Profile
Dr Benjamin Koh obtained his medical degree from the National University of Singapore and a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. He has had previous experience handling communicable disease control, international health relations and health service development in Ministry of Health (MOH).
He has also worked on enterprise and entrepreneurship development in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and was the Senior Director in charge of service delivery and development in the Ministry of Social and Family Development. He was the Coordinating Divisional Director for Higher Education in the Ministry of Education, overseeing policies on higher education and academic research.
Dr Koh is the Deputy Secretary (Development) in MOH. He oversees issues relating to infrastructure and manpower development for the healthcare sector in Singapore, as well as matters relating to ageing and eldercare.
Profile
Professor Chong Yap Seng is the Chief Clinical Officer 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.
Profile
Professor Barry Halliwell is Senior Advisor, Academic Appointments and Research Excellence, Office of the Senior Deputy President and Provost.
Professor Halliwell graduated from the University of Oxford with BA (1st class) and D.Phil degrees. He holds a D.Sc degree from the University of London. He was a faculty member with the University of London, King’s College from 1974 to 2000 and held a prestigious Lister Institute Research fellowship. From 1995 to 1999, he was a Visiting Research Professor of Internal Medicine and Biochemistry with the University of California Davis, School of Medicine, Divisions of Cardiology and Pulmonary/Critical Care Medicine. Professor Halliwell was a Visiting Professor of Biochemistry to NUS from 1998 to 2000. He was Head of the University’s Department of Biochemistry from 2000 to 2007 and was Deputy Director, Office of Life Sciences from 2001 to 2003. From 2003 to September 2008, he was the founding Executive Director of the newly formed NUS Graduate School of Integrative Sciences and Engineering. From Mar 2006 to May 2015, he was the Deputy President (Research and Technology) at NUS. From Jun 2015 to May 2018, he was the Senior Advisor to the President at the National University of Singapore.
An internationally acclaimed biochemist, Professor Halliwell is known especially for his seminal work on the role of free radicals and antioxidants in biological systems. The Thomson Reuters lists Professor Halliwell as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers in Biology and Biochemistry and his Hirsch Index is 164. (Based on Scopus, Jun 2021).
His book Free Radicals in Biology and Medicine published by Oxford University Press, and now in its fifth edition, is regarded worldwide as an authoritative text in the field. He has received numerous research awards, including Singapore President’s Science and Technology Medal (2013), the “Lifetime Achievement Award” by the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine in the USA for overall sustained excellence in the field and the Ken Bowman Research Award for outstanding achievements in the field of cardiovascular research from the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (Canada).
His research focuses on the role of free radicals and antioxidants in human disease, particularly Alzheimer’s disease and other brain disorders. His interest in identifying the most important antioxidants in the human diet and in developing novel antioxidants has critical bearing on treating human diseases and understanding how diet might cause or prevent them.
Professor Halliwell is a member of several editorial boards including FEBS Letters, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications and Antioxidants and Redox Signaling. He has been a lead speaker at Gordon Conferences and other prestigious events worldwide and is a member of several expert advisory panels to leading universities, companies and government agencies.
Profile
Dr Vincent Ho is Director at the National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore. He leads the Human Health and Potential (HHP) Directorate in developing and driving research, innovation and enterprise strategies of Singapore’s HHP domain.
Prior to joining NRF, Dr Ho was an independent Research Fellow in the Molecular Engineering Laboratory founded by the late Nobel Laureate Dr Sydney Brenner. He was a recipient of a National Science Scholarship awarded by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
Dr Ho received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, and B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering (Magna cum Laude) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Professor William Hwang is the Medical Director of the National Cancer Centre of Singapore (NCCS), Chair of the Oncology Academic Clinical Programme (ACP) in the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre, Head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Cell Therapy Centre, and one of the research faculty in the Duke-NUS Cancer and Stem Cell Biology (CSCB) programme. He is serving as Chairman, Biobanking Advisory, Ministry of Health (MOH); Co-Chair, National Advisory Committee on Cancer Care (NACC), MOH; Co-Chair, Cell, Tissue and Gene Therapy (CTGT) Regulations workgroup, MOH; Member, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Regulations workgroup, MOH. He is also Board Organising Committee (BOC) member of the Singapore Translational Cancer Consortium.
He has previously served as Medical Director of the Singapore Cord Blood Bank, Head for the Department of Haematology in the Singapore General Hospital and Head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Blood Cancer Centre as well as Director for SingHealth Transplant.
He was previously President of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), and Advisory Board member of the Centre for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR, based in the USA). He served as Congress President for the 2016 Asia Pacific Blood and Marrow Transplant Group (APBMT) meeting and currently serves as Executive Board member of the APBMT.
Prof Hwang has published over 120 papers in medicine and science, particularly in the field of haematology and HSC.
Profile
Professor Ng Huck Hui is the Assistant Chief Executive of the Biomedical Research Council, under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
Prof Ng is renowned in the field of gene regulation and genomics. His laboratory is developing diagnostic and therapeutics modalities for brain and liver diseases. Prof Ng had held several administrative positions. He was the Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and the Executive Director of the A*STAR Graduate Academy.
Prior to joining A*STAR, Prof Ng was a postdoctoral fellow with Harvard Medical School under the prestigious Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellowship. Prof Ng is renowned in the field of stem cells, having spent more than a decade in research to understand and uncover the intricacies of gene regulation and how they relate to cell biology. He was also the President for the Stem Cell Society Singapore, which is a major platform for educating the public on stem cell research. In 2016, Prof Ng was elected to be an Associate Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, making him the only associate member to be based in Singapore. Most recently, Prof Ng was also elected as Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Science (SNAS).
In recognition of his scientific contributions, Prof Ng has received numerous local and international honours and awards, including the Young Scientist Award in 2004, Singapore Youth Award in 2005, National Science Award in 2007, Junior Chamber International (JCI) The Outstanding Young Persons Singapore Awards in 2009, Singapore Youth Award (Commendation Medal) in 2010, President’s Science Award (Team Award) in 2011, President’s Science Award (Team Award) in 2018 and The Public Administration Medal (Silver), National Day Awards 2019.
Outside of A*STAR, Prof Ng is very active in the local universities and organizations, and holds adjunct positions at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS Faculty of Science, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) School of Biological Sciences and LKC Medicine and the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI). He also sits on the Board of Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation Singapore (CRIS) Pte Ltd, National Medical Research Council (NMRC), Science Centre Singapore and NUS High School.
Profile
Ms Elaine Teo is the Director, Aged and Ancillary Services Regulation, and Regulatory Transformation in the Health Regulation Group, Ministry of Health, Singapore.
Trained as a pharmacist, Ms Teo has been with the Singapore Ministry of Health (MOH) since 2003 where she was instrumental in the establishment of the Optometrists and Opticians Board, the Allied Health Professions Council (AHPC), and the Agency for Care Effectiveness (ACE). At AHPC, she served as the inaugural registrar where she led the successful state licensure and professional regulation for key allied health professions. As Head of the policy and planning team in ACE, she facilitated international collaborations for capacity building, and orchestrated the launch of ACE’s first guidances to positive reception, securing sustained cooperation and resources for ACE’s new initiatives and subsequent expansion.
Currently, as a director in the Health Regulation Group, she oversees the regulation of the aged care and ancillary services sectors to assure patient safety; and champions regulatory transformation through regulatory sandboxes, use of analytics, consumer engagement and education initiatives for more agile regulatory responses to new risks emerging in the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.
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Professor Ashok Venkitaraman is the Director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, and a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, a member of the National University Health System (NUHS). He holds a joint appointment at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Prof Venkitaraman’s research has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of how cancer is suppressed by genes that maintain the integrity of DNA in the human genome. His laboratory is recognized for the discovery that mutations in the breast and ovarian cancer gene, BRCA2, provoke genome instability leading to carcinogenesis. Prof Venkitaraman now seeks to achieve a deeper understanding of the steps that underlie carcinogenesis, in order to find new strategies to intercept cancer development well before the disease reaches an advanced and hard-to- treat stage. He has developed new technologies to target previously ‘undruggable’ targets, and is a serial biotech entrepreneur, most recently as a founder of PhoreMost Ltd.
Prof. Venkitaraman has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, and as a member of EMBO.