered greater synergy among the local and international scientific community in developing cutting-edge sensing technology in his role as Scientific Director at A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) and the Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation μ-Electronics Centre (SHINE). His contributions help pave the way for Singapore to manufacture next-generation flexible electronic devices. These collective efforts complement his pursuit for innovation impactful science.
Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS Medical School was awarded the PSA for his breakthrough research and contributions to the field of bat biology and emerging viral diseases. Professor Wang established bats as a new model system for understanding zoonotic transmission, and notably led the international team of experts which discovered that bats were the reservoir for SARS-CoV-1. His research will help to better predict, prevent and control future viral spillover events and may lead to novel approaches for improving human health. Beyond infectious diseases, his research has implications for other conditions including cancer, inflammation as well as ageing-related and metabolic diseases.
Professor Wang made very significant contributions to Singapore’s COVID-19 response, including the development of a novel rapid serological test kit that detects SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies with high specificity and sensitivity. Developed and commercialised in collaboration with the Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub) and GenScript Biotech Corporation, the test was launched in Singapore as cPass, and is currently the only FDA-approved test for detecting SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies and used in more than 50 countries. Professor Wang is a member of multiple international and national research committees and workgroups and has contributed to policies and roadmaps for identifying emerging zoonotic diseases, preparing national and international agencies to better respond to epidemics and pandemics.
The PTA was awarded to Associate Professor Too Heng-Phon from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine for his groundbreaking work in developing an accurate, versatile method to detect miRNA biomarkers. His research would go on to be commercialised and applied to the discovery of biomarkers for the early detection of cancers and other diseases.
Associate Professor Too’s technology enabled the development of the world’s first molecular blood test for the early detection of gastric cancer, which has allowed patients the best chance of long-term survival. The technology has also been used to develop assays for early detection of lung and breast cancer, with clinical validation studies done in the last two years.
Associate Professor Too is also the Co-founder, Chief Scientific Advisor and Non-executive Chairman of MiRXES, a Singapore-headquartered biotechnology company that has licensed and commercialised his miRNA detection technology which is used to develop solutions to improve and save lives.
Dr Sarah Luo from A*STAR’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) was awarded the YSA for discovering a novel region in the brain that regulates feeding behaviour. When activated in mouse models, the brain region led to increased food consumption even when mice were not hungry. The same brain region also contributed to excessive feeding in defined environments, demonstrating that the environment also plays a part in regulating feeding.
The work of Dr Luo and her team is important for the understanding of the brain’s role in feeding behaviour has an impact on metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes, and contributes to A*STAR’s Brain-Body Initiative . Her work will also help to further uncover the link between the brain region and metabolic dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases, as many such diseases have a metabolic component and show feeding dysregulation symptoms.
Dr Yvonne Gao from the NUS Department of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Technologies at NUS was awarded the YSA for her research focusing on building a hardware that is scalable and robust to realise a practical quantum computer. These developments are critical for scaling up quantum devices while effectively preserving their performance. In her PhD work, Dr Gao performed the first experimental demonstration of a universal entangling operations between multi-photon quantum elements.
Dr Gao’s PhD work has already resulted in two patents, both of which have been licensed in a Yale spin-off based in the United States.
Dr Zhang Hanwang from the School of Computer Science and Engineering at NTU was awarded the YSA for his work to use group theory to build a general causal framework for artificial intelligence that can actively intervene in the environment, collect data on demand, and generate unseen data. Dr Zhang’s research is critical for the building of next-generation AI that reduces the reliance on big data sample sizes, as it would limit the collection of user data and reduce energy costs of model training, without sacrificing performance.
Dr Zhang and his team are recognised for their causality-based algorithms for robust AI models. Their unbiased visual solutions such as video surveillance, fire control monitoring, and recommendation system, have been widely adopted in the Alibaba City Brain system, which uses AI to gather information across cities to help address some of urban life’s difficulties.
Email
Location