SG50 Singapores Scientific Pioneers

8/18/2019 SG50 Singapores Scientific Pioneers

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BY JULIANA CH AN, GRACE CHUA, SHUZHEN SIM AND R EBECCA TAN

SINGAPORE’S

SCIENTIFICPIONEERS


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BY JULIANA CHAN, GRACE CHUA, SHUZHEN SIM AND REBECCA TAN


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This book is dedicatedto all scientists in Singapore,

past, present and,most of all,

aspiring.


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Copyright © 2015 Juliana Chan, Grace Chua, Shuzhen Sim andRebecca an.Published by: Asian Scientist Publishing Pte Ltd5 oh uck Link Singapore 596224E-mail: [email protected]

Website: http://www.asianscientist.comISBN: 978-981-09-5893-0 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-981-09-5894-7 (paperback)ISBN: 978-981-09-5895-4 (e-book)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording orotherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

National Library Board,Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Chan, Juliana, author.Singapore’s scienti c pioneers / Juliana Chan, Rebecca an,Grace Chua and Shuzhen Sim.– Singapore : A sian ScientistPublishing Pte Ltd, [2015]pages cmISBN : 978-981-09-5893-0 ( hardcover) 978-981-09-5894-7 (paperba ck)

1. Scientists – Singapore – Biography. 2. Science – Singapore –History.

I. itle. II. an, Rebecca, author. III. Chua, Grace, author. IV.Sim, Shuzhen, author.

Q141509.225957 -- dc23 OCN910911412

Book design by: Oxygen Studio Designs Pte LtdPrinted by: KHL Printing Co Pte Ltd

PREFACE Juliana Chan and Rebecca an

ingapore has made much progress in the 50 yea rs since its independence, not least interms of research output and achievements. Although many people are aware of theimportance of research and development for Singapore’s growth, little is known aboutthe individuals who laid the foundations for Singapore’s scienti c achievements.Tese scientists, although lauded by their peers internationally, are not householdnames in Singapore; their contributions can seem obscure.

In celebration of our nation’s 50th anniversary, and supported by grants fromthe SG50 Celebration Fund and Nanyang echnological University, the editorial team at A sian Scientisthas initiated a combined online and print project to celebrate Singapore’s scienti c pioneers. In this book,

we try to capture the struggles and successes of their extraordinary lives, while articulating their immensecontributions to the world of s cience.

Above all, we thank the 25 people who agreed to be interviewed for this book. Tey are all above50—born before Singapore gained independence—and have made exceptional contributions to ourcountry’s scienti c, engineering, medical and education sectors. Although we approached each interviewee

with a similar set of questions, we gave them the freedom to emphasise and elaborate on different aspectsof their lives. As such, the reader may notice slight differences in structure and content between pro les. We feel it is important to preserve the voices and inclinations of the scientists, even at the expense of someconsistency across pro les.

One major challenge was selecting 25 individuals for this book. Tere are of course many otherdeserving Singaporean scientists whom we could not feature. We regret that our own limitations preventus from being able to commemorate here their signi cant contributions to Singapore. It is clear to oursmall editorial team that t his book cannot be a comprehensive repository of Singapore’s scienti c history,and certainly it would be impossible even if we tried. Rather, the stories here are meant to inspire youngpeople to embark on science careers of their own someday.

Finally, we thank Grace Chua and Shuzhen Sim, who wrote many of the chapters; Sudhir TomasVadaketh, who edited all the chapters; Cyril Ng and Bryan van der Beek, who took the beautifulphotographs that accompany the pro les; Eunice Ong, who edited the photographs; and our design teamfrom Oxygen Studio Designs, who did the design and layout for the book. We appreciate your supportand this book is very much your hard work.

S


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070

KanagaratnamShanmugaratnam

066

Phua Kok Khoo

046

Lam Khin Yong

062

Lui Pao Chuen

074

Sit (Wong) Kim Ping

078

Su Guaning

082

Bernard Tan

090

Tan Gee Paw

102

Teoh Swee Hin

008 014 018

Introduction Freddy Boey Ariff Bongso

034 042

Chou Loke Ming Huang Hsing Hua

038

Hang Chang Chieh

054

Lim Pin

058

Low Teck Seng

050

Gloria Lim

022 026 030

Sydney Brenner Cham Tao Soon Louis Chen

Contents

094

Leo Tan

098

Tan Tin Wee

086

Tan Chorh Chuan

110

Wong Poh Poh

106

John Wong

114

Timeline


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INTRODUCTION

odern Singapore’s foray intoscience is generally believed tohave begun with the formationof the S cience Council in 1967,two years after the country

gained independence.But in the 1890s, Henry Nicholas Ridley,

an English botanist and geologist who was therst scienti c director of the Singapore Botanic

Gardens, was already carrying out experimentson a plant that would ourish across the MalayPeninsula—rubber.

At the time, the rubber tree (Heveabrasiliensis ), indigenous to the Amazon basin,

M

had never been commercially grown anywhereelse. Malaya’s main cash crops then were coffee,nutmeg and cloves. In 1895, Dr Ridley discovereda new method of tapping rubber: by making tinyincisions into the tree’s lactiferous vessels (littletubes containing latex), one could spare thecambium (stem cell) layer from serious damage,raising overall yields.

His timing was fortuitous. In the early 1900s,Henry Ford’s mass production of the automobilefuelled a worldwide demand for rubber tires.Malayan rubber output, catalysed by Dr Ridley’snew method, boomed.

THE SCIENCE COUNCIL ONESMALL STEP FOR SCIENCE IN

SINGAPORE

In 1965, research and development (R&D) inSingapore was rudimentary—technicians weretrained to manufacture products, not innovate.

Te Science Council was given a seeminglystraightforward task—to raise public awareness ofthe importance of science and technology (S& ) toindustry and academia. But in reality this was a tallorder. Most Singaporeans did not have undergraduatedegrees, let alone graduate degrees in S& . Amidthe uncertainty of developing a newborn country,R&D seemed like a frivolous pursuit.

Lee Kum att, one of Singapore’s earliesthomegrown PhDs, was the Science Council’s rstchairman. Among its many outreach activities

were a 1970 survey of R&D activities in the publicsector and the 1972 Science Quiz. In 1970 it alsomooted the formation of the Singapore ScienceCentre—a project completed in 1977 at a cost ofS$14m (S$32.5m in today’s dollars).

SINGAPORE’S FIRST DEDICATEDMINISTRY FOR SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY

After the 1968 general elections, oh Chin Chye was appointed Singapore’s rst minister for scienceand technology. As manpower development wasthe top priority, Dr oh introduced researchfellowships and grants for graduate-level research,

which were managed by the Science Council.It was another decade before basic research

started to take shape in Singapore. With meagreresources at their disposal, scientists had to be

resourceful. Consider Sit (Wong) Kim Ping (seep.74), professor of biochemistry at the NationalUniversity of Singapore (NUS), whose researchinto mitochondria required analysis of metabolicprocesses in rats. In the 1970s, she jury-riggeda pestle onto a rotating drill bit in order to

INT

oh Chin Chye (left) viewinga moon rock at the NationalMuseum of Singapore, January 13th 1970. Dr oh completed a PhD inphysiology at the National Institutefor Medical Research, London,in 1949. He joined the Universityof Malaya in 1953 as a physiologylecturer, before entering politicsin 1959. Putting him in charge ofscience and technology was an easydecision—Dr oh was the onlyCabinet member with a PhD.

Photo credit: Courtesy of theNational Museum of Singapore,National Heritage Board.

After retiring in 1911 and returningto England, Dr Ridley published in

1930 a seminal and comprehensive work on plant dispersal, based on hisscienti c expeditions in both Malaya

and Sabah, and a review of widely-scattered literature on the subject.

Photo credit: Walter Makepeace,Gilbert Edward Brook and Roland

St John Braddell (Eds.)One Hundred Years of Singapore , 1921.

homogenise rat livers at high speed. She also used acooking pot with holes drilled in it to boil multipletest tubes over a Bu nsen burner.

Tose were straitened times for researchers.Nevertheless, a 1975 review of the civil service chairedby Lee Kuan Yew, the prime minister, recommendedthat the Ministry of Science and echnology fundprojects that are more applied in nature. “Oursis a nation with no natural resources. Neither can

we afford the means to carry out fundamentalresearch…” the review report gravely stated.

In 1981 the Ministry of Science andechnology was folded into other ministries. Te

Science Council was placed under the purviewof the Ministry of rade and Industry, and itsrole reduced to promotional activities such asorganising conferences and establishing links withinternational scientists.

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SINGAPORE PIVOTS INTOHIGH TECH R&D

Despite these setbacks, there was growing corporateinterest in Singapore as a gateway to Asia. Largemultinational companies in the semiconductor anddisk drive industry, such as Seagate echnology,Motorola and Fairchild Semiconductor, set upR&D units here. In 1981, Apple Computer openeda manufacturing plant in Singapore to assemblepersonal computers.

It was the deep recession of 1985-86—sparked partly by wage in ation among low-cost

factory workers—that prompted Singapore’s shiftinto high-tech R&D. Te country was no longerable to compete with lower-cost manufacturingdestinations, such as China and Malaysia.Singapore thus continued its move up the valuechain. It began training a sophisticated workforceand establishing research institutes to attractinvestors and collaborators around the world.

o lead this charge, Philip Yeo, thenpermanent secretary of defence and chairman of theNational Computer Board (NCB), was appointedchairman of Singapore’s Economic DevelopmentBoard (EDB) in 1986. Under Mr Yeo, the ScienceCouncil was replaced by the National Science and

echnology Board (NS B) in 1991. Te NS B was tasked with attracting foreign investment intoSingapore. New research institutes in the countryfocussed on R&D into disk drives, semiconductors,chemicals and pharmaceuticals, among others.

S& budgets have grown in tandem withthe sector’s growing importance to the country.Te rst ve-year National echnology Plan for1991-95 had a budget of S$2bn (S$3.1bn in today’sdollars), which was promptly doubled ve yearslater. Te most recent ve-year budget for 2011-15is S$16.1bn.

REACH FOR THE STARS

In the 2000s, R&D activity grew exponentially.Mr Yeo became co-chairman and then executivechairman of NS B in quick succession. Hereorganised NS B-funded research institutesunder two councils: the Science and EngineeringResearch Council, overseeing the physical sciencesand engineering, and the Biomedical ResearchCouncil, overseeing the biomedical sciences.

NS B was renamed the Agency for Science,echnology and Research (A * S AR) in 2002. A

new scheme called the A * S AR National ScienceScholarships was launched to cultivate local PhDscienti c talent; it has since funded more than1,000 Singaporean scholars and fellows locallyand abroad. Exploit echnologies Pte Ltd wasalso established to manage A * S AR’s intellectualproperty and facilitate technology transfer in theform of licensing agreements or new start-ups.

Biomedical scientists had reason to cheerin 2003, when a sprawling research hub, calledBiopolis, was offi cially opened. Tere, joining fouryoung biomedical research institutes is the mucholder Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology,

established in 1985. Large pharmaceutical andbiotechnology companies such as NovartisPharmaceuticals have also set up facilities there.

All these developments are part of thebiomedical sciences initiative, a S$1.48bn plan toestablish the sector as the fourth pillar of Singapore’seconomy, alongside electronics, engineering andchemicals. Many have helped Mr Yeo implementthis initiative, including Sydney Brenner (see p.22),an elder statesman of science; an Chorh Chuan(see p.86), then dean of medicine at NUS; John

Wong (see p.106), then a n oncology-haematologyprofessor at the National University Hospital(NUH) and NUS; and Kong Hwai Loong, formerexecutive director of the A * S AR BiomedicalResearch Council.

Te physical sciences and engineering sectorhas been the mainstay of Singapore’s economysince independence. Fusionopolis, which openednext to Biopolis in 2008, was built as a home for allthe physical scientists and engineers in Singapore.Exceptions are the Institute of Chemical &Engineering Sciences, which is located on

Jurong Island; and the Singapore Institute ofManufacturing echnology and the Data StorageInstitute, both of which are located on universitycampuses. Subsequent phases of development

will expand Fusionopolis into a business pa rk forinformation technology (I ), media, electronics,physical sciences and engineering companies.

Meanwhile, a cluster of start-ups, mainly inthe media and I space, is located in the adjacent

Ayer Rajah Crescent area, the so-called “SiliconValley of Singapore”.

In 2006 the National Research Foundation(NRF) was established as a department within thePrime Minis ter’s Offi ce with a ma ndate to set t henational direction for R&D. Among other things,it offers grants to fund research that has strategic

importance to Singapore. Its prestigious SingaporeNRF Fellowship supports independent researchersbased here. In 2013, it launched its agship Global

Young Scientists Summit, a n annual conferenceattracting Nobel Laureates and other award winners,inspired by the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.

FROM A HUMBLE MAGPIETHE GROWTH OF SINGAPORE’S

MILITARY RESEARCH ANDDEFENCE CAPABILITIES

Many are familiar with the narrative of how post-independence Singapore lacked a strong militaryforce, prompting the government to implementmandatory National Service for all Singaporeanmales, as part of a broader defensive strategy todeter real and present threats to the country.

But few have heard the story of how, in 1971,Singapore also started to prepare for a “future” war.It was the peak of the two-decade-long Vietnam

war; the US was ghting Russian surface-to-airmissile systems using electronic warfare.

Goh Keng Swee, then minister of defence,realised that mastery of the electromagneticspectrum would be crucial for military success inthe future. He assembled a team of engineers—codename Project Magpie—to develop R&Dcapabilities for such a scenario.

In 1977, Project Magpie evolved into the

Defence Science Organisation (DSO). Unable toacquire defence technologies from other countries,DSO bootstrapped Singapore’s modern defencesector partly by investing in PhD-level research. In

ony an Keng Yam addressingthe audience at the 2012 LindauNobel Laureate meeting. Dr an,the seventh president of Singapore,served as the inaugural chairmanof NRF from 2006 to 2011.

After graduating with a degreein physics from the Universityof Singapore, he received a PhDin applied mathematics from theUniversity of Adelaide in 1967.He was a mathematics lecturer atthe University of Singapore beforeentering politics.

Photo credit: Markus Pössel/Creative Commons.

Goh Keng Swee (left) at the offi cialopening of the Singapore Mint,24 April 1968. Often described asSingapore’s economic architect,Dr Goh served as minister of

nance, minister of defence, deputyprime minister and minister ofeducation, among other roles.During his undergraduate days atthe London School of Economics(LSE), he was the foundingchairmain of the Malayan Forum, ananti-colonial, nationalist movement,

which counted Lee Kuan Yew andoh Chin Chye as co-founders.

Dr Goh later returned to LSE where he earned a PhD ineconomics in 1956.

Photo credit: Courtesy of theNational Museum of Singapore,National Heritage Board.

1986, Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) appointedLui Pao Chuen (see p.62) to the new position ofchief defence scientist.

In 1997, Su Guaning (see p.78), a foundingmember of Project Magpie, led the incorporationof DSO as a non-pro t company limited byguarantee, henceforth known as DSO NationalLaboratories. In 2000, he converted MINDEF’sDefence echnology Group into a statutoryboard called the Defence Science and echnology

Agency (DS A), where he served as chief executiveuntil 2002.

hese combined organisational changesand scienti c advances have helped transformSingapore from a tiny country worried aboutexistential threats to South-east Asia’s leader inmilitary spending and arms exports.

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RECYCLING SEWAGE ANDSEA WATER

Independence left Singapore without a sovereigndefence force but also without a sovereign watersupply—it was almost entirely dependent onimported water from Malaysia. Singapore’s long-term water security is g uaranteed only till 2061—

when its only remaining water agreement withMalaysia will expire.

With this resource constraint in mind, af terindependence Mr Lee led Singapore on a relentlessdrive to achieve water self-suffi ciency. In 1971,

he set up the Water Planning Unit in the PrimeMinis ter’s Offi ce.an Gee Paw (see p.90), now chairman of the

Public Utilities Board (PUB), oversaw many of itssuccesses, including the decade-long project to cleanup the Singapore River. Singapore now has twoadditional source of water—recycled used water(NEWater) and desalinated seawater, in additionto local catchment and imported water from Johor.By 2061, PUB expects NEWater to ful ll 55% of

University of Singapore (NUS), with Lim Pin (seep.54) as founding vice-chancellor.

Te merger met with strong opposition fromthe Nanyang University alumni and the Chinese-speaking community. Nanyang University’sgrounds were taken over by a new technicalinstitute, the Nanyang echnological Institute(N I), with Cham ao Soon (see p.26) as itsfounding president in 1981.

In 1991, the government ful lled a promiseit had made to disgruntled alumni ten yearsbefore—N I was upgraded to university statusas Singapore’s second English-medium university.

N I merged with the National Institute ofEducation (NIE) to form Nanyang echnologicalUniversity (N U), with Professor Cham asfounding president, a position he held for 22 years.

In the past two decades Singapore’s higher-education landscape has blossomed. In 2000, theSingapore Management University was founded.In 2009, the Singapore University of echnologyand Design was founded as a tie-up with theMassachusetts Institute of echnology in the US.In 2011, Singapore’s rst liberal a rts college, Yale-NUS College, was established as a collaborationbetween Yale University in the US and NUS. TeSingapore Institute of echnology enrolled itsinaugural cohort in 2014, catering primarily tolocal polytechnic graduates.

Singapore’s hitherto only medical school, the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at NUS, was

joined in 2007 by Duke-NUS Graduate MedicalSchool, a tie-up with Duke University in theUS. Te Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine atN U was launched in 2013 in partnership withImperial College London. Both medical schools

were opened to help meet Singapore’s futurehealthcare needs and to train the next generation ofclinician-scientists.

hese new developments must seemastonishing for Singapore’s older practicingdoctors, who trained in diverse, fascinatingsettings. Consider 94-year old K Shanmugaratnam(see p.70), who in 1938 enrolled at Singapore’s KingEdward VII College of Medicine (one of UM’spredecessors). When World War II interrupted hisstudies, he found work under the Japanese in theirbacteriology and serology laboratories, and thenat the Chuo Byoin (Central Hospital)—present-day KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital—

which treated both locals and Japa nese civ iliansand soldiers.

SINGAPORE THROUGH THE EYESOF ITS SCIENTIFIC PIONEERS

When one considers the long arc of historythrough the lives of Singapore’s scientists—fromProfessor Shanmugaratnam, who learned histrade during some of the country’s darkest days,to the relatively y outhful an in Wee (see p.98),an Internet pioneer comfortable hobnobbing inSilicon Valley—it becomes apparent just how

remarkable the last fty years have been; notsimply for Singapore, but for the wider world with which the “tiny red dot” is inextricably linked.

Tese scientists’ stories embody the strugglesand successes of Singapore. Common themesemerge: dealing with the limited resources availablein a young country; the need to both persevereand adapt when there is no clear goal in sight;the thankless and unglamorous nature of muchresearch; the value of pursuing one’s passions;and the importance of family and colleagues inovercoming adversity.

Much as they acknowledge Singapore’stremendous accomplishments, the scientistspro led here do not shy away from highlightingareas in which there is room for improvement.Tese include: encouraging a culture of debate anddissent; making data more transparent; mitigating

environmental damage; and reducing genderimbalances.

As the scientists here admit, science is notnecessarily a path that leads to fame or fortune.Sometimes the thrill and validation is intenselypersonal. “I think it’s the greatest adventure in the

world to really know, at a given point, that you’rethe only person in the world that knows somethingnew,” Professor Brenner says.

Like the slow, steady growth of a coral reef,scienti c contributions may only be truly apparentdecades or even c enturies later. In 2015, when the74-hectare Singapore Botanic Gardens, home tomore than 10,000 types of plants, was declared thecountry’s rst UNESCO World Heritage Site, it

was is no small part due to the efforts of pioneerslong gone, including Dr Ridley, who chipped away,patiently, at the bark of the rubber tree.

Singapore’s water demand, while desalination willaccount for another 25%. And the remaining 20%?“Free from the sky,” says Mr an.

Singapore has today become a global hubfor water research, with more than 180 watercompanies and 26 water research institutes.

SINGAPORE’S ACADEMICCOMMUNITY IN TRA NSITION

In the 1960s, there were two universities inSingapore. Te Chinese-medium Nanyang University

was founded in 1956 to provide higher education to

the Chinese community. Meanwhile, the English-medium University of Singapore was founded in1962 following a split by the University of Malaya(UM) into two autonomous divisions. (Te KualaLumpur campus retained the UM name.)

Over the next two decades, both universitiestrained Singaporeans for various professionaloccupations. But in 1980, in part to consolidateresources and in part to promote the Englishlanguage, they were merged to form the National

Lee Kuan Yew (left), Singapore’sfounding prime minister, visiting

the Institute of Molecular andCell Biology (IMCB) in 1988.

Mr Lee is recognised for hisvisionary leadership and for

developing Singapore into a highincome country. He supportedthe establishment of the IMCBto help Singapore become a key

player in the emerging eld ofbiotechnology. o achieve water

self-suffi ciency for Singapore,he encouraged R&D in water

recycling and desalination.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the

Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology

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014

Freddy Boey

By Grace Chua

Thebasementtinkerer

s a child, Freddy Boey took no plaything at face value. A metal helicopter was somethingto be taken apart a nd put back together. Wooden blocks and a pile of sand becamerailroad tracks and tunnels. wo pieces of wood and some nails became a replica ofa toy airplane.

He progressed from taking apart and reassembling his toys in the zinc-roofedkampung house he shared with his grandmother, parents and ten siblings; to tinkering with inventions inthe basement of his home; to becoming a serial inventor and entrepreneur winning more than S$30m ofgrants and licensing biomedical devices worth millions of dollars over the years.

As he is being readied for this pro le’s photo shoot, the 59-year-old professor of materialsengineering—also deputy president and provost at the Nanyang echnological University (N U)—looks uncomfortable. “Do I need a jacket? You can take all the pictures you want, I’m not going to getany more handsome,” he quips.

A

Credit: Cyril Ng


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FROM KAMPUNG TOBASEMENT LAB

Professor Boey has always been more ready to get hishands dirty than pose for corporate pictures. Teninth of eleven children born to a mechanic and ahousewife, he was largely left to his own devices a sa child. “My parents and siblings didn’t have a clue

what I was doing,” he says.Even without parental pressure, he breezed

through secondary school, then topped his cohortat St Andrew’s Junior College. But he was denieda government scholarship due to his congenital

kidney illness.Instead, Professor Boey scraped togethersavings from odd jobs during National Service, and

went to Australia’s Monash University, which atthe time offered free tuition. Tere, he rememberssneaking out of a dull chemical engineering lectureinto the next class. It happened to be on materialsscience. “Te professor was explaining how anairplane wing can bend, and it blew my mind,”he says.

With that, Professor Boey switched tomaterials science—and evangelised to friendsabout it. (Te department’s class size promptlydoubled, said Ian Polmear, a materials scienceprofessor at Monash, in 2011 at an awardceremony recognising Professor Boey as Monash’sDistinguished Alumnus of the Year.) In 1980, hegraduated top of his class—all whi le holding down

a variety of jobs, from cleaning pubs to deliveringeggs, to make ends meet.

Professor Boey then spent a year as ametallurgist at the Singapore Institute of Standardsand Industrial Research (SISIR), developing itstrademark gold-plated Risis orchids, and a furtherten months volunteering with an aboriginalcommunity in a remote part of North Queensland.He then began graduate studies at the NationalUniversity of Singapore under eoh Swee Hin (seep.102), a materials engineering pioneer.

Tere, Professor Boey examined the impactof impregnating polymer into wood—wood’s

re- and water-resistance is raised, boostingits value. “My job was to do the modelling,” heremembers. “I had a modelling equation w ith nineor ten variables, and we were using this so-called‘supercomputer’—you put the question in in themorning, and you could go to lunch before theanswer came out.”

By 1987, he had completed his PhD andfound a job. “I joined N U because I was giventhe freedom to do what I could do, and I’ve beenhere since,” he says. And one thing he could do wasinvent things.

For instance, for Singapore’s Mass Rapidransit (MR ) system, which began running in

1987, he made soft plastic ticket barriers—thedistinctive red fare gates. He developed the material,then ordered a rst batch from plastic mouldersin Australia.

Another project involved developing carbon-bre parts for the A-4 Skyhawk jet ghter. At

the time, he says, use of the laboratory for non-academic pursuits was frowned upon, so he set upa lab in his home basement.

“For two years, late at night when mychildren and wife were asleep, I’d work for a coupleof hours,” he says. “I bought my own materials—Iremember buying carbon bres from Russia asthey were cheaper.” Professor Boey’s carbon-

bre parts, though approved, were never used bythe Singapore Air Force, which later decided toupgrade its eet of A-4 Skyhawks.

For Hewlett-Packard’s semiconductorfactories, Professor Boey designed a series of carbon-foam indexer wheels on which to mount roboticarms. His wheels were less than half as heavy asconventional aluminium ones, and less susceptibleto vibrations that slowed the pace of the robots’

work. o get the wheels perfectly at, he cast them

on large pieces of oat glass—glass made by oatingmolten glass on a bed of molten lead.

All this work in the basement laboratorycaused little marital friction, until his wife Celina,a general practitioner, discovered epoxy cooling inthe kitchen fridge. “When I told her what it was, it

was not funny,” Professor Boey grimaces.

ROBOT ARMS TO NANOMEDICINE

Such tinkering, he says, was not discouraged byN U, but neither was it actively promoted at rst.Only from around 2000 did the university beginto ramp up its research and innovation efforts.Tat year, N U’s materials engineering division

was upgraded to a full- ed ged engineeringschool, and Professor Boey became its vice-deanof research.

When Professor Boey’s eldest sister died inLondon of lung cancer that year, in her early 60s,he was driven to study biomedical devices. “Whycan’t a device delivering a small dose of radiationbe implanted next to a cancer?” he asked himself.

He soon realised that the techniques andideas used in one domain could be appliedto another. For instance, to make very thinbiodegradable heart stents of an even thickness, heused a technique called multilayering, commonlyused in microelectronics, which involves spinningdrops of liquid material till they become at layers.“It’s a lot of lateral thinking,” he say s.

With colleag ue Subbu Venkatrama n, apolymer chemist, he developed fully biodegradableheart stents that can deliver drugs. Tey spunoff a company, Amaranth Medical, in whichBoston Scientific, a medical device giant,bought a stake. hey also redesigned thesurgical tissue retractor, which surgeons useto expose a surgical site. Teir now ubiquitousdisposable version is gentler than conventionalmetal ones.

Profesor Boey’s newest company, PeregrineOphthalmic, expects in three years to gain approvalfrom the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)for a treatment that would replace glaucoma-drugeyedrops with an injection that delivers drugsslowly for months.

Tough he holds countless patents, ProfessorBoey does not believe in ling new ones uncritically.

“I don’t le unless I believe they can be licensed;more than two-thirds are,” he says.

FOSTERING INNOVATION

“I’m glad the experience I have is helping to shapethe whole of N U,” he says. “Te culture heretoday is very different from the time I was doingthings in my basement.”

In 2011, Professor Boey wa s appointed N Uprovost, and created a new path for researchersto get tenure through world-class, high-impactinnovation. Likewise, as dean of the school ofmaterials science and engineering, he challengedthe faculty and students to spin-off at least onecompany a year—a target they promptly exceeded.

For instance, Hydroemission Corporationmakes biodegradable controlled-release technologyfor water treatment, waste treatment, andother applications; and NanoFrontier develops

nanoparticles for applications such as detectingbiochemicals. Meanwhile Vincent Lau, a materialsscience alumnus, developed an online-retailsolution called Paywhere.

“I think innovation can come in anyenvironment; but you need to have an inquisitivemind, and you need a sense of optimism,” ProfessorBoey says. “Most of the time invention comes

when you persist, and it happens by accident moreoften than not. If you are a pessimist looking for aperfect answer, you’ll never get it done.”

And as provost, he is trying to encouragethat happy optimism and innovation in theundergraduate population. “I believe in havingan education, not a degree,” he says. “A lot of oureducation is spent on feedingthe students information, whereexams are the focus.”

He would like to teachstudents the basics better andfaster, perhaps using onlinelearning technologies, “and therest of the time educate them asa person, as a leader. What youlearn in class lasts only for a coupleof years, but inquisitivenessand learning how to learn lastsyou longer.”

As Professor Boey showsoff photos of his family—threedaughters, a son, three dogs,

“and one illegal cat who walksin and out and doesn’t even payrent”—he shares his equallyrelaxed approach to parenting.“I am not someone whose aim inlife is to sit down with all my children and makesure they pass their PSLE [Primary School LeavingExamination] with ying colours,” he says. “I saidto them, whatever result you get is all right; there

will always be a place for you whether you are a topstudent or not.”

In the long run, he believes Singaporeanresearchers are capable of inventing things that

will have a world-class impact, and materialsscience is a eld ripe for such invention. “ oday,energy depends on new catalysts and storage; clean

water depends on new materials to purify the water. Materials science is going through a goldenage—and the sun hasn’t set.”

Most of thetime inventioncomes when

you persist, andit happens byaccident more

often than not.


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018

Ariff Bongso

By Rebecca an

Conceiving

many worldfirsts

n 1965, Singapore had a total fertility rate ( FR) of 4.66 children per woman and anaverage household size of about six, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics.

By the time Samuel Lee was born in 1983, however, the situation had changed

drastically, with the FR dropping to 1.61, below the generally-accepted replacementrate of 2.1. But Mr Lee was no ordinary baby: he was Singapore’s—and Asia’s— rst“test-tube baby”, brought into the world by a team led by the late S . S. Ratnam.

Since then, thousands of babies have been born in Singapore through assisted ferti lity techniques, with 1,158 in 2009 alone [the most recent publicly-available datum]. Although these numbers are nothigh enough to cause a discernible rise in birth rates, perhaps more importantly,in vitro fertilisation(IVF) has given many infertile couples a shot at parenthood.

Much of the credit for this should go to Ariff Bongso, professor of the department of obstetrics &gynaecology at the National University of Singapore, who has made several pivotal research breakthroughsthat have improved IVF success rates.

“I have watched some of the children born through IV F grow up and enter university. o me, it isoverwhelming to know that a technique conceptualised in the lab ultimately results in so much happinessand joy,” says Professor Bongso, who is a faculty member at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and theNational University Health System.

Over the course of his still active career, Professor Bongso has also been at the forefront of one ofthe most exciting elds of the last decade: stem cell research.

I

Credit: Cyril Ng


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REACHING PEAK PRODUCTIVITYIN SINGAPORE

Like many other IVF pioneers in his time, ProfessorBongso, a native of Sri Lanka, rst perfected hisskills on animal embryos before making the jumpto humans. Although offered a place to pursuemedicine overseas, he chose to study veterinarymedicine instead, completing a ve-year programmeat the University of Ceylon in 1970.

“Te initial shift from human to veterinarymedicine turned out to be a de ning momentin my education,” Professor Bongso recalls. “My

strong background in comparative mammalianreproduction has in fact been an asset inunderstanding and providing solutions to some ofthe problems in humans.”

He went on to complete a master’s and PhDin mammalian reproductive biology at the Universityof Guelph in Ontario, funded by a CanadianCommonwealth Scholarship. He then returned to SriLanka to work but after ten years, and in inauspiciouscircumstances, felt the pull of Singapore.

In 1987, while attending the funeral of hisclose friend, S. M. Ratnam, in Kuala Lumpur,Professor Bongso met the deceased’s brother,Professor S. S. Ratnam, who persuaded ProfessorBongso to join him in Singapore. Professor Bongsoand his family liked Singapore so much that he tookup citizenship in 1991.

“Without a doubt, the most productive part

of my career has been during my stay in Singapore,”he muses. “In those early years of my career inSingapore, I spent less time on writing and winningresearch grants… manpower, material and funding

were all provided by the department. Tese to me were the key ingredients that resulted in severalbreakthroughs and world rsts.”

LIVING PROOF OF A LIFE’S WORK

Although the very rst IVF baby was born in 1978,IVF techniques were still relatively crude in the late1980s and had a very low success rate of 10-15%.

Conception begins when a sperm cell meetsan egg cell in the fallopian tubes. Each sex cell hasonly one copy of the pair of chromosomes found innon-reproductive cells. When sperm and egg fuse,the resulting embryo has a full set of chromosomes.If all goes well, it s tarts developing into a baby.

However, getting the sperm and egg to meet in

I strongly believethat in the

biomedical eldresearch teams

should comprise

a mix ofclinicians, basicresearch scientists

and clinician-scientists working

together.

the rst place is challenging. Forroughly one-third of infertilecouples, the male’s sperm islacking in either quantity orquality. In another one-thirdof cases, the female experienceshormonal imbalances resultingin the egg not being releasedinto her fallopian tube; or shehas structural defects in herfallopian tubes which preventthe sperm and egg frommeeting. In all other cases, bothmale and female partners haveone or more issues resulting ininfertility.

IVF can be thought ofas speed dating, concentratingsperm and egg cells outside thebody to increase their chancesof meeting and fusing. Teembryos thus formed in “testtubes”—or, more likely, petridishes—are then transplantedinto the womb where theyhopefully begin to grow.

“Back then, the cultureconditions for the growth ofhuman embryos in the laboratory were suboptimal,”Professor Bongso explains. “As a result, IVFspecialists were transferring fertilised embryos after

culturing them for only two days, whereas in naturalconception the embryos reach the uterus from thefallopian tube on day ve—at the blastocyst stage.”

In 1988, Professor Bongso and his teamattempted to develop a co-culture system in thelab that would mimic the conditions of the humanfallopian tube. Tey grew the embryos on a bedof human fallopian tubal cells in a plastic dish inthe presence of a synthetic formulation of fallopiantube uid that they developed. “Tis allowed usto prolong the growth of human embryos to theblastocyst stage and doubled the IVF pregnancyrates,” he says.

Professor Bongso’s co-culture techniquesoon spread from Singapore to IVF programmesall around the world, where it remained the goldstandard until recently, when a new cell-free liquidculture medium formulated on the knowledgegained by the co-culture system replaced it.

Apart from co-culture, Professor Bongso has

also been involved in developing IVF techniquesranging from microinjection—a procedureenabling men with poor sperm counts to fatherchildren—to zona-free blastocyst transfer, wherebythe outer shell of the embryo is enzymaticallyremoved to increase the chance of implantation inolder women.

ENTERING THE STEM CELL FRAY

While his success in the eld of IVF made himsomething of a household name in Singaporeand the region beyond, Professor Bongso’s nextdiscovery launched him onto the world stage. In1994, he became the rst scientist in the world toreport the isolation of human embryonic stem cells(hESCs), which have the potential to develop intoany human cell.

Building on his IVF-related knowledge,Professor Bongso used a fallopian feeder culture,in which he was able to maintain the hESCs fortwo generations. In contrast, a group in Wisconsinusing mice cells as a feeder culture succeeded atmaintaining their hESCs for over 40 generations,receiving a patent for their work in 1998.

By this time, stem cells had evolved from apurely academic research interest to an intenselycommercial one, with many companies realisingtheir vast potential for treating diseases such as

Alzheimer’s and diabetes. Arguing that patents on hESCs restricted

access to the potentially revolutionary cells, severalgroups sought to overturn the patent held by the

Wisconsin group. In the ensuing legal battle,Professor Bongso’s work was cited as evidence thatthe Wisconsin group was not necessarily the rst tohave discovered hESCs.

However, culturing hESCs on mouse feedercells is not without its limitations. “Cell lines grownon mouse or other animal cells could possibly becontaminated with viruses and bacteria fromthe feeder cells,” Professor Bongso says. “Tisrisk seriously curtailed the possible downstreamapplications of hESCs.”

In 2002, Professor Bongso and his teamsucceeded in establishing a “pure” stem cell linegrown in completely animal-free conditions, byusing embryonic muscle and skin cells rather thanadult fallopian tube cells for the feeder culture. Tisremoved a major obstacle to the progression of stemcells from lab to clinic.

RIDING T HE WAVE

But the problem of mouse feeder cells was onlyone of many. Still, unfazed by the challenges andconvinced that the opportunity was promising,Professor Bongso co-founded ES Cell International(ESI), a biotechnology startup supported by theEconomic Development Board of Singapore.

Incorporated in 2000, the company hadearly success, including the patenting of ProfessorBongso’s human feeder method and its selectionby the US National Institutes of Health as one often groups to have its stem cell research eligible for

federal funding. Te company also scored a coup with its recruitment of Alan Colman—famous forcloning Dolly the sheep— rst as chief scientist andthen as CEO.

But in the wake of that early euphoria, the stemcell industry at large was about to experience its rstboom and bust cycle. By 2007, ESI had given up itsresearch on treatments for diabetes and heart failure,switching instead to the less risky option of licensinghESC lines and using them in screening assaysfor drug development. A US company eventuallyacquired ESI in 2010 and renamed it ESI BIO.

PRESSING ON

Professor Bongso has continued slowly chippingaway at the hurdles in stem cell research. Inparticular, his research group has focussed on cells

isolated from the Wharton’s jelly of the humanumbilical cord, a much less controversial andmore readily available source of stem cells thandiscarded embryos.

As excited as Professor Bongso is about hiscurrent research, he has not neglected to trainthe next generation of scientists. Fong Chui Yee,for instance, was once his student and is nowa respected researcher in her own right. She has

worked closely with Professor Bongso over theyears and is poised to take over his lab whenhe retires.

“I strongly believe that in the biomedical eld,research teams should comprise a mix of clinicians,basic research scientists and clinician-scientists

working together,” Professor Bongso says. “Synergybetween all these three types of specialists in acomplementary manner will draw in diverse ideasand fruitful results.”


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Thegreatest

adventurein the world

n 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson, two scientists working at the University of

Cambridge in the UK, deduced the molecular structure of DNA, proposing a doublehelix formed by paired chains of the nucleotide bases A, C, G and .

Sydney Brenner, then a 26-year-old PhD student at Oxford University, describesseeing their model of DNA for the rst time as a watershed moment in his scienti c career.

At that point, the question of how a mere four bases could encode the information required for cells tomake all the proteins necessary for life—the genetic code—was as yet unsolved. In the early 1960s, ProfessorBrenner’s role in deciphering the genetic code helped lay the foundation of modern molecular biology.

Few scientists make their mark on even one specialised eld of research. Several years later,Professor Brenner’s pioneering use of the nematode wormCaenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a modelfor understanding human biology revolutionised research in genetics and developmental biology, and in2002 earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Since 1983, in his capacity as a trusted advisor to the Singapore government on scienti c policy,Professor Brenner has been instrumental in establishing Singapore as a biomedical research centre ofinternational repute. In 2003, Singapore conferred on him its inaugural Honorary Citizen Award, thenation’s highest form of state recognition for non-citizens.

oday Professor Brenner, 88, is senior fellow at Singapore’s Agency for Science, echnology, andResearch (A * S AR), and also holds senior faculty positions at t he Salk Institute and the Howard HughesMedical Institute in the US. “I’ve had a good long run in science,” he acknowledges.

I

Sydney Brenner

By Shuzhen Sim

Credit: Bryan van der Beek


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THE GENETIC CODE ANDNEMATODE WORMS

Professor Brenner developed an interest inmolecular biology as a medical student in the1940s in his native South Africa. Keener onresearch than medical practice, he moved to theUK in 1952 for a PhD at Oxford. Ten in 1956he joined the Laboratory of Molecular Biology(LMB) at Cambridge, where he would share anoffi ce with Dr Crick for t wenty years.

In 1961, together with Dr Crick and others,Professor Brenner showed that the genetic codeis composed of non-overlapping triplets—threebases, or a codon, encoded one amino acid, thebasic building block of proteins.

urning next to the question of howinformation is transferred between DNA andproteins, Professor Brenner demonstratedthe existence of messenger RNA, an unstable

intermediate molecule thatcarries information from DNAin the nucleus to ribosomes—the cell’s protein makingmachinery—in the cytoplasmof the cell.

oday, “DNA makesRNA and RNA makes protein”is considered the “centraldogma” of molecular biology.But in the 1950s, the scienti c

establishment ridiculed theidea that DNA could carry allthe information required forlife. Professor Brenner had “topreach to the heathen”.

In the late 1960s,Professor Brenner becameinterested in the geneticsof how complex organismsgrow, particularly in thedevelopment of the humanbrain and nervous system.Scientists often study modelorganisms—simple organismsthat can be easily handled in

the laboratory—to gain insights into the biologyof more complex animals, such as humans. Ingenetics, for example, the fruit yDrosophilamelanogaster and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae are widely-used model organisms.

Professor Brenner recognised the potential ofC. elegans , a one millimetre-long nematode worm

with a transparent body and simple nervous system,for studying developmental biology. In a 1974 paper,he described important aspects of its genetics, along

with methods for studying it in the laboratory, thusestablishing it as a new model organism.

Research onC. elegans blossomed. Scientiststracked the development of every single one ofits 959 cells and mapped the wiring of its 302neurons. By the early 1990s, scientists had startedto sequence entire genomes of simple, single-celled organisms—the rst was the bacteriumHaemophilus in uenzae .

In 1998, thanks to a consortium of researchersin the UK and US, C. elegans became the rstmulticellular organism to have its complete genomesequenced. Dubbed “nature’s gift to science” byProfessor Brenner in his 2002 Nobel lecture, thishumble organism has helped researchers understandfundamental cellular processes such as cell division,embryogenesis, ageing and cell death.

DEVELOPING BIOMEDICALRESEARCH IN SINGAPORE

In 1983 the Singapore government, eager todiversify the country’s economy away from low-cost manufacturing, sought Professor Brenner’sadvice on developing a biotechnology sector. Heproposed setting up the Institute of Molecular and

Cell Biology (IMCB) at the National University ofSingapore (NUS) in order to train Singaporeansand provide research infrastructure.

Inaugurated in 1987, the IMCB’s mandate was also to prove that Singapore, despite being a tinypopulation with little experience in basic research,could produce high-calibre scienti c research.

Professor Brenner ran a laboratory at theIMCB, and led efforts to study the genome of the

akifugu rubripes puffer sh—or fugu in Japanese.His team showed that the fugu and humangenomes share similar blueprints, even though theformer is about eight times smaller than the latter.

LikeC. elegans , the compact fugu genome is anideal model for studying larger a nd more complexgenomes. Te IMCB enhanced its internationalreputation when it became a key member of aninternational consortium that in 2002 publisheda draft sequence of the fugu genome in Science ,a journal.

Professor Brenner is, understandably, tiredof talking about his older achievements. But askhim about his latest endeavour, the MolecularEngineering Laboratory (MEL), set up in 2009 atthe Biopolis, and his eyes light up.

In the early, heady days of molecularbiology, Professor Brenner and his fellow rebels atCambridge did not accept students. “Who wantsto be stuck with a student for three years whenthe eld was changing almost every month?” hemuses. “In a dynamic eld you can’t maintain aproject because a student has to get his PhD.”

oday, under constant pressure to competefor grants and pass performance reviews, principalinvestigators (PIs, the heads of laboratories) tendto maintain large groups of graduate studentsand post-doctoral fellows, on whom they rely toproduce the science. In the US, especially, thishas resulted in a glut of PhD holders, without acorresponding increase in jobs for them.

Te entire system of academia, thinksProfessor Brenner, is bad for scienti c innovation.Te bureaucracy sti es talent. “PIs have ceasedto become scientists,” he worries. “Tey becomemanagers a nd sit in offi ces all t he time and havegroup meeting and so on. Tat’s not the wayyou create new science.” As employees of the PIs,students and “post-docs” also lack the independenceto work on problems that really interest them.

In a bid to liberate them, Professor Brennerestablished MEL. Here, freshly-minted PhDs are

their own boss es. “You’re independent, but you’realso responsible,” he says. “If you’ve got ideas, youimplement them. You really need to ta ke it all the

way through.”MEL is not only unique in its structure, but

also in the scope of its research. It was the rstplace, Professor Brenner says, to institutionalisemolecular engineering, an extremely broad,interdisciplinary eld involving the design,manipulation, and synthesis of molecules formyriad applications. Tese proteins can be usedto make materials with unique properties, forexample, or chemical scaffolds that can be used todesign better drugs.

One area of research at MEL is biomimetics—aeld in which the imitation or mimicry of nature is

used to solve engineering problems. Here, the teamis studying and designing potentially useful proteinsfrom marine organisms. For instance, suckerin, theprotein present in the sucker ring teeth of squid,

could be used to make strong, exible materials forapplications ranging from reconstructive surgery toeco-friendly packaging.

Others in the laboratory are developingmolecular probes—molecules that exhibit ameasurable change, such as emitting uorescence,after interacting with other molecules. Tese areuseful in a wide variety of industrial and researchapplications—monitoring chemical manufacturingprocesses, for example, or detecting a speci cDNA sequence.

MEL, Professor Brenner hopes, will nurturetalented young researchers, whom he views as the biggestinvestment in the future that Singapore can make.

“Ninety percent, maybe even more, of whatgoes on in research and development is essentiallyroutine,” he says. “And that’s ne. But you also needthe talent to do something new.”

Constant reinvention, he thinks, is especiallyimportant for small countries like Singapore,

which must keep creating new possibilities a ndopportunities for their people. It certainly helps thatSingaporeans, in his opinion, are focussed on self-improvement. MEL often loses talented researchtechnicians to graduate programmes at top-notchuniversities.

Singapore, Professor Brenner believes, likemost of Asia, has a problem that cannot easily besolved by throwing money at it. “Tere is a lesion

which is very bad, and that is respect for seniority,”he says. “People don’t ask questions in lectures. I

think we’ve got to encourage the questioning.”

A THRILL THAT’S WORTH IT

For Professor Brenner, science has always been allconsuming. “Work doesn’t start at 8 and nish at 5and then you forget about it,” he says. “It goes on dayand night. And of course it’s hard to keep a familylife when most of the time you’re living in your ownhead.” Nevertheless, Professor Brenner and his late

wife May raised four children, and were married for58 years, until her death in 2010.

Professor Brenner believes that any sacri ceshe has had to make pale in comparison to theexcitement of discovery. “I think it’s the greatestadventure in the world to really know, at a givenpoint, that you’re the only person in the world thatknows something new,” he enthuses. “Tat’s a thrillthat’s worth it.”

[At MEL] you’reindependent,but you’re alsoresponsible. If

you’ve got ideas,you implement

them. You reallyneed to takeit all the way

through.


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Cham Tao Soon

By Grace Chua

Thepragmaticuniversity-

builder

n his book on the evolution of Nanyang echnological University (N U), Cha m aoSoon, professor of uid mechanics and its founding president, explains the relativeyouth of the administrators and leaders involved: “It was a different age, and manythings were started by young men.”

Again and again in the Singapore story this comes up, and it is nearly alwaysyoung men in their twenties, thirties and forties who are the key players in the tale—men whose wivesgave up thriving careers to support their husbands’ endeavours, men who loved and provided for theirchildren but saw them rarely, men who sacri ced lucrative job offers and personal dreams for duty, forcountry, for the things they built from scratch.

It was indeed a different age: in 1981 Singapore’s population was less than 2.5m (more than 5mtoday), its gross domestic product per person only US$5,000 (more than US$50,000 today). Te then41-year-old Professor Cham was tasked with training engineers for the nation’s future.

I

Credit: Cyril Ng

A SWE ATY UNGLAMOROUS JOB AN ENGINEER’S UN IVERSIT Y i ’ i f h l I i h h i h f il ” h


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A SWE ATY, UNGLAMOROUS JOB

Te new president had nearly become a musician. Asa child he had taught himself several instruments,including the piano and violin, and as an upper-secondar y student at Raffl es Institut ion, he had toldhis father he wanted to study music.

His father, a court interpreter and lm censorfor the Ministry of Culture, discouraged him,saying it would be diffi cult to make a living. Instead ,he urged his son to take up engineering—seen as asweaty, unglamorous profession by most.

“Either you worked in the sun as a builder oryou tinkered with your car engine,” Professor Chamrecalls. But it was a secure living, his father insisted;engineers created wealth and comfort, improvingpeople’s quality of life by building material things.

So off Professor Cham went, on a governmentscholarship, rst to the University of Malaya inKuala Lumpur (as the Singapore campus hadno engineering school at the time); then to theUniversity of Cambridge for a doctorate in uidmechanics. When he returned to serve his bond,it was as a pioneer member of the University ofSingapore’s engineering faculty. “I remember

when the facu lty of engineering started,” he says.“April 1st, 1969. Everybody thought it was an AprilFool’s joke.”

Te main task of the 13 pioneer facultymembers was to train some 120 undergraduateengineers a year for the massive infrastructure

projects that marked Singapore’s early years—housing; roads; and drainage to help prevent theoods that tormented neighbourhoods in the

monsoon season. In 1974, weeks before the start ofthe term, the Ministry of rade and Industry rang

with a request: please double your enrollment to 240students. On the list of national priorities, research

was rock bottom.Professor Cham kept busy by consulting

for Singapore’s rapidly growing industrial sector.For instance, he designed a water-based coolingsystem for a printing rm that took advantage ofair-conditioner discharge. He also literally helpedbuild the university, by designing some of its air-conditioning systems.

In 1975, restless, he wanted to leave theuniversity to start an engineering rm with a friend.“But we already allow you to do consulting,” ReginaKwa, the deputy vice-chancellor, retorted. ProfessorCham took the hint and stayed.

AN ENGINEER’S UN IVERSIT Y

By 1981, Professor Cham had been dean of theengineering faculty for three years.

Ten came word from higher up. o addressSingapore’s persistent shortage of engineers, thegovernment had decided to open a new school: theNanyang echnological Institute (N I). ogether,the National University of Singapore (NUS) andN I would train 1,200 engineers a year to feed theburgeoning building, electronics, petrochemical,and other industries, which Singapore aimed tomodernise with technology-intensive activitiessuch as R&D, engineering design and computersoftware services.

Te new institute was something of a politicalhot potato. Te Chinese-medium NanyangUniversity was a hallowed institution amongoverseas Chinese, whose alumni ranged fromSingapore to Vancouver. When the Universityof Singapore merged with the original NanyangUniversity to form NUS in 1980, it rankled thealumni that the government had simply done away

with their alma mater at the stroke of a pen.In that sense, N I was partly a political

project to appease this large Chinese-educatedconstituency. N I later became the full- edgedNanyang echnological University (N U) in 1991.

From the start it was Professor Cham whosupplied the vision for modernising engineeringeducation. He desired an engineering school

with a difference. Unconvinced by what he sawas engineering’s excessive emphasis on academiaand theory, he recruited lecturers with extensiveindustry experience, such as Brian Lee, anelectrical and electronic engineer, who had spentmore than a decade at General Electric, andBengt Broms, a soil foundation engineer, whohad earlier worked for Shell, and on geotechnicalprojects in Sweden.

Like medical students, the new engineeringstudents would shadow and learn from theprofessionals. Tey helped build and design parts oftheir own school, such as several thin-shell concreteroof structures, during a second-year training stint.

And, uniquely for Singapore at the time, they didcompulsory six-month internships in their third year.

“Te companies welcomed it,” ProfessorCham says. “Tere were more places on offer than

we had students! Why? In the usual two- to three-month internship, by the time they know the work,

it’s time for them to leave. In six months, they canlearn a meaningful job.”

As for building the university itself, thesturdy, bespectacled Professor Cham would roll uphis sleeves and sweat through a plate of sh-headcurry at a Jurong kopitiam (traditional coffee shop)each week with his colleagues. Te tableful of menin button-down shirts would eat and talk throughdecisions inf ormally before going back to the offi ceand signing off on them. In all, the university’sinitial development budget was a generous S$170m.

As a political project which had to succeed, it didnot want for funds, he says.

Physically, N U is a school evidently designedby engineers. Visitors are often bemused by its oornumbering system, in which all the levels marked1 are at the same altitude across campus, all thosemarked B1 at the same level, andso on down.

“For a large and undulatingcampus this was deemed to be themost sensible way to determinethe altitude with respect to outsideroads,” Professor Cham says.

Buildings and hostels, too, were numbered—N1, N1.1, S1,Hall 4, and so on—temporarily,in the hope of raising funds withnaming rights. Alas, there havebeen no takers.

Te 107-hectare campus,

in the far reaches of Jurong, wasin the middle of a jungle. “Tere were still squatters, feral dogs,and it was heavily overgrown,”Professor Cham says. Onemorning, he arrived in the offi ce to nd a snake in hisdustbin. Meanwhile, the staff operated out of an oldauditorium which some were convinced was haunted.

All this took Professor Cham away from hisfamily. When work started on the institute, heand his wife Ee Lin—a geophysicist he had metin secondary school when they attended the samemusic competitions—decided she would give up her

job so someone could be home with their children.oday Gee Len, his daughter, is a project

manager, while at Jen, his son, is a computerengineering associate professor at N U.

“It was a very easy decision as our philosophy

is family above career. Even for me if I have afamily appointment which clashes with a business

appointment, the former prevails,” he says.Professor Cham also says he turned down a

lucrative job offer when he was tapped to run N I.“At the time, my income was about $200,000,” hesays. “Tis was in the 80s, so that was quite a lot,but I was offered a million dollars a year to runa company.”

Good thing he stayed. Within four years,before its rst students had even graduated, N I

was named one of the best engineering institutionsin the world by the Commonwealth EngineersCouncil, the Commonwealth’s professional-engineering body.

A MELODIOUS RETIREMENT

Professor Cham remained president of N Utill 2002. Over the years, hehas also found the time formany corporate, non-pro t andeducational board positions.

After starting up N I,he joined the board of KeppelShipyard. He has also helddirectorships at firms suchas NatSteel, Singapore PressHoldings and United OverseasBank. Te music-lover at onetime also chaired the SingaporeSymphony Orchestra’s board ofdirectors. “I’m down to just two

listed companies now,” he laughs.Last year, he retired aschancellor of SIM University(UniSIM; formerly SingaporeInstitute of Management, SIM)

as well. oday, he remains special advisor to theSIM governing council and senior advisor to thepresident at N U.

How does he juggle all these commitments?He plucks out a small diary from a shirt pocket.“By November, I’ve already got all my meetingsplanned for the following year,” he says. Tatincludes family functions and regular SSOconcerts, such as a performance by renownedpianist Krystian Zimerman.

Ask if he would have done anything differently,and he claims he has no regrets, aside from wishinghe were less impatient and more compassionate.

“I always try my best and if it doesn’t succeed, toobad. I sleep very well at night,” he says.

I always trymy best and if itdoesn’t succeed,too bad. I sleep

very well at

night.


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icture the young mathematician, a recent Stanford University graduate, amonga pioneer batch of Singaporean scholarship holders who have returned home to teac h.

In the early 1970s, the University of Singapore is a quiet academic backwater,not the bustling campus with the tens of thousands of local and international studentsit has today. Laboratories are rudimentary. Te Internet does not yet exis t and postal

services are slow—by the time a journal or book arrives in the university library, it is already out of date.Funds for travel to mathematics powerhouses in Europe and the US are meagre.

But pure mathematics is part of the life of the mind, limited not by technology but only by one’simagination and work ethic. Tus the young mathematician, who lectures in the day and works on hisdoctoral thesis at night, publishes in 1975 a seminal paper in a relatively new eld—a new method forunderstanding the probability that rare events will occur.

Te paper will give rise to a new area in discrete probability, with applications in many eldsincluding computational biology, epidemiology, economics and computer science.

Tis is the life and work of Louis Chen, 74, distinguished professor of mathematics and statisticsat the National University of Singapore (NUS). In the 43 years he has been there, NUS’s mathematicsdepartment has climbed from the doldrums into the world’s top-20-ranked programmes.

P

Louis Chen

By Grace Chua

A seriesof rareevents

Credit: Cyril Ng


18/63


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034

otted with old shophouses that are home to a 90-year-old Hainanesekopitiam,achingly hip cafes, and much else, Singapore’s East Coast area is known for its laidback charm. For Chou Loke Ming, a recently retired professor of biological sciencesat the National University of Singapore, it is the place where he rst fell in love—

with the sea.“When the shermen came back from a day’s work and started to put their catch on the shore, the

whole community would come down and have a look, myself included,” Professor Chou muses, recallinghis childhood growing up i n the Siglap neighbourhood. “Tat’s when I started to become very interestedin the sea and anything to do with marine life.”

After completing his PhD on house lizards at the University of Singapore—because the university was looking for lecturers to teach vertebrate zoology—Professor Chou turned his fascination with t hesea into a thirty-year career in marine ecology and conservation, with a special focus on coral reefs.Commonly mistaken for plants due to their extremely slow growth, corals are actually animals closelyrelated to sea anemones and jelly sh.

Te so-called “rainforests of the sea” occupy only 0.1% of the ocean’s surface yet are home to 25% ofthe world’s marine species. Te secret to this amazing biodiversity is a unique partnership between coralanimals and single-celled algae known as zooxanthellae.

Tese photosynthetic algae reside within each coral polyp, supplying the corals with as much as90% of their energy requirements. In turn, the corals absorb calcium from the surrounding seawater,building a hard, protective structure that can grow to become a massive coral reef like Australia’s GreatBarrier Reef, the only living entity visible from space.

Chou Loke Ming

By Rebecca an

A championfor

conservation

D


SHAPING ANDRE SHAPING

and cowries, in huge numbers.You can still nd them there these

the environmental damageand as evidence to convince

“ he rate of speciesextinction has not been as drastic


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RE SHAPINGSINGAPORE

Although coral reefs need a longtime to develop—the GreatBarrier Reef has been growingfor half a million years—theirdestruction can be swift. In the1960s, Singapore was looking fora fast way to meet the demandsof a growing population. Landreclamation had long been partof Singapore’s developmentalstrategy; it was rst used in 1822to create the area today knownas South Boat Quay.

However, land reclamationreached an unprecedented scalein the post-independence years,

with an aggressive plan that sawSingapore’s land area increasefrom 580 sq km in 1960 to 630sq km by 1990. oday, it standsat 720 sq km, almost 25%larger than it was just beforeindependence.

Involving the levellingof hills and dredging of thesea oor, the extensive landreclamation has almost completely smothered the

costal coral reefs surrounding mainland Singaporeand left whatever remains threatened by extremelyhigh sedimentation levels that block out thesunlight needed for photosynthesis.

Research by Professor Chou shows thatSingapore has lost 65% of its coral reefs since1986, in large part due to land reclamation. [Bycomparison, over the same period the GreatBarrier Reef lost 50% of its coral coverage, largelydue to cyclone damage and a population explosionof destructive crown-of-thorns star shes.]

Most of Singapore’s reefs are now foundonly off surrounding islands such as Pulau Pawaiand Pulau Semakau, which are used for live ringexercises and a land ll, respectively. One of the veryfew mainland areas where corals can still be foundis off Labrador beach.

“I remember Labrador beach from my student

days, before the land reclamation, when there wasstill an extensive rocky shore,” Professor Chou says.“We used to nd all kinds of different seashells, cones

You can still nd them there thesedays, but you will have to huntvery hard.”

CORAL REEFS ORGOLF COURSES?

At an estimated 7,618 people persq km, Singapore has the thirdhighest population density in the

world after Macau (21,190 peopleper sq km) and Monaco (18,475people per sq km). With so manycompeting land-use demands,marine conservation hashistorically been a low priority.But since the 1970s, ProfessorChou has tried convincingSingaporeans that coral reefs are

worth saving.“I remember a permanent

secretary asking me why weshould preserve the reefs sinceSingaporeans could easily go toMalaysia or Indonesia if they

wanted to go div ing,” ProfessorChou shares. “I thought for a

while and then said, ‘Yes, but thesame is true of golf courses.’ Te

meeting stopped soon after that!”But by the late 1980s, he says, attitudes had

begun to change, in tandem with rising incomesand growing local environmental activism. Tegovernment, meanwhile, started participating ininternational conservation pow-wows such as the1992 United Nations Earth Summit.

oday, for any construction project, developersneed to conduct impact assessment studies,mitigation exercises, and real-time monitoringprogrammes.

“Projects must be stopped if measurementssuch as sedimentation exceed certain limits,” saysProfessor Chou. “[In the past] if we had thesemeasures in place, it would really have helped slowdown the total impact to the reefs.”

REGIONAL RESEARCH

In the late 1980s, Singapore lacked adequatemarine science research, which was needed byconservationists both to understand the scale of

and as evidence to convincepolicy makers to act. However,Singapore was not well knownfor marine biology and a lack ofgovernment support meant thatresearch facilities were few andfar between.

“Tankfully, there werea few Association of Southeast

Asian Nations (ASEAN) projectson marine science in the late1980s, supported by Australia,Canada and the United States,”Professor Chou recounts. “Atthat time, there were only fourother countries in ASEAN[Tailand, Malaysia, Indonesiaand the Philippines], each ofthem big countries with a lot ofmarine space.”

It wasn’t apparent why Singapore deserved aslice of ASEAN’s marine budgets. “Scientists in theother ASEAN countries would tell me, ‘Singaporeis so small, you just need a bicycle to get from oneend to the other; you don’t need a boat!’” ProfessorChou says. “But in the end, the collegial spiritprevailed and the budget was equally shared.”

Te money helped him establish facilitiesfor marine biology—focussing on underwater andscuba capabilities—which allowed more researchto be conducted.

Professor Chou has also worked on otherinternational projects. Among other things, hecontributed to the United Nations EnvironmentProgramme (UNEP), helping to edit the State ofthe Marine Environment Report for the East AsianSeas (2009), the rst such assessment for theregion; and was appointed to the UNEP’s regionaloffi ce in Bangkok to review Cambodia’s coas talmanagement plans.

SINGAPORE’S SURPRISINGLYRESILIENT REEFS

Professor Chou’s local research revealed a pleas antsurprise. In spite of all the damage done to them,Singapore’s coral reefs have still managed tosustain a wide range of wildlife, including 130

species of sh, 250 species of molluscs and over800 crustacean species.

extinction has not been as drasticas expected, given the scale ofthe environmental changes,”Professor Chou shares. OfSingapore’s 250 recorded coralspecies, for instance, while 70 arenow “quite rare”, only two havegone extinct locally.

Even those that havedisappeared may one day return.In 2014, divers spotted a Neptune’scup sponge (Cliona patera )—believed to be extinct since 1908—incongruously clinging on to aland ll lagoon. oday the westernreefs of both Pulau ekukor andSt John’s Island are part of theSister’s Islands Marine Park, the

rst of its kind in Singapore, which was established in 2014 after some

thirty years of lobbying by Professor Chou.“[Te park] will inspire more people to

understand that the environment is part of ournational heritage, something that we should try toconserve and protect,” Professor Chou says.

“But if there is one wish I could have,I would like to see the waters become clear again,”he quips brightly. “It will take a lot of effort. It willtake a lot of money as well. It will take a lot ofcommitment on the parts of t he different agencies.

Anything on land development also ows out tothe sea, so it’s not work that ca n be done by a singleagency. It will be challenging, but I don’t thinkit’s impossible.”

Part of his optimism no doubt comes fromthe knowledge that the many of his former studentshave taken up the cause and are continuing his

work. Karenne un and Jeffrey Low, for instance,are deputy director and senior manager respectivelyat the National Biodiversity Centre Division.

“If we look at the past 50 years, after all theimpact, our natural resources are still there, theyhaven’t been completely degraded,” says ProfessorChou. “Now with all the measures in place—thenational marine park, the government agencies, theNGOs—we’re beginning to have more discussionand collaboration. I hope that we will somehowmake the waters clear again in the next 50 years,

so that the next generation will be able to enjoy theenvironment just as we have.”

I remembera permanent

secretary askingme why we

should preserve

the reefs sinceSingaporeanscould easily goto Malaysia orIndonesia if

they wanted togo diving.

But if thereis one wish Icould have, I

would like tosee the waters

become clearagain.


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ingapore, an island city-state just north of the equator, has a hot and humid climate.o compensate, Singapore’s buildings maintain some of t he world’s coldest indoor

temperatures, powered by air-conditioners that whir along day a nd night, 24/7.Te late Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s rst prime minister, used to joke that when

indoors he needed to wear clothes intended for European climates. More seriously,Mr Lee has argued that the greatest invention of the 20th century is the air-conditioner, especially forthose living in the tropics.

But in order to run air-conditioners effi ciently, intelligent thermostats are needed. Tis is whereHang Chang Chieh, professor of electrical engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS),comes in.

“When it rains, t he air-conditioner continues to work, wasting a lot of energy. It is not only energy-ineffi cient, it also makes people very uncomfortable,” says Professor Hang.

o improve the technologies behind air-conditioners—and many other consumer goods—ProfessorHang has, among other things, taken sophisticated control systems found in the military and aerospaceindustries and made them cheaper a nd simpler.

Hang Chang Chieh

By Juliana Chan

Wealth andintelligence,re-defined

S


“INTELLIGENT”CONTROL SYSTEMS

A CLA RION CA LL TO SERV E Polytechnic (the only polytechnic in Singapore atthat time) for two years before the University of

in NUS and NS B, Singapore awarded ProfessorHang the Public Administration Medal (Gold) in


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As a student Professor Ha ng built his own radioand hi- audio speakers, and had a knack forrepairing things. His PhD research topic coveredadaptive control, a eld where control systems areprogrammed to detect changes in the environmentand adjust their parameters automatically.

Tis eld is at the heart of the aerospaceindustry, where adaptive control systems arecritical in stabilising airborne aircraft. Forexample, as a plane progressivelydepletes its fuel supply alongits ight path, lightening itsload, it needs to detect thechange of its mass to maintaina comfortable experience forthose on board, while burningless and less fuel to maintain itsspeed. Conversely, as and whenair resistance increases, theplane needs to burn more fuel.

But the technology usedin commercial airplanes—and also in space programmesand the military—remainstoo expensive for everydayapplications such as air-conditioner thermostats. osharply reduce costs, ProfessorHang had to imbue thesecontrol systems with some kindof arti cial intelligence.

hese systems are“intelligent” in that they areable to measure a variable (e.g.the outdoor temperature after a rainy spell) andadjust the control parameters accordingly (e.g.raise the temperature setting on a n air-conditionerthermostat) without the need for humanintervention.

Beyond air-conditioners, intelligent controlsystems have much wider application in robotics,disk drive manufacturing and even in healthcare.“We are now coming up with the next generationof rehabilitation equipment, which are light

weight, low cost, and can be rented or borrowedand put at home, cutting out travelling time,” says

Professor Hang.

Don’t chasemoney, let

money chaseyou. When youare successful inyour work, at theminimum, you will be wealthy

in knowledge.

Like many young people growing up in Singaporetoday, CC—as he is often referred to—wasdetermined to get into medical school.

In the 1960s, medicine was offered only bythe University of Singapore—not by the country’sonly other university, the Chinese-languageNanyang University.

Professor Hang, who was then enrolledat the Chinese-language Chung Cheng HighSchool, realised that he would not be able to pass

the medical school qualifyingexams if he was not pro cient inEnglish. In 1964, he transferredto Anglican High School, alsoa Chinese-language school butallowed him to take his papersin English and was strong inbiological subjects.

One incident, however, would cha nge t he c ourse of h islife. During his school holidaysafter his rst year studying fora higher-level certi cate (HSC,the precursor to the GCE ‘A’levels), he read in a magazine that

Japanese youth were applyingin droves to study engineeringas they wanted to help rebuildthe country’s shattered economyafter the Second World War.

Intrigued, Professor Hangstarted reading lots of engineeringarticles and introductory textbooks.It was a revelation to the wannabe-doctor, who changed his mind

and decided to become an engineer instead.“Singapore was in bad shape in the 60’s; we

were still a colony. Tere wa s poverty and manypeople could not afford medical healthcare,” hesays. “I thought, at that time, instead of being adoctor, if I became an engineer, I could help thecountry create wealth, and more people couldafford healthcare.”

It was all rather anti-climactic when ProfessorHang found out that the University of Singaporedid not have an engineering programme in 1966.

Undeterred, he studied in the electrical

engineering degree course at the Singapore

Singapore department of engineering absorbed theprogramme. His entire graduating class had only40 engineering students, of whom 18, includinghim, majored in electrical engineering.

Professor Hang later received a bond-freescholarship from the UK government to pursue aPhD at the University of Warwick.

His post-PhD career as a control systemdesigner at the Shell Eastern Petroleum Companyended after three years when he received a phonecall from Jimmy Chen, head of NUS’s departmentof electrical engineering, who wanted to recruit him.

Acquiescing, Professor Hang took a n immediatepay cut of 20%, a choice he has never regretted.

THE FIRST OF MANYFIVE YEAR PLANS

Tough the veteran engineer has long been focussedon his research into control systems, he has also hadto wear many other hats along the way.

NUS appointed Professor Hang consecutivelyto three senior roles—vice-dean of the faculty ofengineering in 1985, head of the department ofelectrical engineering in 1990, and deputy vice-chancellor (research and enterprise) in 1994—during which time he has had to oversee theuniversity’s transformation from a primarilyteaching institution to one that is research intensive.

Part of his mandate was to raise research funds.“I was one of the most expensive beggars around. Iasked for hundreds of t housands, millions,” he says

with a laugh.In parallel, he became the founding deputy

chairman of the National Science and echnologyBoard (NS B) in 1991, a part-time position he helduntil 1999. Te government gave NS B just ve y earsto produce concrete results, such as helping to attractforeign investment and growing local industries. “Wehad to make sure the rst ve years succeeded so that

we would have a next ve-year plan,” he says.By seeding a group of talented researchers,

his efforts would eventually bear fruit and leadto multinational companies making signi cantinvestments here. Te rst ve-year National

echnology Plan in 1991—with a budget of S$2bn(S$3.1bn in today’s dollars)—was renewed; two

decades later, the 2011 plan had a ve-year budgetof S$16.1bn.For his contributions to championing research

1998, and the National Science and echnologyMedal in 2000. In 2001, NS B was renamedthe Agency of Science, echnology and Research(A * S AR), where he was seconded full-time from2001 to 2003 as its executive deputy chairman.

WEA LTHY IN K NOWLEDGE

Professor Hang remains active in engineeringeducation—as head of NUS’s division ofengineering and technology management since2007 and as executive director of NUS’s Institute

for Engineering Leadership since 2011.He encourages bright, young people to study

engineering because of the many academic, industryand entrepreneurial careers available to them. oprepare them for a life of entrepreneurship, theNUS faculty of engineering is making curricularchanges to allow students to enter a design andinnovation pathway.

Te engineer in him also wants to let the factsspeak for themselves. He cites a 2013Wall Street

Journal article, which described how participantsof an investor conference voted engineering as thenumber one subject to study for a life of innovation,and their top choice for their children’s collegemajor. A 2015 article in Te elegraph also notedthat more than a fth of the world’s wealthiestpeople studied engineering in u niversity.

“Parents of course always say those in thenance sector, property, can make money,” he says.

But regardless of one’s career ambitions, he believesengineering will provide a strong foundation.Consider his daughter, 33, who studied electricalengineering and later worked in public service,consulting and then banking.

Nevertheless, despite the allure of thesehigh-paying professions, Professor Hang has some

nancial advice for Singaporean youth, includinghis daughter and son, 26. “Don’t chase money,let money chase you. When you are successful inyour work, at the minimum, you will be wealthyin knowledge.”

Singapore should certainly be thankfulthat Professor Hang himself chose not to “chasemoney”. Among his many engineering andresearch contributions to the country, one bears

reiteration: the “intelligent” air-conditioner, which will help reduce energy u se—and sweater sales—in this tropical island.


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Huang Hsing Hua

By Shuzhen Sim

Shaping

molecules anduniversities

n biology, form and function are inseparable. Molecules of identical chemical makeupcan bend, twist and rotate into a variety of different conformations. Tis affects theirphysical interactions with other molecules, and determines how accessible their reactivegroups are to enzymes, the proteins that catalyse chemical reactions essential to life.

For instance, our basic senses— sight, smell, sound, taste and touch—depend oncascading signals initiated by the docking of appropriately-shaped molecules onto receptor proteins.

As molecules are tiny—a raindrop contains about one billion billion (1018) water molecules—chemists have developed ingenious techniques to determine their shape. Tey bombard molecules withelectron beams, magnetic elds, and just about every wavelength along the electromagnetic radiationspectrum from everyday radio waves to biologically-hazardous gamma rays. Te molecule’s response tothese perturbations offers insights into its structure.

Huang Hsing Hua, professor emeritus of chemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS),is one such molecular detective. A physical or

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