Our Alumni

I have been interested in biology and nature for as long as I can remember. Growing up in urban Singapore made any patches of green all the more fascinating. In school, I was fortunate to have the chance to volunteer at the then Raffles Museum for Biodiversity Research at NUS (now the Lee Kong Chian Museum), which was really an excuse to hang around people doing real research and to go about Singapore looking at plants. My research is now on microbiology, but what fascinates me is still the same: living organisms doing things you didn’t expect, and being able, through science, to look at familiar things through new eyes.

For my doctoral research, I worked on a bacterium that has a symbiotic partnership with a “protozoan” host. The bacteria live on the surface of the host, looking like a thick fur coat, and the host feeds on this bacterial coat, which is its main food source. For this reason, it was long thought that the bacteria could fix CO₂ to make biomass, similar to what plants do. However we found that they are in fact recycling waste organic carbon compounds from the environment, more like mushrooms. This was the first time that such recycling was shown to support a symbiotic relationship.

My research has now turned to the “protozoan” host, which is a type of ciliate. These are single-celled organisms with two types of nuclei in each cell, and each type of nucleus contains a different version of the genome. By comparing the genomes in different branches of the ciliate family tree, we seek to understand how these two genome versions came to be.

In ACJC, I was a member of the Writers’ Circle and the SMC. As a member of the SMC, I was involved in organising the C. B. Paul Science Quiz for secondary school students. This was especially meaningful for me because it is an event put together by students for students, and I had participated in similar competitions myself in secondary school. Coming up with questions for the quiz was also good and fun! During my postgraduate studies in Germany, I joined a community choir, which was also a good opportunity to practice my German. I still enjoy making music, and play the piano at home.

The main piece of advice I have is to look for a good mentor and a good team of colleagues, rather than just a “cool project” or a brand-name institution. There are plenty of interesting projects (and research never goes in the direction you think it would at the beginning anyway), but a good fit between student and supervisor is much harder to find. Make full use of any opportunities for internships, lab rotations, and informal visits to labs you might be interested in, and don’t only talk to the potential supervisor but also to current and former students.

I’ve seen people from many different backgrounds come to a career in research. A perfect academic record is definitely NOT a requirement. Many also work in other occupations after university before deciding to pursue postgraduate studies. Apart from an interest in the Sciences itself, you should be someone who enjoys problem-solving and communication. Problem-solving, because figuring out how to answer your scientific questions requires digging into the literature, learning (or coming up with) new methods, and wrangling with logistics, supplies, and funding. Communication, because you have to articulate your problems before you can start solving them, and you need to share your work with others such that they can appreciate why it is interesting and why they should care.