Professor E Shyong Tai is a leading clinician-scientist in Singapore, renowned for his work in endocrinology, diabetes, metabolic diseases and precision medicine. He obtained his medical degree with commendation from the University of Dundee, UK, and went on to earn his MRCP (UK), FRCP, and PhD. 

He is currently a Senior Consultant in Endocrinology and serves as Director of the Centre for Precision Health at the National University Hospital (NUH). A Professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, and Duke-NUS Medical School, he plays a pivoting role connecting both research and clinical, as the Deputy Program Director for the Precision Medicine Translational Research Program at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He is also the Chief Medical Officer of PRECISE (Precision Health Research, Singapore), where he leads national efforts to embed precision medicine into healthcare.

Professor Tai’s research on diabetes, lipid disorders, and gene–environment interactions, with over 200 publications to his name. He has influenced Singapore’s clinical guidelines on diabetes and lipid management and received top honours, including the National Outstanding Clinician-Scientist Award (2015) and the Nature Award for Mentoring in Science (2022/23), highlighting both his scientific contributions and dedication to mentoring.

A strong advocate of patient-centred care, Professor Tai continues to influence clinical practice, research, and health policy, making significant contributions to medicine in Singapore and the wider region.

Prof Tai is leading the group of NUS academics speaking at the Joint Symposium on Precision Health.

Associate Professor Xueling Sim  is a molecular epidemiologist at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH), National University of Singapore (NUS). She is internationally recognised for her research in statistical genetics, having conducted many of the key genetic association studies in East and South Asian populations, most notably spearheading the largest meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in East Asians, published in NATURE. Her recent work extends to the use of omics biomarkers to understand disease pathways, notably cardiometabolic diseases. 

Since 2021, she has taken up positions as cohort custodian of the Singapore Population Health Studies (SPHS, https://blog.nus.edu.sg/sphs/), and Director of the National Cohorts Office (NCO, https://nco.nus.edu.sg/). As custodian of the SPHS (a suite of seven independent cohorts spanning over 20 years), she oversees a cornerstone for epidemiological research at NUS, contributing to national projects on precision health (e.g., PRECISE-SG100K), and diabetic complications (e.g., DYNAMO), Leveraging on her experience as a cohort custodian, as NCO director, she leads efforts to develop and strengthen the national cohort ecosystem by fostering a vibrant community of cohort creators and users to maximise the value, utility, and impact of population cohorts for research and public health. NCO focuses on ensuring the continuous generation of high-quality, longitudinal research data that can be openly accessed and enriched with other datasets for advanced analyses. 

Dr. Chunyi Hu is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore (NUS), where he also holds the prestigious Presidential Young Professorship (PYP). He is also a valuable member of the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Precision Medicine Translational Research Programme, where he contributes his expertise in molecular mechanisms and genome-editing technologies to advance precision medicine applications.

His academic journey began in China, where he earned his B.Sc. from Anhui Normal University in 2012, followed by a Ph.D. in 2017 from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. He then pursued postdoctoral research at Cornell University (USA), completing his fellowship in 2022, where he further deepened his expertise in structural biology and biochemistry.

Dr. Hu’s research is centered on fundamental molecular mechanisms of biological macromolecules, with a particular focus on supramolecular complexes in immunity systems. His laboratory investigates the CRISPR-Cas adaptive immunity system in prokaryotes, which enables microbes to defend against viral attacks. The team’s work spans multiple fronts, including the discovery of novel CRISPR-Cas systems, high-resolution structural studies of molecular complexes, and the development of advanced genome-editing technologies. Beyond these, his group explores CRISPR-based diagnostic innovations, therapeutic applications of gene-editing and RNA technologies, and new real-time imaging systems.

Through these efforts, Dr. Hu’s research contributes both to the fundamental understanding of molecular biology and to the translation of biomedical discoveries into precision diagnostics and therapies, bridging structural insights with real-world clinical applications.

Dr. G. Owen Schaefer was appointed Assistant Professor at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in 2020. He is currently Director of the Phase II Health ethics, Law and Professionalism (HeLP) curriculum. Owen’s research interests cover ethical issues raised by the development of novel biotechnologies.

Before beginning his graduate work, Owen spent two years at the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health in the USA as a pre-doctoral fellow. There, he received training in research ethics, was involved in the department’s ethics consultation service, and published several academic articles. He then went on to read for BPhil and DPhil degrees in philosophy at Oxford, writing a dissertation on moral enhancement. Immediately prior to joining the CBmE, he spent a year as a post-doc at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics researching the implications of various novel biotechnologies. 

Owen joined CBmE in August 2015 under the MOH-funded initiative, Clinical Ethics Network + Research Ethics Support (CENTRES). In January 2018 he switched roles to be a Research Assistant Professor under the Science, Health And Policy-Relevant Ethics in Singapore (SHAPES) initiative at CBmE, funded by a grant from the NMRC, before taking up his present role as Assistant Professor in July 2020.

Dr Catherine W.M. Ong is Associate Professor with Tenure in the Department of Medicine at NUS, Assistant Dean of Research at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Head of the NUHS Clinician-Scientist Academy. She is Principal Investigator at iHealthtech, Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases at NUH, and Visiting Consultant at the Tuberculosis Control Unit Singapore, focusing on Tuberculosis in both research and clinical practice.

Catherine serves as Associate Editor for the European Respiratory Journal, Deputy Editor for the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, and Treasurer of the ESCMID Study Group for Mycobacterial Infections (ESGMYC). She previously held leadership roles in the Society of Infectious Disease (Singapore), Academy of Medicine, and College of Clinician Scientists Singapore, and is an expert reviewer for agencies such as the European Commission, Wellcome Trust, and UK Research and Innovation.

She graduated from NUS in 2003, specialised in Infectious Diseases, and completed her PhD at Imperial College London through an NMRC-funded scholarship. Her lab investigates tuberculosis host-pathogen interactions, biomarkers, and host-directed therapies, with support from NMRC, NCID, and NUS. Her team has received national and international awards. Clinically, she advises Singapore’s Ministry of Health and collaborates with the WHO. Her accolades include awards from the American Society for Leukocyte Biology, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Infectious Diseases Society of America, NMRC, and Institut Merieux-SIDS.

Dr. Guo Quan SENG is an Assistant Professor in the History Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is a historian of cross-cultural interactions, with a special interest in Peranakan Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. 

His first monograph Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia, published by Cornell University Press in 2023, explored the formation of creole identities through gendered processes of inter-cultural interactions, in legal, religious as well as popular Malay print culture. He also serves as a member of the Board of Advisers for the Asian Civilisations Museum, as well as the Peranakan Museum in Singapore.

He received his BA (History) from Cambridge University (UK), MA (History) from NUS, and PhD from the University of Chicago.