Electronic skin systems are increasingly used in healthcare, robotics and wearables, but most rely on arrays of sensors connected to external electronics for signal processing and display. These designs often face limitations such as low spatial resolution, wiring complexity and inefficient signal interpretation, making intuitive real-time feedback difficult.

To address these challenges, a team led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech) developed a soft, ultrathin device called the “eLuminator”. The findings were published in Nature Communications on May 2026.

A new paradigm beyond conventional electronic skin

Unlike traditional electronic skins that rely on discrete sensing pixels and typically achieving less than 100 dpi (where dpi indicates how finely pressure details can be resolved within a given area), the eLuminator uses a continuous, pixel-free design. With a spatial resolution of approximately 30 µm (847 dpi), it can detect much finer pressure details, enabling high-precision tactile sensing for advanced applications.

At the core of the technology is a mechano-electroluminescent response, where applied pressure directly changes the device’s light emission. When pressure is applied, the device generates visible light patterns that map both the magnitude and shape of contact. This enables immediate and intuitive visualisation without the need for separate processing or display systems.

The high-resolution luminescent response allows fine surface features such as the ridges and valleys of fingerprintsto be clearly captured in real time, demonstrating its capability for detailed tactile imaging and potential use in biometric applications.

“This technology transforms how we interact with tactile information,” said Prof Lim. “Instead of relying on complex electronics, users can immediately see force distribution as it happens, making the process far more intuitive.”

Applications in healthcare and intelligent systems

The eLuminator shows strong potential in surgical training and healthcare monitoring, where precise force control is critical but difficult to achieve due to the lack of tactile feedback. When integrated into surgical tools, it provides real-time visual feedback on applied force, improving precision and reducing the risk of tissue damage. It can also map pressure distribution on the foot, supporting early detection of areas with high risk of foot ulcers in diabetic patients.

Beyond healthcare, the device enables more responsive human–machine interface. It supports both static and dynamic sensing, with optical feedback of around 15 milliseconds and digital readout of around 110 milliseconds, allowing force interactions to be visualised and quantified in near real-time. Its high sensitivity also enables the detection of gentle touches, which is important for robotics and prosthetics.

Soft, durable and versatile platform

The eLuminator is ultrathin, approximately 70 µm thick, and made of flexible, non-toxic materials designed to mimic the mechanical properties of human skin. It can stretch beyond 100 per cent strain and conform to curved surfaces such as the body or medical devices.

The device remains stable under repeated mechanical stress, with consistent performance demonstrated over more than 1,000 to 4,000 cycles. It also operates across a broad pressure range, from light touch to approximately 180 kPa (similar to the pressure felt when balancing a heavy textbook on a fingertip), making it suitable for diverse applications.

By combining visual and digital sensing in a single system, the eLuminator simplifies device design and enables easier integration into next-generation wearable and biomedical technologies.

Future directions

The research team is working to further improve the device’s sensitivity and reduce its power requirements, while advancing deployment in high-impact healthcare applications.

“Our focus moving forward is not just to improve the technology, but to apply it where it can make a real difference to patient care,” said Prof Lim. “By working closely with clinicians, we aim to develop solutions that improve outcomes and support better decision-making.”

Driven by the rapid growth in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), electric vehicles and other advanced technologies, the global semiconductor market is projected to reach US$1.6 trillion (S$2.03 trillion) by 2030, with Singapore standing out as a critical industry hub. Backed by a trusted business environment and strong intellectual property protections, Singapore has attracted more than S$30 billion in semiconductor investments from 2022 to 2025 and today accounts for one in 10 semiconductor chips and one in five semiconductor equipment units produced globally. Building a strong pipeline of skilled future semiconductor talent will therefore be critical to meeting the industry’s increasing manpower needs and sustaining Singapore’s leadership.

The MSc STO programme is a multidisciplinary coursework programme hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, in collaboration with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management. The programme is further enriched by NUS’ major semiconductor research initiatives, including the Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation µ-Electronics (SHINE) Centre, which provide students with exposure to cutting-edge research and industry-relevant technologies.

Offered on both a full-time and part-time basis, the MSc STO programme equips STEM graduates and working professionals with comprehensive expertise across the semiconductor value chain, from materials and devices to manufacturing, packaging, supply chain management and strategic decision-making. Students can also pursue specialised industry pathways, including AI training combined with experiential learning. Graduates are prepared for diverse engineering and management roles across foundries, equipment suppliers, and government agencies. Through formal training and cross-disciplinary perspectives, the curriculum fosters critical thinking, technical expertise, and an awareness of industrial impacts on society.

"By combining rigorous postgraduate education with industry internships and expert mentorship, this partnership will accelerate the development of highly skilled industry-ready talent," said Professor Aaron Thean, Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost at NUS. "It will build talent capacities needed to power the next phase of semiconductor innovation and manufacturing, strengthening Singapore's position as a global semiconductor hub."

Micron-Applied Materials-NUS Graduate Scholarship Programme

The joint scholarships will be funded by Applied Materials and Micron. In its pilot phase, 4 local scholars will be selected annually, and they will receive tuition support for the MSc STO programme, alongside industry internships with exposure to real-world projects, and potential employment upon graduation. Following the pilot, the initiative could scale to 10 to 20 scholars per cohort and expand to other semiconductor-related programmes and university partnerships.

Joshua Lee, Corporate Vice President and Singapore Country Manager at Micron Technology, said, "At Micron, we are committed to developing Singapore's next generation of local semiconductor talent. We believe that talent is one of the most critical enablers of semiconductor advancement. By connecting academic learning with real-world industry experience, this partnership will help aspiring talent develop the expertise and skills needed to support the industry's future growth and innovation in Singapore."

“One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is not a lack of opportunities, but making sure more people can see a future for themselves in semiconductors. Through this partnership, we are giving students firsthand exposure to an industry that touches nearly every aspect of modern life, while helping them discover where their strengths can contribute to the technologies of tomorrow,” said Mr Brian Tan, Regional President, Southeast Asia, of Applied Materials.

The researchers base their claim on measurements showing that their atomic clock, built from the element lutetium, outperforms previous record holders built from different elements.

More accurate clocks hold promise to probe unknowns in fundamental physics and monitor gravitational changes across the Earth – and they are vying to redefine the second.

Pushing the limits of timekeeping

Atomic clocks keep time with reference to an atomic transition, when one of the atom’s electrons swaps energy levels. The frequency of this transition is a fixed property of the atom. A laser is matched to this ‘clock transition’, and the light oscillations act like a pendulum to count time.

The basic method has been in place for decades. Caesium atoms have set the global standard for time since the 1960, and caesium atomic clocks already support the Global Positioning System (GPS) and synchronise communication and transport networks.

But scientists have been pushing the limits of timekeeping with other elements.

Elements such as recent record-holders ytterbium, strontium and aluminium oscillate much faster than caesium, helping them to keep time more accurately. The international body responsible for time standards is considering data from such new optical atomic clocks towards a redefinition of the second expected in or after 2030.

The CQT team started working with lutetium over a decade ago on the hunch that it had the right properties to join the set of top-performing clocks. The team, to its knowledge, is the only group working with this element for timekeeping so far.

Now, the team has measured the frequency of their lutetium clock to 19 decimal places, reporting an uncertainty of 1 x 10^-19 which is the lowest reported for any optical atomic clock to date. They also built two clocks and compared their ticking to each other. The clocks agreed to an uncertainty of 5.7 x 10^-19, which is the most precise clock comparison ever made. More measurements could reduce that uncertainty further.

Lutetium’s advantage

Lutetium’s strong performance comes from properties of the atom: its clock transition hardly feels changes in temperature or magnetic field. In other elements, these environmental factors can gently vary the frequency of the clock transition.

“In the future, I just don’t see how this clock can be beat,” says Associate Professor Barrett. His team has done over a decade of precision engineering on their atomic clock setup, testing different properties of the atom. That work included inventing a scheme called ‘hyperfine averaging’ to define the clock transition.

“The good properties mean that high accuracy can be achieved even in a wide range of environments,” says Associate Professor Barrett. “The lutetium clock would be stable even if you went from the hottest place recorded on Earth in Death Valley to the coldest place in the Antarctic plateau.”

Two is better than one

The team’s confidence is bolstered by their clock comparison, carried out using a technique known as correlation spectroscopy over 200 hours of measurement.

Each lutetium clock consists of a single charged ¹⁷⁶Lu+ ion having a clock transition matched to a laser with wavelength of 848 nanometers.

“There is a humorous saying that ‘A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure,’” says Dr Kyle Arnold, a Senior Research Scientist from CQT at NUS and joint first author on the paper. “It basically tells you that the only way to test the accuracy of a standard is to compare clocks and demonstrate reproducibility.”

Ideally, the team would also compare their lutetium clock to the world’s other best atomic clocks, but there’s a challenge. Optical atomic clocks at the 10^-19 level are so precise they can feel the slowing down of time by gravity over height differences of millimetres. The CQT team’s comparison measurement could resolve a 5mm height difference between their clocks on the same table. To ensure that this did not limit their measurement, they independently measured the height difference of the Lu+ ions below the millimetre level. Differences in gravity between different places on Earth are not yet known well enough to compare clocks at this level.

To enable new comparisons and explore future applications, the clock should come out of the lab. “The next step is to take the lab-scale clock and miniaturise it into a transportable system,” says Mr Michael Lee, joint first author on the paper and a PhD student on the NUS team. The researchers expect they can make their clock smaller without compromising the accuracy.

NIMOS is established by NParks and hosted at NUS, with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) as a partner institution, and St John’s Island National Marine Laboratory as a key national facility. It brings together expertise across universities, research institutes and public agencies to address how Singapore can develop management and conservation strategies for marine ecosystems, advance Singapore’s blue economy, build local talent, and establish Singapore as a regional thought leader in marine science.

“As marine environmental challenges in Singapore and the region become increasingly complex – crossing disciplines, sectors, geographies and national boundaries – research and innovation must keep pace to deliver the knowledge and solutions needed to address them. NIMOS, hosted at NUS, brings together universities, research institutes, government agencies and partners across the region to align our research priorities, deepen Singapore’s marine science capabilities, and develop practical solutions that support both environmental resilience and sustainable growth,” said Associate Professor Huang Danwei, Director of NIMOS and Deputy Head of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at NUS.

NIMOS builds on earlier and existing national marine science efforts, including the Marine Science Research and Development Programme (MSRDP) managed by NUS and the Marine Climate Change Science Programme (MCCS) led by NParks. These programmes established important scientific baselines and research capabilities; NIMOS will consolidate and expand this foundation into a coordinated national platform with a stronger focus on interdisciplinary solutions, talent development and regional leadership.

The launch was also part of NUS Sustainability CONNECT, the University’s flagship sustainability festival.

A whole-of-coast approach to conservation

NIMOS will take a whole-of-coast approach, which involves studying and managing an entire coastal sea space as an interconnected system, to address complex marine challenges with research projects expected to be inter- and trans-disciplinary, bringing together academic and non-academic experts, and across various marine ecosystems.

NIMOS will focus on research areas comprising biodiversity and nature, environment and climate, and ecosystem resilience, with technology being harnessed across research projects. NIMOS’ key strategic priorities include:

1. Developing targeted and effective management and conservation strategies

NIMOS will develop adaptive management tools and science-based approaches that enable marine ecosystems to withstand multiple stressors while continuing to provide essential ecosystem services. This includes developing predictive models for ecosystem tipping points, enhancing habitat resilience with restoration guidelines tailored for the local environment, and creating monitoring frameworks that can detect early warning signals of ecosystem degradation.

2. Deliver inter- and trans-disciplinary solutions to advance Singapore’s blue economy

NIMOS will undertake marine science research that can guide the optimisation and management of Singapore’s sea space. This includes studying how much activity, such as aquaculture and recreation, Singapore’s waters can sustainably support. NIMOS aims to develop inter- and transdisciplinary solutions to balance economic productivity with ecological resilience, ensuring that marine and coastal resources can scale and sustain Singapore’s blue economy – the sustainable use of marine resources for economic growth.

3. Building local talent and capabilities

NIMOS will focus on developing a robust pipeline of local talent that can help build capabilities across academia, industry, and government, ensuring Singapore has the capabilities needed to address complex marine environmental challenges.

4. Establishing Singapore as a regional thought leader in marine science

NIMOS aims to establish Singapore as a regional thought leader in marine science, by consolidating capabilities from key regional institutions and fostering partnerships across Southeast Asia. Building these meaningful regional partnerships can also enable data sharing and comparative assessments of marine health, across Southeast Asia. This would strengthen Singapore’s resilience against complex global marine challenges

Boosting resources for research and talent development

The S$60 million funding for NIMOS under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 Plan (RIE2030) will support research, training and capability building.

Over the next 10 years, the institute will offer up to 12 PhD Research Scholarships for Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents, supporting the growth of local expertise for academia, government and industry. NUS has also committed 10 additional PhD Research Scholarships for NIMOS projects.

NIMOS’ research projects will also create internship and training attachment opportunities for undergraduate and polytechnic students in marine science laboratories across institutes of higher learning.

Bringing the research community together to accelerate discovery

NIMOS will begin operating as a virtual institute, enabling research collaborations to start immediately while longer-term facilities are being developed. The future space will house the NIMOS staff, NUS researchers and collaborators working on NIMOS projects. Its permanent home on NUS campus is expected to include wet science laboratory facilities and collaborative office space for project teams.

To strengthen coordination across the marine science community, NIMOS will also convene the inaugural Singapore Annual Symposium for Marine and Ocean Sciences in 2027. The symposium will serve as a national platform for researchers, policymakers, industry partners and public agencies to share findings, identify emerging priorities and accelerate the translation of marine science into coastal planning, ecosystem management and climate resilience.

Strengthening Singapore’s regional role in marine science

NIMOS will also deepen Singapore’s regional and international marine science partnerships. These collaborations will support data sharing, comparative assessments of marine health and joint research on transboundary issues such as ecosystem connectivity, marine pollution, ocean warming and biodiversity loss. The Institute will build on existing research ties with various institutions worldwide, including those in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and engage a regional network of institutions in Southeast Asia.

The NUS–Lancet Pandemic Readiness through Institutions, Mobilising Communities and Equity (PRIME) Commission launched its report, “Transforming Pandemic Readiness for Equity”, on 21 September 2026 at Instituto Cervantes, New York, during the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week. The launch advances a broader approach to pandemic readiness that focuses on how pandemic readiness can better incorporate equity, whole-of-society action and the protection of communities.

Professor Teo Yik Ying, NUS Vice President (Global Health) and Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, participated as a panellist at the launch. He is also a member of the NUS–Lancet PRIME Commission and a co-author of the report.

Based on the report’s findings, the Commission advised that conventional measures of pandemic preparedness — including surveillance, laboratories, stockpiles and emergency plans — remain essential, but do not by themselves guarantee protection when systems come under pressure. Instead, it defines pandemic readiness as a whole-of-society capacity to prevent, prepare for, respond to, recover from and redress the effects of pandemics while protecting people's wellbeing.

From preparedness on paper to protection in practice

The report draws on research across 20 countries, engaging stakeholder from government, civil society and the private sector, as well as six evidence reviews, future scenarios and epidemiological modelling. It brought together expertise spanning infectious diseases, health emergencies, health systems, governance, social protection and community engagement.

Its findings point to five systemic vulnerabilities that can leave communities unprotected during crises: (1) insecurity in basic needs; (2) housing insecurity and crowding; (3) administrative exclusion from healthcare and social protection; (4) distrust of institutions and health information; and (5) fragile health and social systems. The Commission calls for attention to the systems that create vulnerability, rather than labelling particular groups as “vulnerable”.

The Commission’s modelling of a hypothetical future influenza A pandemic found that rapid vaccine development could reduce deaths by 59 per cent, from 58.5 million to 23.9 million, even under scenarios where countries with greater purchasing power received vaccines first. Population-based vaccine allocation could further avert 2.7 million deaths, particularly in middle-income countries, while measures to improve vaccine confidence could save another 1.9 million lives.

Singapore’s efforts and NUS leadership for global pandemic readiness

Established by NUS and The Lancet, PRIME reframes pandemic readiness around the equitable protection of all people before, during and after a crisis. It offers countries 10 priority areas for planning, six Foundational Blocks to build readiness, and a PRIME Test to assess whether policies and investments will actually protect people in practice.

NUS has played a central role in convening this international effort. In January 2026, the Asia Centre for Health Security, headquartered at NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, hosted a PRIME Commission meeting at NUS involving representatives from 22 countries. NUS researchers are also represented in the Commission’s scientific coordination group, and they will be part of the leadership driving the international partnership on implementation of the report’s recommendations.

Prof Teo shared, “For NUS to partner The Lancet on the PRIME Commission reflects strong global recognition of NUS’ leadership in global health. The Commission’s recommendations are intended to ensure that countries focus not only on strengthening technical capabilities, but also on investing in the social and community infrastructure necessary to provide genuine protection for their populations. More importantly, the Commission proposed a practical framework to address systemic weaknesses and, in so doing, help prevent the unnecessary loss of millions of lives worldwide.”

Explaining the relevance of the findings to Singapore, Prof Teo shared that the report builds on existing strengths in disease surveillance, laboratory testing, healthcare delivery and emergency coordination by examining whether these systems continue to protect people under prolonged pressure.

Singapore entered the COVID-19 pandemic with strong capabilities in disease detection, laboratories, and contact tracing, but the crisis underscored the importance of translating technical preparedness into systems that protect people in practice. The country’s experience showed how pandemic readiness extends beyond healthcare: wage support and business continuity measures helped protect livelihoods and made public health measures more sustainable, while collaboration among government, scientific and community stakeholders supported service delivery and public communication.

Rather than replacing Singapore’s existing disease-agnostic, modular pandemic preparedness framework, the PRIME Test could complement it by stress-testing whether measures protect health, livelihoods and wellbeing; reach people facing financial, administrative, housing or digital barriers; incorporate the perspectives of affected communities and frontline stakeholders; and anticipate consequences across healthcare, social services, businesses and families. Applying these questions to different pandemic scenarios could help determine whether measures remain feasible, trusted and equitable under pressure.

Prof Teo cited Singapore’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in migrant worker dormitories, where authorities worked with migrant worker leaders to build trust, as an example of involving the communities being protected. He also highlighted transparent communication and trust as foundations that need to be built before a crisis, rather than only during one.

Turning recommendations into action

To translate its findings into practice, PRIME proposes 10 integrated recommendations, six “Foundational Blocks” and a “PRIME Test” to assess whether policies, plans and investments protect wellbeing, advance equity, strengthen trust and voice, and anticipate effects across systems.

The report is intended as a first step. Through the proposed PRIME Collective — a global platform for collaboration, shared learning and implementation — the Commission plans to work with countries and communities to apply the PRIME Test, adapt its approach to different contexts, develop practical implementation plans and measurable indicators, and support continued learning and accountability.

The next phase is about moving “from paper to action”, with NUS continuing in a leadership role as PRIME moves into implementation.

Please refer to the full NUS-LANCET PRIME Commission report here.

The study, led by Associate Professor Alfredo Franco-Obregón from the Department of Surgery at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, was published in the journal Smart Medicine on 4 June 2026. This discovery builds on their previous work, where they showed that brief PEMF exposure enhances uptake of doxorubicin (DOX), a chemotherapy drug, by breast cancer cells.

PEMF therapy applies intermittent, low-intensity magnetic pulses to targeted regions of the body over a short period of time. Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón has previously explored the effect of PEMFs on muscle development and oncology. In their latest study, the NUS team demonstrated that even without chemotherapy, PEMFs completely eradicated tumours in 75 per cent of tested preclinical models after just four 30-minute sessions.

“Our study represents a major advancement in breast cancer treatment by demonstrating the potential of PEMFs as a stand-alone, drug-free therapy, offering a possible future where patients could avoid chemotherapy and its debilitating side effects,” said Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón.

Breast cancer cases are projected to rise by a third, from 2.3 million in 2023 to more than 3.5 million by 2050, while annual deaths may nearly double from 764,000 to nearly 1.4 million. Cancer treatment faces challenges such as tumour heterogeneity, drug resistance, and treatment-related toxicities. Approaches targeting TAMs also faced difficulties such as off-target effects. The growing burden underscores the urgent need for innovative therapies to improve patient outcomes and save lives.

From cancer’s friends to foes

Breast cancer occurs when cells in the breast mutate and grow uncontrollably, forming a solid tumour. These cancer cells recruit and hijack nearby immune cells, corrupting them to protect the tumour, accelerate tumour growth, and encourage the spread of cancer (metastasis). Prominent among these recruited immune cells are TAMs, which are abundant in nearly all solid tumours.

There are two primary types of macrophages, M1 and M2. M1 macrophages are pro-inflammatory – the “soldiers” that eliminate threats like bacteria and viruses. M2 macrophages are anti-inflammatory – the “medics” that orchestrate wound healing and tissue repair once threats are cleared. Cancer cells corrupt most TAMs into adopting the M2 “medic” state, suppressing immune attacks against the tumour while facilitating tumour growth and metastasis.

The key to this macrophage reprogramming lies in a protein called TRPC1 (Transient Receptor Potential Canonical 1), which regulates the M1 state. Crucially, TRPC1 also allows cells to sense and respond to magnetic fields. In their experiments, the NUS team confirmed that a brief 10-minute exposure to PEMFs activated TRPC1 channels on M2-like TAMs, setting off a signalling cascade that converted them to the M1 state – essentially turning TAMs from helpful “medics” to aggressive cancer-killing “soldiers”. These activated TAMs then selectively target cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. Furthermore, the same magnetic signature disrupts cancer's ability to hijack TAMs, altering the TAM-cancer communication loop in both directions.

“We have identified a molecular “switch”, the specific cell signalling pathway that allows us to reprogram TAMs. Once reprogrammed, these immune cells actively hunt and devour cancer cells, obliterating the tumour,” said Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón. “With the non-invasive and targeted nature of PEMF therapy, we hope to provide patients an effective and safe alternative treatment, with fewer undesirable side effects.”

Pulses of hope for cancer patients

Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón shared that the same PEMF device used in this study has just successfully completed Phase 1 clinical trials, demonstrating its safety in humans. The team is now seeking partners to conduct Phase 2 efficacy trials to evaluate how well the PEMF treatment works in patients and to further advance its development towards clinical use.

“Since we previously showed that PEMFs selectively increased the uptake of DOX in breast cancer cells, we will be evaluating if our PEMF immunotherapy can work synergistically with chemotherapy for better results,” added Assoc Prof Franco-Obregón. “As the immune cells we reprogram are commonly found in most solid tumours, we are optimistic that our PEMF therapy could potentially be a complementary treatment for other cancers beyond breast cancer.”

Started in 2007 by Associate Professor Ben Leong from the Department of Computer Science at NUS Computing, CVWO gives students the opportunity to apply their computing skills to address real operational needs of local charities. Each summer, students spend three months working full-time to build, deploy and maintain computer systems for partner organisations, on a pro bono basis. They work with real users, evolving requirements and long-term maintenance needs, gaining valuable experience beyond the classroom.

Professor Tulika Mitra, Dean, NUS School of Computing, said, "For nearly two decades, CVWO has demonstrated what students can achieve when given real responsibility, for causes that truly matter. Their work has left a positive and lasting impact on the organisations and communities that they serve.”

Two decades, measured in impact

CVWO’s first project in 2007 was for the Geylang East Home for the Aged, where students developed a system to digitise resident records and daily operations. Over nearly two decades, CVWO's systems have gone on to serve partners across eldercare, family services, disability support and counselling, each maintained for as long as the partner needs it.

CVWO’s cohorts have now grown to around 20 students each summer. At its peak in 2024, its Active Ageing Centre (AAC) system, built on a shared multi-tenant platform called Cornerstone, was deployed across 13 Active Ageing Centres in four partner organisations, and was whitelisted by the Agency for Integrated Care as an approved AAC IT system in October 2024.

The programme has also contributed beyond its usual social service work when the need arose. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Assoc Prof Leong assembled a team of six CVWO students and alumni to build SwiftCobra, a web application which supported contact tracing operations for the Whole-of-Government Health Surveillance Task Force. The completed system, based on an initial concept developed by the Singapore Armed Forces, was a critical component of Singapore's national contact-tracing effort, and the team was recognised with the Tech Heroes From Crisis Pathfinder Team award in 2021.

Charting new ground in 2026

This year, CVWO expanded its work into new areas of social impact. One new initiative was Project UMA, a system developed for Punaravartan Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the repatriation and preservation of Cambodian and Nepalese cultural heritage. The Foundation manages more than 15,000 images, documents and records relating to artefacts, people, places, collections and investigative events. The information had previously beentoo fragmented to manage using conventional off-the-shelf software.

Project UMA is CVWO’s first project for an international client and the first to incorporate AI capabilities. The team built a system that Punaravartan Foundation uses to map relationships among records, and produce AI-assisted descriptions, transcriptions and semantic searches to help researchers locate relevant material even when their search terms differ from the original wording. Human researchers remain responsible for interpretation and judgement.

Historically, CVWO's projects were generally undertaken in partnership with larger charities, as developing a bespoke system takes a full summer to build. Signpost Collective was the first project in which CVWO tested a different approach. The volunteer-led non-profit supports more than 120 informal street sellers through around 70 active volunteers. Interactions, attendance and reporting were previously tracked using manual processes and across separate systems. Rather than building from scratch, CVWO students configured Cornerstone's existing components to fit Signpost Collective’s needs, and developed only a thin custom interface. This approach made such systems more scalable to maintain, and easier for CVWO to work with smaller organisations.

Together, the two projects capture what is distinctive about CVWO’s plans for 2026: a foray into new areas of social impact, and a shift from separate, bespoke systems towards a shared, configurable platform model.

“I joined the CVWO programme expecting to sharpen my technical skills. However, the biggest lesson I learnt was that great engineering is actually about understanding people and building solutions that truly meet their needs,” said Suvan Handa, a Year 2 Computer Science student who is part of the Project UMA team.

AI, applied deliberately

Over the next few years, CVWO will explore new areas where AI can add practical value to the workflows of its partner organisations. Potential applications include assisting with tasks such as rewriting or summarising case notes, subject to appropriate safeguards and human review.

Student training will remain central to the programme. CVWO also recognises the risk of cognitive offloading associated with the use of AI. Students in the programme will continue to write the code, understand the systems they build and develop strong engineering fundamentals, even as AI is increasingly used in the development process.

Assoc Prof Leong said, "AI gives our students powerful new capabilities. This means we can build better, more impactful systems for the organisations that need them most. As we mark CVWO’s 20th anniversary, our mission remains unchanged. AI simply gives us a new tool to work more effectively."

Marking the milestone

In conjunction with its 20th anniversary celebrations, CVWO has received a significant boost to its efforts. Mr Keith Chua, through the Mrs Lee Choon Guan Trust Fund, has pledged approximately S$1.5 million to the Centre for Computing for Social Good and Philanthropy. This is the second generous gift of S$1.5 million Mr Chua has made to the Centre. Part of the gift will support CVWO’s IT infrastructure costs.

Speaking at the awards ceremony held at the University Cultural Centre on 4 September 2026, NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye celebrated the award winners as living proof of the excellence woven into the NUS identity.

He also spoke of how the University is embedding AI deeply into both education and research to unlock new frontiers of discovery. "AI has reshaped scientific research and discovery in unprecedented and unexpected ways…Even as we embrace AI, we must celebrate human excellence. We do so this evening at the University Awards. Determination, endeavour, excellence – these are the very human traits that define the NUS spirit, qualities that will anchor the next AI-powered chapter of NUS."

Top accolade - Outstanding Service Award

This year, the prestigious Outstanding Service Award was conferred on Mr Seah Moon Ming, Chairman, Board of Governors of NUS High School of Mathematics and Science, and Professor Bernard Tan Cheng Yian, NUS Senior Vice Provost (Undergraduate Education), in recognition of their inspiring leadership and dedicated service. Both are accomplished individuals who have made sustained contributions in selflessly serving the University and society.

Mr Seah Moon Ming

Mr Seah is a veteran leader who has devoted over four decades to strengthening Singapore's public institutions and continues to invest in the next generation through education and philanthropy. As Chairman of the Board of Governors of NUS High School of Mathematics and Science since 2021, he spearheaded the school's Strategic Plan 2025–2029 and forged partnerships with industry and social service organisations to enrich student learning. He is also Chairman of SMRT Corporation and SMRT Trains Ltd, where he led a cultural transformation anchored in the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement. He established the Seah Moon Ming Foundation, which contributes annually to bursaries and scholarships across NUS, NUS High School, Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), polytechnics, Institutes of Technical Education (ITEs), and charity organisations, championing access to education for the next generation of engineers and underprivileged families.

Delivering the citation, Professor Aaron Thean, NUS Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost, said, “[Mr Seah’s] contributions have been recognised nationally, including the Meritorious Service Medal in 2022 and the Public Service Star in 2014. Behind all these obvious contributions and achievements is a man with a heart for Engineering at NUS. He has gifted much of his time to the faculty as an advisory board member, fostering its growth. We are privileged to have Mr Seah as part of our community.”

Reflecting on his investment in education, Mr Seah said, “I believe an education should build character, shape values, and inspire students to serve society…With the right values, sense of purpose and gratitude, an NUS education can become a powerful force for a better future.”

Professor Bernard Tan Cheng Yian

Behind many of NUS' most significant curriculum reforms over the past 17 years is Professor Bernard Tan Cheng Yian, a champion of interdisciplinary and future-ready education. As Senior Vice Provost (Undergraduate Education), Prof Tan has been instrumental in driving curriculum reforms across virtually every college, faculty and school in the University, advancing interdisciplinary programmes, common admissions, experiential learning, student financial aid and AI integration in education. He chairs the University Committee on Educational Policy and multiple university-wide steering committees covering student information systems and graduate employment. A former President of the Association for Information Systems, he received the organisation's LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2024.

In his citation, Prof Thean paid tribute to Prof Tan’s work in undergraduate education and his leadership in advancing NUS’ AI efforts. “As Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Professor Tan has steered the University’s educational directions, policies and programmes, always demonstrating a deep commitment to the learning experience of our students. He exemplifies collegiality, institutional commitment and a lifelong dedication to the University.”

Sharing his hopes about the future, Prof Tan said, “Don’t be afraid of the unknown. Don’t be afraid of disruptions. All these disruptions, in fact, make us stronger. Take heart. Keep innovating, and I’m confident that future generations of NUS students and educators will do better than those who come before them.”

The honour roll

The NUS University Awards 2026 also recognised the accomplishments of seven outstanding educators and researchers.

University Research Recognition Award

Professor Abhik Roychoudhury from the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, was lauded for extending his research from academic breakthroughs to enterprise-grade tools used by companies worldwide.

Professor Ashok Venkitaraman from the Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; and Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, was honoured for his landmark discoveries on the BRCA2 gene, which have laid the scientific foundations for targeted cancer therapies used globally.

Young Researcher Award

Associate Professor Chen Huijun Cynthia from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health was commended for her research on ageing and healthcare financing, which has directly shaped government policy in Singapore and on global platforms.

Assistant Professor Liu Boxiang from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Science, recently won the 2026 Young Scientist Award at this year’s President’s Science & Technology Awards (PSTA). He was recognised for his work on genetic variation and RNA splicing which is advancing the understanding of complex and autoimmune diseases across Asian populations.

Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award

Professor Liu Xiaogang from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, was honoured for his excellent and committed mentorship in nurturing the next generation of scholars and thought leaders. He is a dedicated mentor to over 130 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, many of whom have gone on to publish in the world's leading scientific journals.

Outstanding Educator Award

Two faculty members were acknowledged for being exemplary educators who have excelled in engaging and inspiring students in their quest for knowledge:

1) Associate Professor Robin Loon Seong Yun from the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, who has transformed how students engage with community and identity through experiential, arts-based learning.

2) Associate Professor Tay En Rong Stephen from the Department of the Built Environment, College of Design and Engineering, who has developed the Contextualised Learning via Enquiring, Answering, and Reflecting (CLEAR) pedagogical framework. This has reshaped how curiosity and critical thinking are taught across Singapore and six other countries.

Read more about the NUS University Awards recipients here and the NUS press release here.

Professor Wu Jishan, Provost's Chair Professor from the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science at NUS, received the esteemed President’s Science Award (PSA) from Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, President of the Republic of Singapore.

Two outstanding young researchers were conferred with the Young Scientist Award (YSA) from Mr Heng Swee Keat, Chairman of NRF, for their potential to become future world-class leaders in their fields. They are: Assistant Professor Liu Boxiang, Presidential Young Professor from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Faculty of Science at NUS, and Assistant Professor Hou Yi, Presidential Young Professor from Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, and Head of the Perovskite-based Multijunction Solar Cells Group at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS) at NUS.

Their collective achievements underscore the University’s deep commitment to fostering a culture of research excellence and innovation at every career stage, from promising young talents to established leaders in their fields.

2026 President’s Science Award Recipient: Professor Wu Jishan

Professor Wu Jishan was presented the PSA for his contributions to molecular carbon science. His work focuses on developing open-shell and topologically complex molecules as designable systems, enabling new approaches to control their properties for future electronic, magnetic, photonic and quantum technologies.

A leading molecular scientist, Prof Wu has transformed our understanding of how electrons can be controlled in carbon-based molecules. He challenged the long-standing reliance on stable "closed-shell" molecules by demonstrating that highly reactive "open-shell" molecules can be systematically designed and controlled. This paradigm shift turned scientific curiosities into functional materials with unique magnetic, optical, and quantum properties.

One of Prof Wu’s most significant contributions is the development of stable diradicals and polyradicals – molecules containing unpaired electrons that interact with one another. His discoveries have led to new materials for spintronics, photonics and molecular quantum technologies. Prof Wu also reshaped chemistry’s core concept of aromaticity by extending it into three dimensions. He synthesised complex carbon architectures like Möbius and figure-eight molecular systems, opening new possibilities for advanced photonics, circularly polarised light technologies, spin-selective devices, and future quantum systems.

“Receiving the President’s Science Award is a tremendous honour and a deeply meaningful milestone for me. It recognises not only my own scientific journey, but also nearly two decades of work by my students, research team and collaborators at NUS,” said Prof Wu. “I am particularly grateful that our long-term effort to explore unconventional molecular systems — from open-shell molecules to three-dimensional aromatic and topological carbon structures — has grown from fundamental curiosity into new directions for advanced materials and quantum technologies.”

Collectively, Prof Wu’s discoveries provide a unified framework for controlling electron behaviour. Since joining NUS in 2007, he has built a world-leading research programme and mentored a new generation of scientists who now hold leadership positions globally. His foundational work and commitment to talent development lay the groundwork for future quantum technologies and cement Singapore’s position as a global leader in scientific innovation.

Read the full citation here.

2026 Young Scientist Award Recipient: Assistant Professor Liu Boxiang

Assistant Professor Liu Boxiang, a computational biologist and geneticist, won the YSA for his work in developing artificial intelligence (AI) and bioinformatics methods that improve the identification of causal genes for complex diseases, enabling precision medicine approaches for human health.

“This award recognises not just me but the hard work and dedication of my team and the generosity of my mentors and collaborators. It shows that the work we do is generating real-world impact, and the risk we took led to positive outcomes,” said Asst Prof Liu.

Asst Prof Liu’s research involves developing and employing AI methods to find genes that cause complex human diseases, with a particular focus on Asian populations, which have been underrepresented in genomic research. His work lays the groundwork for precision medicine tailored to an individual’s genetic makeup.

To close the data gap, he spearheaded the creation of the first atlas that maps genetic variation in individual Asian cells. His work identified an Asian-specific gene variant linked to Graves’ disease, a common thyroid condition, with the discovery earning a coveted spot on the cover of the scientific journal Nature Genetics. Asst Prof Liu also developed powerful computational tools, including the LocusCompare2 web platform used by researchers worldwide and the DIRAC deep-learning model, which turn raw genetic signals into actionable insights about disease mechanisms and potential drug targets.

Beyond his own research, Asst Prof Liu is committed to nurturing the next generation of scientists. He directs the Genomic Data Science Laboratory and the MGI-PPS Joint Laboratory at NUS, mentors a team whose work has earned awards, and has co-created and taught new genomics courses for the University. He also leads an industry partnership to bring advanced sequencing technologies to NUS. Apart from YSA, Asst Prof Liu received two other early-career awards this year – the NUS Young Researcher Award, and the NUS Faculty of Science Young Scientist Award.

Addressing aspiring scientists, Asst Prof Liu urged, “Don't give up – most people give up way too soon and never manage to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Pace yourself and avoid burnouts. Eat well, rest well, and exercise to fight for another day.”

Read the full citation here.

2026 Young Scientist Award Recipient: Assistant Professor Hou Yi

Assistant Professor Hou Yi clinched the YSA for his contributions to the development of high-performance perovskite solar technologies, from record-breaking devices to scalable manufacturing. His work has enabled lightweight and energy-efficient power systems for AI infrastructure, wearable electronics, space platforms and sustainable energy applications.

A pioneer in next-generation solar technology, Asst Prof Hou specialises in tandem solar cells. These cells stack two light-absorbing layers, often using perovskite materials, to capture more solar energy than conventional single-layer cells. His research has produced multiple world-record performances and tackled key challenges in stability and large-scale deployment.

By expanding the understanding of how different material layers interact and the degradation mechanisms of solar cells, Asst Prof Hou has made these advanced solar technologies significantly more durable, efficient, and commercially viable. His breakthroughs are paving the way for lightweight, energy-efficient power generation, moving beyond the limitations of traditional silicon and enabling new energy solutions for a wide range of demanding applications.

“One of the biggest challenges in our research has been translating high-performance perovskite solar cells from laboratory-scale devices into technologies that are stable, scalable, and relevant to real-world applications. We have addressed this by working across disciplines and continuously connecting fundamental materials science with device engineering and manufacturing,” said Asst Prof Hou.

Outside the lab, Asst Prof Hou is deeply involved in technology commercialisation. As the founder of the NUS spin-off company Singfilm Solar, he actively translates academic research into industrial use. Through his research and entrepreneurial efforts, he is building revolutionary power sources for AI infrastructure, wearable electronics, and space systems, strengthening Singapore’s position as a global leader in next-generation solar technology.

To young researchers, his advice is “to stay curious, focus on important problems, and not be afraid of taking on challenges that may initially seem difficult or unconventional”.

Read the full citation here.

The Corporate Lab is supported under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 plan (RIE2025) and is hosted at the College of Design and Engineering and with participation from the School of Computing at NUS. The Corporate Lab brings together a multidisciplinary research ecosystem spanning AI algorithms, accelerator architectures, low-power memory systems, circuit design, silicon technologies, and application development. The programme will integrate NUS’ pioneering research with ST’s expertise in semiconductor technology, system development, and industry operations.

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said: “The ST–NUS HELIX Corporate Lab is a testament to the value of industry–academia partnerships in translating research into innovation. By combining NUS’ research strengths with STMicroelectronics’ industrial capabilities, we are building not only advanced, cutting-edge edge AI hardware, but also the talent and ecosystem that will help define the future of Singapore’s semiconductor and AI industries.”

Laurent Malier, Executive Vice President, Global Technology R&D at STMicroelectronics, said: “ST’s strength as an integrated device manufacturer lies in our ability to bring together advanced silicon technologies, embedded memory, circuit design, heterogeneous integration and chiplets. Through HELIX, we are creating an industrially relevant foundation to explore differentiated AI computing technologies and accelerate the translation of promising research into scalable semiconductor solutions.”

The Corporate Lab was officially launched today by Ms Low Yen Ling, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and Ministry of Trade and Industry, as the Guest-of-Honour.

Building the future of edge AI

Edge AI processes data directly within or close to a device rather than relying exclusively on remote cloud infrastructure. This enables faster response times, stronger data privacy, improved energy efficiency, and greater resilience in environments with limited or intermittent connectivity. These capabilities are increasingly important for AI systems that must perceive, reason, and act in real time, in the real world – often described as Physical AI.

HELIX focuses on a key frontier within this space: embodied AI, where intelligence is built directly into a physical form — such as a robot, humanoid, or drone — combining multi-modal sensing, on-device computing, and real-time actuation. Delivering that intelligence efficiently, on compact and power-constrained hardware, is the challenge HELIX is built to address. Enabling these capabilities at the edge requires innovation across algorithms, software, system architecture, and hardware.

HELIX builds on ST’s long-standing journey in AI and will help us explore new system-level solutions that combine efficient computing, advanced memory architecture, and application-driven design to address the requirements of future intelligent devices. Complementing ST’s capabilities, NUS brings world-class expertise in integrated circuits, computer architecture, AI models, and system design. Under the partnership, researchers from NUS and STMicroelectronics will jointly work on research work packages, talent development, IP creation, and demonstration activities.

The research at HELIX will span the full technology stack, from AI models and system architecture to heterogeneous accelerators, on-chip memory hierarchies, circuit design, chip integration, and silicon implementation. It will focus on memory centric architecture, innovative in-memory computing, and scalable compute-and memory systems, supported by ST’s P18 18nm Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) technology and embedded Phase Change Memory (PCM). P18 FD-SOI enables ultra-low-power operation and adaptive body-biasing, while embedded PCM provides dense, non-volatile storage on the same die alongside the on-chip SRAM hierarchy. Together, these capabilities can reduce the off-chip data movement that dominates the energy consumption of memory-bound AI workloads.

ST will make a substantial technology and engineering contribution to HELIX by providing NUS with a dedicated design chassis implemented in its proprietary P18 18nm FD-SOI technology. The platform will bring together ST’s silicon, architecture, integration, and engineering capabilities to give researchers an industrial-grade foundation for developing, integrating, and validating new AI accelerator concepts. By eliminating the need to build the underlying infrastructure from the ground up, the design chassis will enable greater focus on differentiated innovation, accelerate system-level validation, and create a more direct path from technology pathfinding to industrialisation.

By combining advances across AI algorithms, accelerator architectures, memory systems, circuits, and semiconductor technologies, HELIX aims to address the energy-efficiency, memory-bandwidth, latency, scalability, and integration challenges associated with deploying increasingly capable AI systems at the edge.

Nurturing talent to drive Singapore’s semiconductor ecosystem

The establishment of HELIX represents a strategic investment in Singapore’s future competitiveness in edge AI and advanced semiconductor systems. By fostering industry-relevant R&D, HELIX will strengthen local capabilities and nurture a new generation of talent in AI systems and chip design.

Students, researchers, and professionals will have opportunities to participate in cutting-edge projects led by HELIX, gaining hands-on experience with the latest technologies, collaborating with industry leaders, and developing skills that meet the evolving needs of the sector. Through these initiatives, HELIX aims to build a robust talent pipeline and position Singapore as a global hub for innovation in edge AI and semiconductor technologies.

The study, led by Associate Professor Duong Hai Minh from the Department of Mechanical Engineering under College of Design and Engineering at NUS, was published in the scientific journal Waste Management on 29 June 2026.

A growing recycling challenge

Carbon fibre and epoxy composites are widely used in aerospace, wind energy, automotive and marine applications because they are light, strong and resistant to corrosion. However, the epoxy component is a thermoset polymer that, once cured, cannot be melted down and reshaped like some plastics, making these composites difficult to recycle.

Most existing recycling methods focus on recovering the carbon fibres. The epoxy resins are usually destroyed, discarded or treated as a lower-value by-product. Additionally, some methods require high temperatures, strong chemicals or large amounts of energy.

Assoc Prof Duong’s team took a different approach by using both the carbon fibre and epoxy components of the waste. The researchers mechanically processed the composite into a mixture of fine powder and short fibre fragments, combined it with carboxymethyl cellulose, a cellulose-based binder, and freeze-dried the mixture to form an aerogel.

During the freeze-drying process, the processed composite waste forms a light, sponge-like structure filled with tiny, connected pores. Much of this structure is air, which helps slow the movement of heat through the material. In laboratory tests, the aerogels showed low thermal conductivity, suggesting that they could be used as lightweight insulation materials.

“Our goal was to show that carbon fibre composite waste does not have to be treated only as a disposal problem,” said Assoc Prof Duong. “By using the whole material, including both the fibre and epoxy fractions, we can turn this waste stream into functional materials with higher value.”

From waste to useful material

Beyond thermal insulation, the aerogels also absorbed sound effectively, pointing to their potential use in sound-control materials.

The team also explored their use in environmental clean-up. After being treated to repel water, the aerogels were able to absorb large amounts of oil, suggesting that they could be useful for oil spill clean-up and oil-water separation.

Tests with fibroblast cells also found that the aerogels were non-toxic under the study conditions, supporting further investigation into potential applications involving humans or the environment.

The team is now exploring collaborations with partners in the aerospace, advanced materials, manufacturing and waste management sectors. Future work will focus on scaling up the technology and assessing its environmental and economic performance for industrial use.

“Advanced composites have enabled lighter and more efficient structures in many industries,” said Assoc Prof Duong. “The next step is to ensure that these materials can be managed sustainably at the end of their service life.”

The programme is designed to build an integrated R&D platform for sustainable specialty polymers, using lignocellulosic biomass, which refers to renewable plant dry matter typically produced as a waste by-product from agriculture and forestry, as an alternative raw material to petrochemicals. Southeast Asia produces an estimated 500 million tonnes of agricultural and forestry residues annually which could be a reliable and sustainable source of lignocellulosic biomass. The programme will focus on developing drop-in monomers for specialty polymers used in adhesives, specialty coatings and electronics.

The Energy and Chemicals sector is a critical part of Singapore’s economy, contributing 18.5 per cent of total manufacturing output. As the sector responds to the global sustainability transition, companies are increasingly exploring more sustainable product pathways while remaining competitive. SG Bio-SPRINT aims to expand the range of carbon sources available to Singapore’s specialty chemicals sector by helping shift production away from fossil-based inputs and toward more sustainable pathways. In doing so, the programme supports industry’s transition toward a circular bioeconomy while meeting growing market demand for greener products.

At the same time, specialty chemicals, including specialty polymers, remain a key growth area, with multinational companies continuing to invest in research, development, and production in Singapore. SG Bio-SPRINT will strengthen this momentum by providing targeted scientific support that complements industry R&D and unlocks new opportunities in sustainable materials.

“The NUS Department of Chemistry is proud to lead this programme, which brings together complementary expertise from NUS and A*STAR to develop high-performance, sustainable polymers from biomass feedstocks while assessing their commercial potential. The team offers deep experience and a strong track record in catalysis, green chemistry, polymer science, and materials engineering. Through three synergistic workgroups, we look forward to harnessing the team’s collective strengths and discoveries to help advance the circular bioeconomy.,” said Professor Lu Yixin, Lead Principal Investigator from the NUS Department of Chemistry.

“Ultimately, we hope that SG Bio-SPRINT will reinforce Singapore’s position as a regional hub for specialty polymers R&D and production while contributing meaningfully to the country’s broader net-zero ambitions,” added Professor Koh Ming Joo, co-Lead Principal Investigator from the NUS Department of Chemistry.

Addressing current industry challenges

Although bio-based alternatives are attracting growing interest, major gaps remain before they can be widely adopted in specialty polymer production. One challenge is that methods to convert lignocellulosic biomass into useful products are not fully developed, which limits the range of monomers and polymers that can be produced. Cost-effectiveness and scalability are also challenges, especially when moving from laboratory synthesis to commercial production.

SG Bio-SPRINT is designed to tackle these issues directly. The project focuses on creating industry-relevant drop-in monomers, which are molecules that share identical chemical structures as their fossil-fuel derived equivalents, that can be integrated into existing polymer production lines, rather than relying only on entirely new biomass-derived products. This approach should make adoption easier for manufacturers and help align chemistry design, performance requirements and supply chains.

The programme also responds to a broader global shift. Across government, research, and industry, there is growing urgency around defossilisation in the chemicals sector. While many current efforts focus on biofuels or commodity chemicals, SG Bio-SPRINT targets a more demanding area: specialty polymer applications, where materials must be carefully designed for performance and commercial use.

Developing new sustainable and high-performance polymers

SG Bio-SPRINT is structured around three closely connected workgroups comprising researchers from NUS and A*STAR.

Workgroup 1: Developing biomass-to-monomer pathways

The first workgroup will focus on converting lignocellulosic biomass into promising drop-in monomer candidates. This includes developing chemical routes, improving catalyst performance, and identifying pathways that can produce useful building blocks for specialty polymers.

Its goal is to create monomers that can be used in existing production systems, helping industry adopt greener feedstocks without needing completely new manufacturing infrastructure.

Workgroup 2: Validating performance for real applications

The second workgroup will test whether the new bio-based monomers can perform as well as conventional fossil-based materials. The team will examine purity, reactivity, and post-polymerisation properties, and compare them against industry incumbents.

The validation will focus on three application areas: adhesives, specialty coatings, and electronics. These are high-value sectors where performance is critical, so the workgroup’s findings will help determine whether the new materials are ready for real-world use.

Workgroup 3: Digital, economic, and sustainability support

The third workgroup will use artificial intelligence, molecular modelling, techno-economic analysis, and life cycle assessment to support the rest of the programme. Its role is to evaluate technical feasibility, cost, and sustainability together, helping the team prioritise the most promising routes.

This workgroup will also build a unified data framework that connects current research literature, experimental results and modelling insights. By doing so, the workgroup will help the project make better decisions earlier and accelerate the path from discovery to deployment.

Next steps

SG Bio-SPRINT’s immediate research goals include developing candidate monomers, validating them in application-relevant settings and building a data framework to identify potential polymers to focus on. The programme will also work closely with industry and innovation partners to support translation, intellectual property and future collaboration. Through the programme, the team aims to build foundational expertise and boost confidence in expanding sustainable chemical transition research to cover more applications in the chemical sector.

Published in Science Immunology on 12 June 2026, the study identifies the RNA helicase DDX6 as a previously unrecognised ‘hidden switch’ that prevents the immune system from recognising cancer cells. Targeting DDX6 could make tumours more visible to the immune system, improving existing or new immunotherapies.

Helping the immune system recognise cancer

Our immune system is constantly searching for abnormal cells, including cancer cells. One of the warning signals it looks for is double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), which are produced naturally within cells. Because these molecules resemble RNA produced during viral infections, they can trigger the innate immune system, which is the body’s first line of defence against foreign or abnormal cells.

Many cancer cells suppress these warning signals, allowing them to grow unnoticed. Until now, scientists did not fully understand how this happened.

Previous studies have shown that ADAR1, an enzyme that edits RNA, helps regulate how cells respond to dsRNA. This study identifies the RNA helicase DDX6 as a previously unrecognised suppressor of dsRNA sensing.

Led by Associate Professor Polly Chen, Deputy Director and Principal Investigator of CSI Singapore, the team found that DDX6 works together with ADAR1 to suppress these natural danger signals. As a result, DDX6 reduces immune activation triggered by endogenous dsRNA, hence making cancer cells much less visible to the immune system.

These findings provide new insights into how anti-tumour immune responses are regulated.

"Cancer cells are remarkably good at hiding from the immune system. Our study uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps them stay hidden. By targeting DDX6, we may be able to remove this 'cloak' and enable the immune system to recognise and attack cancer more effectively. Beyond its therapeutic potential, this work also changes our understanding of how RNA editing regulates immune responses," explained Assoc Prof Chen, the lead author for this study.

Challenging a long-held view of RNA editing

For many years, the prevailing view was that RNA editing weakened the structure of dsRNA, making it less likely to trigger immune responses. Instead, the CSI Singapore team found that certain RNA editing events can instead strengthen dsRNA structures, enhancing their ability to activate the body’s natural immune defences. DDX6 prevents these beneficial RNA editing events from occurring, helping tumours escape immune attack.

This new framework for understanding how RNA editing regulates immune sensing in cancer fundamentally changes how researchers think about RNA editing and its role in regulating immunity.

"What surprised us most was that the biology did not behave the way we expected. For years, researchers believed RNA editing generally weakened these immune-triggering RNA molecules. Instead, we found that certain RNA editing events can actually strengthen them. This completely changes how we think about the relationship between RNA editing and immune activation, and opens up exciting new possibilities for developing cancer therapies," Dr Larry Ng, first author for this paper and Research Fellow at CSI Singapore.

Potential implications for cancer immunotherapy

The discovery identifies a novel mechanism of cancer immune evasion and highlights DDX6 as a potential new target for cancer immunotherapy. Targeting this pathway could help overcome cancer-associated immunosuppression and potentially improve the effectiveness of existing cancer immunotherapies. In laboratory studies, removing DDX6 restored immune signalling and slowed tumour growth by allowing cancer cells to become more visible to the immune system.

The research team is now working to identify molecules that block DDX6 and investigate their ability to enhance anti-tumour immune responses. In parallel, the researchers plan to identify additional proteins involved in this newly discovered pathway and determine how they contribute to cancer-associated immunosuppression. Together, these efforts could uncover additional therapeutic targets that could strengthen anti-tumour immunity.

These projects are among six research efforts awarded grants by the National Parks Board (NParks) under the Biosurveillance Research Programme, a S$15 million initiative under Singapore's Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 Plan. Developed in partnership with agencies under Singapore’s One Health framework which recognises that human, animal and environmental health are closely connected, the programme brings together multidisciplinary research teams to advance understanding of zoonotic diseases and their drivers in Singapore, and develop evidence-based strategies for mitigating future disease risks.

The projects led by NUS and Duke-NUS focus on understanding how diseases move between wildlife and domestic animals, the environment and people in Singapore's urban landscape.

Tracking disease risks from urban birds

Professor Karina Gin from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the College of Design and Engineering will lead a project on pathogen risks from urban birds, including pigeons and crows. The team will use environmental sampling and modelling to understand what pathogens these birds may carry, and how these could reach human populations.

Prof Gin said, “In densely populated environments like Singapore, we share our space with a surprising amount of wildlife. While this can be a positive aspect of urban living, it also presents public health considerations worth examining.”

“This study is vital because it moves beyond simply acknowledging the presence of urban birds to actively identifying the specific pathogens they carry and how those pathogens might reach the human population. Our work supports the 'One Health' approach, which is relevant to understand the public health dynamics of a dense urban environment,” she added.

Mapping tick-borne pathogens across Singapore

In another project, Assistant Professor Benoit Malleret from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine will lead a team to create a Singapore Integrated Network for Genomic and Epidemiological Tick-borne Pathogen Investigation and Connectivity (SINGETIC). The project studies ticks found across Singapore and the diseases they may spread from animals to people. The team will use modern laboratory testing to create mapping and forecasting tools to identify possible risk areas, highlight spillover hotspots and explain how infections spread.

“Ticks are part of Singapore’s natural environment, and understanding what they carry is essential for protecting both people and animals. As a ‘One Health’ effort, we are combining field sampling with advanced lab testing to strengthen early detection of tick-borne pathogens. ,” said Asst Prof Malleret.

Understanding disease transmission in wildlife

Associate Professor Kimberly Fornace from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health will lead a project integrating spatial, ecological and biological data to improve surveillance for zoonotic pathogens in mammalian wildlife. The study will focus on understanding and predicting potential disease transmission from wildlife, such as macaques and bats, to humans.

“Understanding diseases in wildlife is essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems and safeguarding human and animal populations. By monitoring wildlife health, we can better understand and respond to infectious diseases and protect biodiversity in our shared environments,” said Assoc Prof Fornace.

Companion animals and zoonotic disease

A team led by Professor Gavin Smith from Duke-NUS Medical School will examine the risk of zoonotic disease transmission between domestic cats and dogs and humans. The team will study a range of settings, including veterinary clinics and pet establishments, to better understand how pathogens may spread between animals and people and identify ways to reduce spillover risks.

“Diseases that can spread between pets and people are an ongoing area of research,” said Prof Smith. “This study will examine how key infections spread among cats and dogs, and whether they can be passed to their owners and caretakers. The findings will support stronger disease monitoring and help guide public health measures to better manage potential zoonoses in pets in urban communities.”

Bird flu surveillance

A project led by Assistant Professor Yvonne Su from Duke-NUS Medical School will assess the risk of avian influenza A viruses in Singapore's wild and domestic bird populations. By combining studies of bird flu viruses with data on bird ecology and movement, the team aims to better understand how these viruses circulate and spread, supporting future surveillance and preparedness efforts.

Assoc Prof Su said, “Avian influenza is a growing global health and biosecurity concern, particularly as H5N1 viruses continue to spread across continents and infect an expanding range of animal species. As a key stopover for migratory birds, Singapore plays an important role in monitoring these evolving risks.”

Turning to the study’s approach, she said, “This pioneering study in Singapore will utilise advanced phylodynamic and modelling approaches to track virus strains, providing critical insights into how avian influenza viruses may be introduced and circulate within local wild bird populations. The findings will strengthen Singapore’s capacity for early detection, surveillance and rapid response to emerging zoonotic threats.”

By studying how pathogens move through urban ecosystems, the research teams aim to strengthen Singapore’s ability to detect emerging risks early and develop evidence-based strategies to protect public health.

These legal changes raise a fundamental question: does legal reform actually lead social change? And if so, how quickly, and under what conditions?

A new study led by NUS Communications and New Media (CNM) Associate Professor Kokil Jaidka suggests the answer is more nuanced than a simple “yes” or “no”. Analysing over 200,000 social media posts and survey responses across all four countries, the research reveals that while legal changes do reshape public discourse, the path to social acceptance depends heavily on the surrounding institutional and media environment.

Language shifts when the law changes, but not uniformly

Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the study examined 65,969 Instagram and 136,255 Facebook posts before and after each country’s legal reform. In Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, moral stereotyping and hostile language on Instagram declined in the months following reform. Users who were already engaged in these conversations began framing them with less reliance on language depicting same-sex relationships as immoral or a threat to tradition.

“This shows that legal reform does reshape the terrain of public expression, at least for those already paying attention,” said Assoc Prof Jaidka, who led the study with co-authors Ms Preetika Verma and Ms Yiting Chen from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Wisconsin-Madison respectively.

However, looking across different countries and platforms painted a more complex picture. The findings also show that changes in public discourse following legal reform are multifaceted and varied across contexts.

In India, where the researchers could track a longer period after decriminalisation, hostile language on Instagram increased even as moral stereotyping fell.

On Facebook, where news outlets generally reach broader audiences, changes were modest across all four countries. Engagement with LGBTQ+ topics did not consistently increase after legal reform, and, in some cases, appeared to decline after the initial period of public discussion.

Drawing on nationally representative Gallup survey data from 46,200 respondents, the researchers further discovered that perceptions of neighbourhood safety for same-sex couples initially declined following legal reform before recovering in some age groups and countries. Younger respondents in Singapore and India eventually reported more positive perceptions, but the initial dip serves as an important reminder that a change in law does not always immediately translate to lived experience.

What explains the variations? The study points to institutional context as a crucial moderating factor. In countries with greater press freedom and freedom of expression (Taiwan ranked highest on both measures), reductions in hostile online discourse after reform were steeper and more sustained. Where these conditions were weaker, the gains were smaller or more mixed.

“The law creates a moment of change, but the wider environment such as society and the media shapes whether that moment becomes lasting progress,” observed Assoc Prof Jaidka.

When AI tools mistake identity for hostility

The research also uncovered an unexpected challenge in measuring online discourse: the very tools designed to detect toxic language can inadvertently flag non-toxic content. When the researchers analysed Instagram captions using Google’s Perspective API, one of the most widely used toxicity classifiers, they found that identity terms such as “queer”, “gay”, and “lgbt” were among the words most strongly correlated with high toxicity scores, despite not being slurs.

As individuals from marginalised communities are disproportionately targeted by online harassment, the words describing their identities appear frequently in abusive content. The algorithms then associate the identity terms themselves with toxicity, potentially suppressing ordinary conversations by the very communities they aim to protect.

The researchers explained how a toxicity score is a relative signal shaped by biases in training data, not an objective verdict on whether speech is harmful, adding how this revealed the need to use these tools with awareness of their limitations.

What comes after legal change

The findings have practical implications for multiple stakeholders. For online platforms, the period immediately following legal reform appears particularly consequential, as communities recalibrate and some voices push back. For media organisations and community groups, the research underscores that legal milestones mark a pivot toward sustained engagement around social attitudes, public discourse and acceptance, rather than a closing chapter.

Assoc Prof Jaidka said, “The research offers reasons for both encouragement – as legal reform does measurably shift discourse – and continued investment in the institutional and social conditions that translate legal changes into lived experience across the region.”

Yet even well-engineered yeast cells can be difficult to control in a precise and timely way. A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Associate Professor Poh Chueh Loo from NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI) and Department of Biomedical Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) at NUS, addressed this challenge using optogenetics, a strategy that rewires cells so that selected genes turn on or off in response to light. By exposing yeast to different colours and patterns of light, the team showed that biological instructions could be delivered dynamically, without repeatedly adding chemical inducers.

“Achieving precise, dynamic control over cellular machinery has been a goal in synthetic biology,” explained Assoc Prof Poh. “By using different colours of light to dictate complex, multi-step processes, we are paving the way to make biological manufacturing more predictable and programmable.”

While yeast has been previously engineered to respond to single colours of light, this is the first time that a single strain of yeast has been engineered to respond to more than one colour.

The NUS team published their research findings in the scientific journal Nature Communications on 22 May 2026.

Life in Technicolour

A key challenge was to make yeast respond reliably to red light. Existing red light-responsive optogenetic systems in yeast require several introduced genes, additional cofactors (or “helper” molecules) or careful handling to avoid unintended activation. These limitations make them difficult to combine with other light-controlled systems.

The team adapted a light-sensitive tool previously used in bacteria and mammalian cells into a single red light-responsive protein for yeast, which they named y-iLight. When exposed to red light, y-iLight attaches to certain DNA sequence in the yeast and turns on specific genes. Importantly, y-iLight works without the need for additional chemicals beyond those naturally found in yeast, making it simpler, more cost-effective, and more reliable for practical use.

Engineering yeast to see red and blue

Although y-iLight was an important improvement, it initially had a serious limitation: blue light could also activate it. This crosstalk meant that the red light system could not yet operate independently alongside a blue light system.

To solve this, the researchers used a modular protein-engineering strategy. They fused y-iLight to protein modules designed to block its activity specifically under blue light, then tested different combinations to identify variants that preserved red light responsiveness while suppressing unwanted blue light activation.

When the improved red light system was combined with the established blue light-responsive system called EL222, the researchers achieved independent control of two gene-expression channels in the same yeast strain. This represents a major step toward multiplexed optogenetics in yeast.

“Achieving this level of independent control without the two systems interfering with each other was a major hurdle in yeast,” says Linus Tan Yu Han, PhD student at NUS CDE and lead author of the paper. “By solving the blue-light crosstalk issue, we opened the door to much more complex genetic programming in yeast using colour.”

Colourful instructions for cell factories

With a dual-channel optogenetic yeast strain in hand, the team demonstrated how multi-coloured light could deliver more complex instructions. They placed two enzymes involved in producing luteolin, a natural plant chemical with potential health-related applications, under separate red and blue light control. By exposing the yeast to different proportion and timing of red and blue light, the researchers could adjust how the yeast made luteolin.

This light-based control also helped researchers understand how the process worked. In particular, they discovered that one enzyme, called F3′H, was less effective in the later stages of culture, providing useful insight on how to improve the process in the future.

The team also used optogenetics to control how yeast cells behave. By linking the flocculation gene FLO1 (which makes yeast cells stick together) to a red light-activated genetic switch, they showed that red light could trigger yeast cells to clump together and sink.

In their experiment, yeast first produced luteolin under blue light, then clumped together under red light. This demonstrates how light can control production and separation, which could inspire cleaner and more programmable biomanufacturing strategies.

Paint me a picture

Optogenetics also offers spatial control: genes can be switched on only where light is projected. To demonstrate this, the NUS team engineered yeast to produce different coloured compounds in response to red or blue light, spread the cells as a thin layer on agar, and projected light through masks. The result was a set of patterned, multi-colour “living images” grown by yeast.

“Together, the work shows that yeast can be programmed with multiple colours of light to control gene expression, metabolic pathways, cell behaviour and spatial patterning. The platform could support future applications in biomanufacturing, pathway optimisation and living materials,” Assoc Prof Poh explained.

What’s brewing next?

Assoc Prof Poh and his lab are currently working on ways to use rationally designed gene networks to boost the properties of these light sensitive proteins. With increased strength and sensitivity, they believe it will create new opportunities in the way microbes are used to manufacture valuable chemicals and materials.

The AI lab is dedicated to advancing foundational AI research and defining the future of gaming intelligence. Building on Razer's broader investments in AI, the new lab serves as a hub for exploration and innovation, accelerating breakthroughs in areas such as digital humans and ambient intelligence. This includes Razer AVA, a vision to build a digital human companion designed to deliver natural, personalised interactions through personality, memory, contextual awareness and adaptive behaviour, as well as Project Motoko, a wearable AI headset that brings ambient, highly advanced multimodal generative AI capabilities into a familiar, everyday form factor. 

The global AI in gaming market is projected to grow from US$4.2 billion in 2025 to US$66.8 billion by 2035, representing a 32 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during the forecast period from 2026 to 2035. Reflecting this trend, a recent survey found that 79 per cent of gamers are receptive to at least one AI-enabled feature they believe would improve their gaming experience. As AI increasingly transforms the way people interact with technology, Razer is deepening its investments in research and innovation to lead and shape the future of gaming experiences. 

Introducing Gaming Artificial Narrow Intelligence (GANI) 

For a start, Razer and NUS Computing are introducing Gaming Artificial Narrow Intelligence (GANI), a new research domain focused on AI models purpose-built for interactive digital environments. For instance, GANI could power an AI teammate that dynamically adjusts tactics to a player’s skill and playstyle, generates context-aware objectives and dialogue in real time, and seamlessly adapts difficulty during live matches to enhance engagement and fairness. 

This research also strengthens the intelligence layer behind Razer's existing AI innovations. The same real-time adaptability and contextual awareness that GANI aims to develop are directly relevant to Razer AVA's ability to sustain natural, personalised interactions, and to Project Motoko's ambient, always-on responsiveness, giving both a stronger foundation as they evolve from concept to product. 

“Gaming presents some of the most demanding environments for AI, requiring systems to respond in real time, adapt to changing contexts, and enhance the player experience. By establishing GANI as a new research domain, we're building the scientific foundation for AI that is purpose-built for gaming,” said Li-Meng Lee, Chief Strategy Officer, Razer. 

“As gaming pushes AI to operate under some of the highest requirements for responsiveness, personalization, and immersion, the breakthroughs developed here have the potential to inform applications far beyond gaming, from interactive entertainment to education, simulation, and other real-time digital experiences. By combining NUS’ research excellence with Razer’s gaming ecosystem and industry expertise, we’re bridging AI research and real-world game development, equipping developers with the tools to build smarter AI, accelerate content creation, unlock new gameplay experiences, and lay the groundwork for innovations beyond gaming.” 

From Research to Real-World Play 

Research is currently being conducted to future-proof products with the goal of extending AI experiences beyond gaming over time. The Razer-NUS Joint AI Research Lab will focus on three pillars: core model innovation, real-time content systems, and advanced personalization capabilities. 

“Universities play a crucial role in advancing scientific discovery and shaping the evolution of emerging disciplines. The Joint AI Research Lab with Razer provides GANI with a dynamic testing ground it needs, leveraging NUS’ strong research expertise in AI while offering direct access to Razer’s live engineering environment,” said Associate Professor Ooi Wei Tsang from NUS Computing’s Department of Computer Science, who also serves as Director of Razer-NUS Joint AI Research Lab. 

“By co-establishing GANI as a new research frontier, NUS and Razer are charting the pathway towards next-generation intelligent systems that will shape the future of interactive gaming experiences. Our goal is to create innovations that transform how millions of players interact with the games they play.” 

The lab will pursue an iterative research-to-translation model, testing and validating advances in both simulated and live gameplay environments and, where appropriate, integrating successful outcomes into Razer’s proprietary systems. Findings intended for the wider community will be published through open research channels, while proprietary innovations will enhance Razer’s global product ecosystem. Under the partnership, NUS Computing will lead research activities and talent development, and Razer will align projects with industry needs, validate real-world use cases, and enable product integration. The lab will be hosted in a dedicated space within NUS. 

In 2025, Razer has launched its AI Center of Excellence (CoE) in Singapore which is currently home to more than 100 engineers, data scientists, and researchers. It also has a CoE powering immersive platform and technologies in France. The establishment of the joint AI research lab marks the next phase of Razer's AI strategy, accelerating innovation in gaming, digital humans, and ambient intelligence. 

For more information on the Razer-NUS Joint AI Research Lab, visit here.

 The opening ceremony was officiated by Mr Heng Swee Keat, Chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF), and attended by leaders from academia, research institutions, industry and government agencies.

 Launched in 2025 as a S$130 million national initiative supported by the NRF, NIRBA was established to advance Singapore’s capabilities in RNA biology and its applications. Bringing together researchers and expertise from NUS, Nanyang Technological University, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, and other partners, NIRBA aims to position Singapore at the forefront of one of the most rapidly evolving areas of modern science.

 The opening of the NIRBA Hub represents the next phase of this journey. Serving as the focal point of NIRBA’s hub-and-spoke model, the Hub will unite researchers, clinicians, technology platforms and industry partners to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and accelerate innovation in RNA science.

 This new development is closely aligned with the ambitions of Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 (RIE2030) plan, which seeks to strengthen the nation’s scientific base, deepen innovation capabilities, develop talent and translate research into economic and societal outcomes.

 RNA Innovation: Advancing Singapore’s bioeconomy, healthcare, and biomedical frontiers

 RNA biology has emerged as a transformative field with the potential to reshape healthcare, biotechnology and the broader bioeconomy. Through initiatives such as NIRBA, Singapore is building capabilities that will enable the advancement of scientific discovery, and also the translation of research into solutions that create value for society and the economy.

RNA-based technologies have already demonstrated their game-changing potential through advances in vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics. Looking ahead, they are expected to play an increasingly important role in precision medicine, disease prevention and treatment, synthetic biology, and future bio-based industries. By strengthening Singapore’s capabilities across the research and innovation value chain, NIRBA is expected to contribute to the nation’s ambitions of becoming a leading global hub for biomedical innovation, medtech development and advanced biomanufacturing.

Professor Ashok Venkitaraman, Executive Director of NIRBA, said, “NIRBA was founded on the belief that breakthroughs in RNA science will increasingly shape the future of medicine, biotechnology and human health. The Hub provides a collaborative environment where researchers from diverse disciplines can work together to tackle fundamental questions in RNA biology and translate discoveries into meaningful applications. We are grateful for the strong support from our partners and look forward to advancing Singapore’s ambitions in this important field.”

Catalysing scientific breakthroughs

Located at Block S9 on NUS’ Kent Ridge campus and spanning 2,000 sqm, the NIRBA Hub serves as the central node of NIRBA’s national hub-and-spoke network. It will support research across areas such as RNA therapeutics, cancer RNA biology, infectious diseases, RNA-based diagnostics, and AI-enabled RNA design, while providing a collaborative environment for talent development, technology innovation and industry engagement.

In addition to advancing research, the Hub will serve as a platform for talent development and international collaboration. It will support the training of the next generation of scientists, foster partnerships with industry, and strengthen Singapore’s connections with leading research organisations around the world.

The opening of the NIRBA Hub underscores Singapore’s commitment to investing in frontier science and building capabilities that will create long-term value for the nation. Through sustained collaboration across institutions and sectors, NIRBA aims to drive scientific excellence, innovation and impact for Singapore and beyond.

Pioneering cutting-edge research

NIRBA brings together multidisciplinary teams to advance the next frontier of RNA science through an integrated research programme spanning RNA modification detection, disease biology, and therapeutic engineering. It will build four peaks of excellence that are of strategic importance to Singapore:

· Cluster 1 focuses on how Asian genetic diversity impacts the RNA biology of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other conditions relevant to Singapore. Scientists will examine whether Asian genomic variants affect RNA expression, modification and function in different cell types linked to these diseases.

· Cluster 2 explores how chemical modifications on RNA alter host immunity. RNA modifications, or small chemical changes made to RNA molecules, play a crucial role in helping our body balance immune responses, enabling the body to fight off infections while protecting our own healthy cells.

· Cluster 3 explores how RNA molecules enter cells and are transported within them to lay scientific foundations for effective RNA-based therapeutics that selectively target diseased tissues.

· Cluster 4 focuses on how RNA-based drugs exert their effects and are cleared from the body after administration, a critical enabler for the development of RNA-based therapies and vaccines in Singapore.

Researchers will collaborate as a highly interconnected ecosystem, where each discovery propels the next. Clusters 1 and 2 focus on designing and testing improved RNA molecules, while Clusters 3 and 4 develop delivery strategies and track their effects in disease models — all working together to create precision RNA medicines for Singapore’s most urgent health challenges, including cancer, metabolic diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

In 2024, global average carbon dioxide emissions reached a new record high. As greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide envelope the earth and trap heat, global warming occurs – our planet is now heating up faster than any point in recorded history, fuelling climate change and its rippling consequences such as increased frequencies of natural disasters, rising sea levels, destruction of food supplies, health risks, among many others. Undoubtedly, it has become increasingly imperative to find decarbonisation solutions.

“Burning of fossil fuels to generate power is the biggest contributor of carbon dioxide emissions,” said Professor Yan Ning, Director of CHCI. “Projects at CHCI directly tackle this issue by researching on hydrogen, a promising alternative to fossil fuels, and developing innovative methods of carbon capture and transformation.”

When used to generate power, hydrogen produces only water as a by-product; no carbon dioxide is emitted. Prof Yan continued, “Our research on hydrogen production and utilisation plays a vital role in curbing carbon emissions. However, translating these scientific innovations into widespread market adoption requires expertise beyond the laboratory. This is where HyLoCC comes in, by filling the crucial gap between academic research and industry. HyLoCC ensures that cutting-edge hydrogen and carbon innovations in the lab can be more readily translated into a reality.”

Forging a decarbonisation powerhouse

HyLoCC aims to drive research commercialisation of decarbonisation solutions by building a robust ecosystem that connects research labs, start-ups, and companies to relevant stakeholders across the value chain to ensure end-to-end technology deployment.

Key activities and services of HyLoCC are as follows:

• Organise regular seminars featuring academic and industry speakers, targeted workshops, and networking sessions
• Facilitate collaborative research through personalised engagements between companies and CHCI researchers to solve specific problem statements
• Provide consortium members with access to CHCI’s integrated equipment and analysis platform to evaluate hydrogen and carbon utilisation technologies, including techno-economic analysis
• Develop talent and expertise through CHCI’s Continuing Education and Training courses and through collaborative postgraduate projects and undergraduate initiatives conducted with consortium members, research partners and companies

“HyLoCC is an avenue where leading experts from various hydrogen and low-carbon sectors can come together to brainstorm ideas and share dedicated resources and information to solve real-world problems,” said Prof Yan. “These synergistic collaborations would build up our arsenal of decarbonisation solutions to fight against global warming and climate change.”

The perspectives and insights of HyLoCC’s founding members will play a key role in shaping the strategic priorities of the consortium. For their remarks, please refer to the Annexe.

About CHCI

The Centre for Hydrogen and Carbon Innovations (CHCI) was formerly known as the Centre for Hydrogen Innovations, first established in July 2022 through an investment of S$25 million, comprising an endowed gift from Temasek along with additional funding from NUS. In July 2024, the Centre inaugurated its 600-sqm advanced research facility, which serves as an innovation hub to boost hydrogen research and its commercial application in Singapore.

The renaming of the Centre on 14 July 2026 at the Industry Day event reflects its broader mission to advance both hydrogen and carbon innovations. CHCI now aims to support Singapore’s transition to a low-carbon future by developing new technologies and fostering collaboration across academia, industry, and government. 

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature Communications on 26 May 2026, introduces a method called qChIP-MS, which enables researchers to identify groups of proteins that work together at specific locations on DNA.

DNA in our cells is packaged into a structure known as chromatin. Chromatin helps determine which genes are switched on or off, protects the genome from damage, and influences how cells respond to stress. Problems in chromatin regulation have been linked to cancer, ageing and other diseases.

Understanding which proteins gather at specific regions of the genome is important because these protein networks help control gene activity and influence how cells behave in health and disease.

For years, scientists have relied on techniques that allow them to study one protein at a time. While these methods have provided valuable insights, they do not reveal the broader network of proteins working together at a particular location in the genome.

"Our DNA is not controlled by a single protein acting alone," said Dr Yong Wai Khang, first author of the study. "Instead, many proteins work together in coordinated complexes. We wanted to develop a practical way to see the full cast of players present at a specific region of our genome."

Mapping protein networks on chromatin

To address this challenge, the team combined two established technologies — chromatin immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry — into a single workflow called qChIP-MS. The method enables researchers to enrich selected chromatin regions and identify the proteins associated with them, while also measuring how abundant those proteins are.

The researchers validated the technique using telomeres, the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that play an important role in ageing and cancer. The method successfully identified known telomere-associated proteins and demonstrated that it could be applied to different types of biological samples, including tissues and specific genomic regions.

Importantly, the team also developed strategies to reduce false-positive results, a longstanding challenge in chromatin-based studies. By carefully benchmarking the workflow, they established a more reliable approach for interpreting complex chromatin data.

While qChIP-MS is primarily a research tool, its potential impact could be far-reaching. By helping scientists understand how proteins interact with chromatin in healthy and diseased cells, the technology may accelerate discoveries in areas such as cancer biology and genome regulation, and could eventually inform future therapeutic strategies.

New insights into cancer and genome regulation

The researchers are already applying qChIP-MS to study how chromatin changes at telomeres in cancer cells. In particular, they are investigating a process known as Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT), which allows certain cancers to maintain their telomeres and continue dividing.

The team also plans to further improve the sensitivity of the technology so that it can be used with smaller sample sizes and applied to increasingly precise regions of the genome.

"This work provides researchers with a new way to study how chromatin is organised and regulated," said Assistant Professor Dennis Kappei, senior author of the study and Principal Investigator at CSI Singapore.  "We hope it will become a useful addition to the toolbox for scientists investigating fundamental biology and diseases such as cancer." Asst Prof Kappei is also a faculty member at the Department of Biochemistry, and a Theme Co-Lead at NUS Centre for Cancer Research (N2CR), both within the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
 

A research team led by Professor Yang Hyunsoo from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed new spintronic computing hardware that offers a promising route towards faster and more energy-efficient optimisation. The team reported two recent advances in Nature Communications, demonstrating probabilistic computing systems based on magnetic tunnel junctions, nanoscale devices that can naturally generate tuneable randomness.

A practical path beyond conventional computing

Quantum computing has long been viewed as a potential breakthrough for optimisation, but practical quantum advantage remains difficult to achieve in the near term. The NUS team’s work shows that probabilistic computing, built using scalable spintronic hardware, could provide a more immediate and hardware-efficient path.

In the first study, the researchers demonstrated a parallel magnetic tunnel junction-based probabilistic Ising processor for solving quadratic assignment problems, a class of computationally demanding optimisation problems. The system integrates 144 compact spintronic tuneable random number generators in a massively parallel architecture. The processor achieved a 3.2-fold speedup with 58.3 per cent energy savings compared with a central processing unit (CPU) implementation.

Importantly, the team compared its system with state-of-the-art D-Wave quantum annealers. In the tested quadratic assignment problems, the spintronic probabilistic processor consistently produced feasible, high-quality solutions across the full dataset, while the quantum annealers struggled to return feasible solutions as the problem size increased. This comparison highlights the potential of spintronic probabilistic computing as a practical near-term alternative for real-world optimisation workloads.

“Quantum computing remains an exciting long-term direction, but many optimisation problems need practical solutions today,” said Prof Yang. “Our results show that spintronic probabilistic computing can deliver strong gains in speed, energy efficiency and solution quality using a hardware platform that is much closer to practical deployment.”

In the second study, the team demonstrated a larger probabilistic Ising machine based on 250 spin-transfer-torque magnetic tunnel junctions. The work showed that a cluster parallel update method could achieve a 10-fold acceleration for sparsely connected graphs without changing the hardware. The researchers also experimentally showed that simulated quantum annealing improved solution quality by 20 times compared to conventional simulated annealing, while increasing robustness to device variability.

“Instead of treating randomness as a source of error, we use it as a computing resource,” said Mr Yang Shuhan, PhD student in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS and the first author of both papers. “By combining stochastic magnetic devices with parallel architectures and advanced annealing algorithms, we can accelerate optimisation while reducing energy consumption.” Together, the two studies address key challenges in probabilistic computing: performance, scalability, energy efficiency and solution quality.

The research involved collaborators from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Politecnico di Bari, the University of Messina, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, and Peking University.

Potential applications and next steps

Looking ahead, the team aims to further scale up the hardware and explore chiplet-based architectures for large-scale probabilistic computing. Such systems could eventually support energy-efficient computing platforms for AI, logistics, scheduling, financial modelling, communications and electronic design automation. 

To strengthen the aquaculture industry, NUS scientists, together with researchers from the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, have developed a novel oral vaccine for fish that can protect them against NNV and be implemented in an effective, efficient and practical way to immunise large amounts of fish. The team was led by Professor Yang Daiwen from the Department of Biological Sciences at the NUS Faculty of Science and the research findings were published in the journal Fish & Shellfish Immunology on 5 January 2026.

Traditional vaccination involves injecting fish individually which can cause fish to be stressed. It is also impractical to execute on a large scale, and unsuitable to be administered on fish larvae and fingerlings. Oral vaccinations can be mixed directly into fish feed, offering a more practical, labour efficient and cost-effective solution.

“Fish are particularly vulnerable in the larval and juvenile stages, with the disease having a near 100 per cent mortality rate in the larval stage. Moreover, the growth is reduced even if some fish survive. At present, there are no simple and effective treatments available for NNV infection, making prevention through vaccination the most promising strategy. Our novel discovery of a viable and effective delivery system to transport virus-like particles to enable fish to resist the effects of NNV addresses this pertinent issue,” said Prof Yang.

Tackling a deadly virus in farmed fish

The novel vaccine is designed using two core biological components – one to train the fish’s immune system and another to deliver the training module safely:

1.      An “imposter” virus

The researchers used the NNV outer shell, known as the capsid protein, to create Virus-Like Particles (VLPs). The VLPs are hollow, non-infectious replicas of the virus. As the VLPs look identical to NNV externally, they trigger an immune response within the fish. However, they do not contain genetic material and are hence incapable of causing disease.

2.      A delivery vehicle

The researchers needed a carrier to get the VLPs to the right place in the fish’s body and chose Lactococcus lactis, a safe and well-understood bacterium. The VLPs were encapsulated inside the bacterial cells, which act as protective capsules. The capsule shields the VLPs as they travel through the fish’s digestive system, ensuring they arrive in the gut where an immune response can be triggered.

A challenge for the scientists was finding the perfect formula for the bacterium-encased VLPs to be delivered successfully to and released in the gut. After trials with live and heat-treated Lactococcus lactis, the researchers found that inactivating the bacteria with sodium hypochlorite protected the VLP’s structure and solubility within the bacteria, ensuring that it could be delivered effectively to the immune system.

The novel oral vaccine produced outstanding results as a method to protect fish against NNV. It induced two-times the levels of antibodies and neutralising antibodies – antibodies which bind to pathogens and prevent them from entering host cells – compared to feeding the fish purified VLPs directly which is also a much more expensive method.

The vaccine was also proven to reduce brain viral load by about 300 times after fish were exposed to NNV for seven days. This means the vaccine dramatically reduced the amount of virus replicating in the fish, effectively protecting them from the lethal effects of the disease.

Bringing research to real-world

The oral vaccine can be applied to economically important fish species such as grouper, and European and Asian seabass. The research team has filed three patents for this novel vaccine and plans to collaborate with industrial partners for field trials on grouper and other types of fish.

Largest-ever survey of flying insects in Singapore’s forests

One of the projects, a collaborative study between the Plant Ecology, Evolution, and Biogeography (PEEB) Lab at the NUS Department of Biological Sciences (DBS), NUS Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM) and NParks, set out to establish the first comprehensive ecological baseline for Singapore’s insect communities for long-term monitoring efforts, and represents the largest-ever survey of insect diversity in Singapore’s forests. The study was a collaboration between Assistant Professor Lim Jun Ying and doctoral student Ms Angelica See from NUS DBS and the Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions (CNCS) at the NUS Faculty of Science, and Dr Hwang Wei Song, Senior Lecturer and Curator of Insects at LKCNHM.

Using Malaise traps to collect insects from the forest understorey and DNA metabarcoding to analyse the samples, the researchers recovered approximately 140,000 unique insect DNA sequences. Many of these likely represent species new to science, with flies and wasps accounting for the majority of the diversity detected. Although often overlooked because of their small size,insects form the foundation of healthy forest ecosystems. They serve as food sources for other animals, break down organic matter as decomposers and support plant reproduction as pollinators.

By providing an unprecedented snapshot of Singapore’s insect biodiversity, the study establishes a critical benchmark for detecting future changes in forest health and strengthens efforts to conserve the ecological integrity of the nation’s remaining forests.

Plant-frugivore interactions: Uncovering the ecological relationships that support tropical forest regeneration

Ms Fung Tze Kwan, a doctoral student at NUS DBS and CNCS, led a research team that collaborated with NParks to establish the first plant-frugivore interaction network for Singapore’s forests. This pioneering study investigated how fruit-eating animals and fruiting tree species contribute to forest regeneration, identifying functionally important seed dispersers, key food plants, and rare frugivorous bird species of conservation concern.

The 18-month field research study, which involved visual tree watch surveys and camera trapping, documented more than 1,075 plant-frugivore interactions, encompassing 21 tree species and 45 fauna species. Network analysis revealed that common fruit-eating animals play key roles in plant-frugivore interactions that underpin seed dispersal and natural regeneration in Singapore's forests. These findings highlight the intricate interdependencies between plants and animals that support biodiversity and forest resilience.

In the long run, the findings will inform the selection of tree species for planting under NParks’ Forest Restoration Action Plan and strengthen the formulation of targeted biodiversity conservation strategies for endangered and key frugivorous species. Beyond these applications, the study provides a valuable foundation for future research in Singapore and the region by establishing a baseline dataset, survey protocol, and local research capacity for studying plant–frugivore interactions.

This study was funded by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, Singapore (HSBC), the Lady Yuen Peng McNeice Graduate Fellowship, and The Singapore Institute of Biology (SIBiol) Research Trust Fund.

Read more about the studies here.

On 16 June 2026, Singapore officially launched eight inaugural projects under AI4S, a landmark national initiative spearheaded by the National Research Foundation to harness the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to revolutionise scientific discovery. Announced by Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, Singapore’s Permanent Secretary (National Research and Development) at the AI4X Accelerate Conference 2026, these strategic research projects pair top AI researchers with domain experts from leading local and international institutions to spur research innovation in areas of interest to Singapore. This ambitious effort aims to nurture a new generation of "bilingual" scientists, fluent in both AI and fields like life science, materials science, and quantum science, so as to accelerate the pace of innovation.

Here, we outline the four NUS projects that are among the eight selected under the AI4S initiative.

Materials Data Foundry: Accelerating Synthesis of Complex Materials for Future Applications

The Materials Data Foundry (MDF) is a joint project co-led by Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov from the NUS Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials (I-FIM) and Professor Alán Aspuru-Guzik from the University of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium to address the dearth of high-quality data in materials science. Using an open autonomous lab powered by AI and robotics, the MDF will create the world's largest dataset linking synthesis protocols to real-world material performance.

The lab will apply its platform to three testbeds: beyond-silicon and quantum-topological materials, durable oxygen-evolution electrocatalysts and corrosion-resistant high-entropy alloy coatings. The project also includes industrial partners like Nvidia and VeChain to tap on the cutting-edge digital solutions on the market. The dataset developed will fuel AI models to accelerate the discovery of new materials for electronics, clean energy, and sustainable infrastructure, bridging the gap from idea to industrial use.

Read more here.

AI for Program Reasoning

Co-led by Professor Abhik Roychoudhury from the Department of Computer Science in NUS School of Computing and Professor Cristian Cadar from the Imperial College London, and in collaboration with leading experts from the Singapore Management University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and ETH Zürich, this project addresses the urgent need to ensure software correctness and security as AI-generated code becomes increasingly prevalent.

The project will build advanced AI tools to automatically analyse, verify, and prove the correctness of computer programs to ensure that they are safe, secure, and work as intended. Employing formal reasoning, which involves proving using mathematical precision, and informal reasoning to understand the behaviour of undocumented code, the project will test its tools on critical systems like network protocols and components of the Linux operating system kernel. Ultimately, the goal is to create specialised AI agents that can help developers catch errors and reliably audit the vast amounts of code produced by other AIs.

Read more here.

Accelerating Genomic Research with Artificial Intelligence: From Data to Discovery

A joint project led by Professor Cheng Ching-Yu from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and his collaborators at A*STAR Research Entities (ARES), this project addresses the challenge of analysing vast and complex genomic data by developing MultiOmicsFM, a unified AI foundation model. Unlike existing AI tools that examine DNA, RNA, and gene activity in isolation, MultiOmicsFM will be designed to interpret them in unison, creating an integrated picture of an individual's genetic makeup. By leveraging Singapore’s unique multi-ethnic genomic datasets, the project aims to expedite discoveries in disease risk prediction and mRNA therapy optimisation, positioning Singapore as a global leader in AI-driven precision medicine.

Read more here.

KGAI4Ag: Advancing Knowledge-Guided AI to Develop Agricultural Digital Twins for Singapore’s Climate Resilience

Professor Roman Carrasco from the Department of Biological Sciences at the NUS Faculty of Science and his collaborators at the Illinois Advanced Research Center at Singapore Ltd. (Illinois ARCS) will be working together to tackle the threat of climate change on Southeast Asia's food security by building agricultural digital twins. These digital twins are virtual replicas of farmland, powered by Knowledge-Guided AI (KGAI), which uniquely combines data with established scientific principles of crop growth to create more reliable and interpretable simulations. The platform will deliver practical forecasting and decision-support tools to help farmers and policymakers optimise planting strategies, resource use, and supply chains, positioning Singapore as a regional hub for climate-resilient agricultural innovation.

Read more here. 

The launch comes as global demand for such bio-based alternatives accelerates. The bioeconomy is projected to contribute up to US$4 trillion annually within the next decade, driven by a broad shift away from petrochemical-based production^[1].

The new A*STAR SIFBI-NUS Synthetic Biology Joint Lab is established by the A*STAR Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (A*STAR SIFBI) and the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (NUS SynCTI). It will support efforts to strengthen translation in emerging technologies and grow the bioeconomy.

The joint laboratory brings together A*STAR SIFBI's capabilities in bioprocess development and scale-up, and NUS' strengths in fundamental science, interdisciplinary research and talent development. Its initial focus will be on nutrition and consumer care, with broader applications spanning advanced materials and health. It will support companies in co-developing testing and validating sustainable, synthetic alternatives to conventional chemical manufacturing.

A*STAR Chief Executive Officer, Mr Beh Kian Teik, said, “For Singapore to capture opportunities in the bioeconomy, we need to move strong science closer to market. This joint lab is one way A*STAR and NUS are closing that gap, by working with industry to develop bio-based solutions that can be scaled into products, including for ingredients, chemicals and materials.”

Led by Professor Jay Keasling, a pioneer in synthetic biology, the joint lab will focus on three areas to accelerate industry translation:

• Faster design: AI-guided enzyme and pathway engineering to shorten development timelines

• Scalable production: Industrially deployable microbial platforms to produce complex molecules at scale

• New molecules: Access to novel bio-based compounds for ingredients and functional applications

Further details are provided in Annex A.

Strengthening Singapore’s Role in the Emerging Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy encompasses industries that use biological systems and biotechnology to produce chemicals, ingredients and materials. It is reshaping how goods are made at a fundamental level. The global market for bio-based chemicals alone is expected to exceed US$200 billion by 2030, while synthetic biology, a key enabling technology, is projected to grow to over US$60 billion in 2030^[2][3].

This shift is evident in the food and nutrition space where bio-based ingredients are opening up vast new catalogues of sustainable sources. This transition allows industry players to strengthen their supply chains by diversifying the source of their ingredients and embracing the latest technologies. For example, in the production of ingredients such as omega-3 lipids, companies are reducing reliance on imported marine sources. Advances in synthetic biology, combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and large-scale data analysis, are accelerating the discovery and production of complex molecules that were previously difficult to make at commercial scale.

Mr Jermaine Loy, Managing Director of the Singapore Economic Development Board said, “As the chemicals sector adopts greener alternatives, industrial biotechnology offers companies a credible pathway to diversify raw material sources and develop novel, sustainable products. The A*STAR SIFBI-NUS Synthetic Biology Joint Lab will strengthen Singapore's capabilities in this emerging area, bringing together world-class R&D and industry translation to advance bioeconomy innovation from Singapore.”

Building the Next Generation of Talent

Beyond research and industry engagement, the lab will serve as a training ground for Singapore's future scientists and engineers in areas such as synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, AI-guided biological design, and industrial biomanufacturing. Joint supervision arrangements, internships and fellowships are designed to develop researchers who can operate at the interface of academia and industry. Professionals with such skills are increasingly in demand as more companies build in-house biotechnology capabilities.

"NUS brings strengths in foundational science and interdisciplinary research. Especially relevant to this joint lab is our strong and established research track record and presence in the synthetic biology space, an example being NUS SynCTI," said Professor Aaron Thean, NUS Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost. "The joint lab gives our scientists a direct pathway to translate their work into practical outcomes, while equipping students and early-career researchers with valuable skills needed to operate across research and industry settings."

Over time, the lab aims to catalyse technology licensing, start-up formation and new partnerships to build a pipeline of talent and ideas that will support the long-term growth of Singapore's bio-based innovation ecosystem.

[1] NatureFinance and Getúlio Vargas Foundation. The Global Bioeconomy: Preliminary Stocktake of G20 Strategies and Practices: A Contribution to the Brazilian G20 Presidency’s Global Initiative on Bioeconomy. Prepared for the G20 Initiative on Bioeconomy (GIB), May 2024.

[2] Green Chemicals Global Overview 2024–2030. Research and Markets, November 2024.

[3] The Business Research Company. Synthetic Biology Market Report 2026. Published January 2026.

The new research collaboration between NUS and Applied Materials aims to shorten one of the most expensive bottlenecks in chipmaking: the long cycle of trial and error needed to develop and optimise new materials and processes. By training AI on data generated from the Corporate Lab’s processing equipment, the partners aim to build a system that can predict the most promising experiments to perform, speeding the path from the laboratory to the production line and reducing costly trial-and-error cycles.

The initiative also aligns with national and global priorities, including the Semiconductor Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) Flagship launched under RIE2030. It comes as the global chip industry heads towards US$1 trillion in annual revenue, with an additional US$300 billion of potential upside from generative AI.  Singapore plays an outsized role, where it produces one in 10 chips worldwide, with the sector accounting for nearly six per cent of the country's GDP and has drawn over S$30 billion in semiconductor investment between 2022 and 2025.

The Corporate Lab, launched in 2018 and expanded in 2024, spans applied chemistry, materials science and semiconductor process engineering. Harnessing NUS’ strengths in materials science, engineering and AI, alongside Applied Materials’ expertise in semiconductor equipment and advanced manufacturing processes as well as Singapore’s mature semiconductor ecosystem, there is now an opportunity to close a critical industry gap. AI has transformed materials discovery in many fields, but has had limited impact on semiconductor manufacturing, due to the complex set of processing parameters and possible materials outcomes at different scales, which is difficult for general material-discovery models to capture.

“Semiconductors are fundamental to today’s AI, and now AI is transforming how semiconductors themselves are designed and made. That makes ever-closer collaboration between universities and industry essential, both to turn research into real-world impact and to prepare graduates for the roles this shift is creating,” said Professor Aaron Thean, NUS Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost. “Deepening our collaboration with Applied Materials, together with our new AI specialisation in semiconductor engineering education, reflects how NUS is advancing this sector on both fronts, through research that forges new frontiers and education that nurtures the talent to apply it.”

“Accelerating semiconductor innovation requires materials engineering, process technology and AI to come together as one system," said Dr Prabu Raja, President of the Semiconductor Products Group at Applied Materials. "By combining NUS' strengths in AI and materials science with Applied Materials' process equipment expertise and real-world data, we can significantly reduce development cycles and speed innovation from lab to fab. Just as important, this collaboration helps prepare a new generation of engineers to operate at the intersection of AI and semiconductor manufacturing."

To mark the start of the collaboration, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed today by Professor Aaron Thean, NUS Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost, and Mr Brian Tan, Regional President (South East Asia), Applied Materials, in conjunction with the opening of the Applied Materials Tampines Campus. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Mr Gary Dickerson, President and CEO of Applied Materials, and Mr Png Cheong Boon, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board.

Closing the gap between AI and chip manufacturing

The new research collaboration between NUS and Applied Materials would address three key challenges in implementing AI in semiconductor manufacturing: the complexity of processing parameters in materials development, the fragmented data generated during semiconductor manufacturing, and understanding how minute structural changes in materials impact device performance.

The aim is to develop an AI platform that learns from both simulations and real experiments and recommends the next best experiment to run, resulting in a closed loop that steadily narrows the search for better materials and process conditions.

“AI has already spurred materials discovery in many fields, but it has not yet reached the factory floor in semiconductors, where the messy physics of real equipment often stymies its implementation,” added Prof Thean. “By coupling our physics-informed AI with Applied Materials’ tools and the Corporate Lab’s advanced processing capabilities, we can build models that understand how a process actually behaves, and use them to point researchers to the experiments most likely to pay off.”

Building AI-ready semiconductor talent

The new Applied AI for Materials and Process Engineering specialisation extends the MSc STO programme into a rapidly growing field where AI is transforming materials innovation, semiconductor manufacturing, and advanced engineering operations.

Designed for STEM graduates and early- to mid-career professionals, the specialisation equips students to apply data-driven and computational methods to real industrial problems. Students will gain hands-on experience with technologies such as machine learning, generative AI, computer vision, semiconductor technologies, and digital twins through practical applications such as defect detection, predictive maintenance, yield optimisation, and materials characterisation.

Students will also have the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects through placements in the industry. These placements span sectors such as semiconductors, materials and process engineering, and advanced manufacturing and operations, enabling students to develop interdisciplinary expertise, apply AI to real-world challenges, and build industry-relevant skills for careers in emerging technology sectors.

The curriculum emphasises human-centricity, ensuring that students retain responsibility for decision-making and applying domain knowledge even as they leverage AI tools. By combining human expertise and critical thinking with AI-driven insights, graduates will be equipped to accelerate innovation, enhance operational efficiency, and drive competitive advantage across the semiconductor industry.

Prof Thean said, “This new AI specialisation represents a timely convergence of education and innovation. We are building a pipeline of AI-ready talent for an industry vital to our technological future. As we integrate AI across education and research, we maintain a core principle: humans remain in the driver's seat. AI is a tool to augment, not replace, human ingenuity and judgment. This reflects NUS' commitment to empowering our community to harness AI responsibly while preserving the critical thinking and creativity at the heart of innovation."

The MSc STO programme is part of a comprehensive range of engineering courses offered by NUS CDE at both undergraduate and graduate levels designed to build the semiconductor talent pipeline. Covering disciplines such as electrical engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, as well as industrial systems engineering and management, these courses provide diverse opportunities for students to make impactful contributions to the sector.

NUS’ new research collaboration with Applied Materials and AI training specialisation complement existing efforts strengthen Singapore’s position at the leading edge of the global semiconductor industry as it converges with AI. Together, they advance both the research that drives the field forward and the talent that sustains it.

Drawing on two long-term studies of Singaporean families, researchers from NUS Psychology found that ‘authoritarian parenting’ and ‘harsh punishments’ were associated with greater dishonesty in children across early and middle childhood. The studies suggest that this is not out of defiance, but a way for the children to cope with self-criticism, the pressure to perform and the fear of making mistakes.

The first study, published in the academic journal Child Development, tracked preschoolers and found that those whose fathers were stricter and enforced rules with little explanation were more likely to cheat later on. The researchers observed that these children also tended to be harder on themselves.

The second study, published in Developmental Psychology, followed school-going children over three years and found that children subjected to physical punishment like spanking were more likely to cheat and lie over time.

The studies were led by NUS Psychology’s Associate Professor Ding Xiao Pan and doctoral student Ms Liwen Yu. The second study was also led by Associate Professor Ryan Y. Hong from NUS Psychology.

Authoritarian parenting promotes cheating through self-criticism

The first study examined 479 families who participated in the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO*) birth cohort study, one of Singapore’s largest and most comprehensive birth cohort studies.

Researchers assessed parenting styles via a parental questionnaire when children were four and a half years old and measured cheating behaviour a year and a half later using a dart game.

The study found that 61 per cent of children cheated, with strict paternal parenting at age four and a half years significantly predicting this behaviour.

“Authoritarian parenting is characterised by high control, low warmth and harsh discipline without explanation. While parents may believe this approach instils discipline, our research shows it may actually undermine children’s internalisation of moral values,” said Assoc Prof Ding.

Researchers found that children’s self-criticism helped explain this link. Children with stricter and more controlling fathers were more self-critical in a sketching task done as part of the study, which predicted a greater likelihood of cheating.

“Self-critical children may feel intense pressure to maintain a flawless image and cheating becomes a maladaptive coping strategy. It is a way to avoid feelings of inadequacy and secure external validation," Ms Yu explained.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the developmental mechanisms linking a discipline-oriented family environment to cheating behaviour,” she noted.

Harsh punishment breeds deception in school-going children

The second study followed 302 Singaporean families with school-going children aged seven to nine years, examining whether negative parental control predicted children’s deceptive behaviours over time.

Negative parental control comprises harsh punishment, discipline and ignoring. Of the three, only harsh punishment, which includes physical punishment like slapping and spanking, was found to increase children’s lying and cheating over time.

Harsh parental punishment at age seven significantly predicted increased deceptive behaviour at age eight, with this pattern continuing into age nine. The relationship also worked both ways: children’s deceptive behaviour at age eight predicted harsher parental punishment at age nine, suggesting a troubling cycle.

The study also identified children’s dysfunctional attitudes, like believing they must do well to be liked, as an important pathway linking harsh punishment to dishonest behaviour.

“Children exposed to higher levels of negative parental control were more likely to internalise dysfunctional beliefs such as ‘I have to do well to be liked’ or ‘I shouldn’t make mistakes’. They may then resort to lying to meet these unrealistic expectations or avoid further punishment,” said Ms Yu.

Cultural context and practical implications

Singapore is a useful setting for the studies because strict, obedience-oriented parenting and physical discipline remain relatively common.

However, even in Singapore, where authoritarian parenting is more culturally accepted, findings suggest it still poses risks for children’s moral development.

“What both studies reveal is that strict parenting doesn’t directly cause dishonesty. Rather, it changes how children see themselves, and it’s this altered self-view that leads to cheating and lying,” said Assoc Prof Hong.

The research team acknowledges that dishonest behaviour in children is multifaceted and influenced by cognitive development, social factors and individual differences. However, these studies provide crucial evidence that parenting practices play a significant role during critical developmental periods.

Ms Yu said, “Understanding these developmental pathways is essential for designing effective interventions. Rather than responding to children’s dishonesty with harsher punishment, which our research shows may actually worsen the problem, parents and educators need to address the underlying psychological mechanisms.”

*About GUSTO

Set up in 2009, GUSTO (Growing Up in Singapore Towards healthy Outcomes) is a nationwide birth cohort study involving collaborators from KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), National University Health System (NUHS), National University of Singapore (NUS), and A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential (A*STAR IHDP). It is a longitudinal study of Singaporean mothers and their offspring. Since its inception, the study has recruited 1,247 Singaporean pregnant women as volunteers. These volunteers are studied extensively during their pregnancy, and their offspring are closely followed up as they grow up. GUSTO aims to understand how conditions during pregnancy and early childhood may affect the mothers’ and children’s health, growth and development, as well as metabolic, neurodevelopmental and other conditions – all of which are of major public health and economic importance in Asia and around the globe.

For marine biologist Dr Ow Yan Xiang, Senior Research Fellow at the Tropical Marine Science Institute at NUS, and resident scientist at the St John's Island National Marine Laboratory, World Ocean Day is “a day to appreciate how our oceans and the marine life within have kept us alive through their roles in climate regulation and supporting global economies”.

On a more serious note, she added that “it is also a day where we caution ourselves about the consequences should our oceans no longer be healthy”.

Dr Ow’s work focuses on seagrass. Unlike seaweed, which are marine algae, the lesser-known seagrass are flowering plants with roots, stems and leaves. Found in shallow, near-shore waters, seagrass meadows are an essential part of the marine ecosystem, providing food and shelter, and serving as nurseries to many aquatic creatures. Seagrass also play an important role in coastal protection by buffering wave energy and stabilising sediments. A natural carbon sink, seagrass meadows are remarkably good at trapping carbon: in the Central Indo-Pacific region, which includes Singapore and Malaysia, they capture an average of 86 metric tonnes of carbon per hectare, the equivalent of annual carbon emissions from 22 cars.

However, Singapore has lost approximately 45 per cent of its seagrass since the 1960s due to land reclamation and ongoing coastal development. Currently, seagrass beds continue to be wiped out at a high rate, for example, in Southeast Asia, the rate of loss is 5 per cent every year. 

When the seagrass is greener on the other side

Last year, Dr Ow co-led Singapore’s inaugural seagrass restoration project in collaboration with the National Parks Board, transplanting seagrass from denser meadows like East Coast to areas with little to no seagrass, like Sisters’ Islands. Until the end of this year, Dr Ow and her team will monitor the transplanted seagrass plot on Sisters' Islands, before deciding on whether to proceed with another transplantation exercise.

To further improve seagrass restoration efforts, Dr Ow and her team have a two-pronged approach. Firstly, they are developing and refining transplantation methods, to determine the best way of planting mature seagrass shoots, so that they will not get washed away or perish easily.

“Transplanting seagrass is a far less well-studied science compared to that of trees, mangroves or even corals,” Dr Ow pointed out. “By optimising our transplantation techniques, we can revitalise the seagrass population in Singapore’s waters.”

Uncovering the wonders of seagrass reproduction

Secondly, Dr Ow and her team are studying the sexual reproduction of seagrass in Singapore. Despite the presence of 12 seagrass species in Singapore, the sexual reproduction of the vast majority remains poorly understood.

Consequently, the team has been conducting monthly surveys at different seagrass meadows to look for seagrass flowers and fruits. Recently, they published an open-access scientific paper in the Bulletin of Marine Science that documents the sexual reproduction of the noodle seagrass Syringodium isoetifolium, including images of the flowers, fruits and seeds as well as detailed information on the timing and process of pollination, fertilisation, fruit development and seed dispersal. This is the first comprehensive description of the sexual reproduction of the noodle seagrass.

“If we are able to understand when and how various seagrass species reproduce sexually, it will greatly aid long-term restoration effort,” Dr Ow said.

Undoubtedly, Dr Ow’s tireless work on seagrass promotes the health of our blue planet. And how can individuals protect our oceans and the conservation of marine life? Dr Ow shared, “Nothing is too little. Collective stewardship can make a big impact if we all play our part.”

She urged, “Whether it’s advancing knowledge through research, advocating for education and conservation, or even making a conscious effort to reduce one’s environmental footprint, small actions are better than none!”

4-NP is widely used in the production of pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and dyes, and routinely enters waterways through industrial discharge. It is highly soluble and chemically stable, allowing it to persist in aquatic environments and move through rivers and lakes. Over time, it can accumulate in food chains, posing risks to both ecosystems and human health. Regulatory bodies classify it as a hazardous contaminant, with long-term exposure linked to damage to the nervous system, liver, and kidneys.

Existing methods for removing 4-NP, including chemical oxidation and biological treatment, while effective, are often energy-intensive, costly, or difficult to scale. Some require continuous chemical input or generate secondary by-products that has to be managed. Adsorption using carbon-based materials offers a simpler alternative, but many such materials rely on chemical activation processes that reduce their environmental and economic viability.

Turning waste into a functional material

The NUS team's approach sidesteps these issues by starting with pomegranate peels collected from local markets in Singapore. The peels are converted into biochar through controlled heating at 600 deg C, then broken down further into nanoparticles using ball milling and ultrasonication in water. The process does not require chemical activating agents.

The resulting nanobiochar has a high surface area and a pore structure suitable for capturing small organic molecules like 4-NP.

“We wanted a material that could remove persistent pollutants effectively without relying on harsh chemicals,” said Kustomo, NUS PhD student and first author of the study. “By working at the nanoscale, we were able to increase the number of active sites while keeping the process simple and more sustainable.”

Reducing the material to the nanoscale exposes more reactive surface sites, allowing 4-NP molecules to bind with the material faster and more efficiently. This improves removal performance while maintaining a relatively straightforward production process.

Strong performance and reusability

In laboratory tests, the nanobiochar was added to water containing 4-NP, a toxic pollutant. Within 90 minutes, it removed more than 94 per cent of the contaminant under optimised conditions. This means the material can clean polluted water relatively quickly, by attracting and holding the pollutant on its surface.

The researchers also tested whether the material could be used more than once. After each round of cleaning polluted water, the nanobiochar was washed with sodium hydroxide to remove the trapped pollutant and prepare it for reuse. Even after three cycles, it was still able to remove 85.76 per cent of 4-NP. This shows that the material can be reused while still maintaining most of its performance. The team’s findings were published in Environmental Nanotechnology, Monitoring & Management on 16 January 2026.

The NUS team is now testing the material in real wastewater samples, which contain a more complex mix of contaminants than the synthetic solutions used in the study. Scaling up production and integrating the material into existing treatment systems represent important next steps. If successfully implemented, this approach could offer a more sustainable and cost-effective solution for treating industrial wastewater while also creating value from agricultural waste.

Dr Sean Yap, Research Fellow at the Centre for Nature-based Climate Solutions (CNCS) under the NUS Faculty of Science, is studying how these soundscapes can be used to monitor biodiversity. His work at the Lab for Advancing Protection of biodiversity with Innovative Solutions (LAPIS), combines bioacoustics — the study of animal sounds — with artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse large volumes of recordings collected in forest environments.

“Bioacoustics uses animal vocalisations to identify species and study ecological patterns,” Dr Yap explained. “These recordings can help us compare species communities between sites, track animal activity patterns, and even locate individual animals.”

His research currently focuses on two questions: how human-generated noise, such as traffic, affects animal activity in forests, and whether microforests, or small restored forest patches, can help improve ecological connectivity in urban landscapes.

Listening to ecosystems

To collect data, researchers place small autonomous recorders equipped with microphones tuned to specific frequencies to capture sound in the forest. The set-up itself is relatively simple; the challenge lies in analysing the vast amounts of audio data generated.

The recordings are then converted into spectrograms or visual representations of sound, which AI systems analyse to identify patterns linked to different sources. Some models can distinguish broad categories of sound, such as traffic noise and animal calls, while others can classify bird vocalisations to the species level or differentiate between anthropogenic noise and wildlife sounds. This allows researchers to assess levels of human disturbance and measure the presence and activity of different species across study areas.

Complementing traditional field surveys

Traditional biodiversity surveys often rely on researchers spending limited time in the field observing wildlife, with results varying depending on the observer’s experience and the duration of the survey.

Bioacoustic monitoring offers a different approach. Recorders can be programmed to collect data continuously or at specific times of day, producing more standardised datasets. Because the devices remain in place, they can also capture species that might avoid human presence. As Dr Yap noted, human observers are often the main limiting factor in traditional surveys, whereas autonomous recorders can collect data over much longer periods and with greater consistency.

Challenges in using AI for biodiversity monitoring

Despite its advantages, AI-based monitoring still faces limitations. Dr Yap’s team found that algorithms tend to perform well for species with distinctive vocalisations, such as songbirds. However, species with lower-frequency calls, including pigeons, doves and owls, are harder for AI models to detect accurately. In some cases, recordings initially flagged as owl calls were later found to be traffic noise.

Many existing sound-recognition models are trained primarily on species from North America and Europe, Dr Yap explained, which can make them less reliable for species found in Southeast Asia.

To address this, researchers at NUS are exploring ways to refine models using locally collected data, allowing AI systems to improve as regional biodiversity datasets expand.

Technology and the future of conservation

While these technologies are transforming ecological monitoring, Dr Yap emphasised that AI complements rather than replaces traditional field research. He sees AI as a powerful tool that could help scientists gather information efficiently and monitor ecosystems over longer periods.

“AI tools depend on good training data and ecological expertise,” he said. “They help us collect and analyse information more efficiently, but they still rely on the knowledge of scientists who study these ecosystems.”

For biodiversity-rich regions such as Southeast Asia, this could make a significant difference. Tropical forests in the region are dense and exceptionally diverse, making it difficult for researchers to spend extended periods surveying species in the field. Technologies such as bioacoustics allow scientists to collect more comprehensive datasets and gain a better understanding of how these ecosystems function.

In the future, Dr Yap hopes to expand AI-based monitoring beyond birds, which are currently prioritised due to the availability of labelled call databases. He plans to work with researchers studying frogs, insects, bats and other mammals to develop locally trained algorithms, improving the accuracy of biodiversity monitoring in Southeast Asia.

The identified signatures could help refine future diagnostic tools, as well as to better match breast cancer patients with targeted therapies.

While genomic instability is a hallmark of cancer, previous research often relied on broad patterns that apply across many different types of the disease. This new study, published in Cancer Research on 14 May 2026, specifically examined breast cancer genomes from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and METABRIC, both of which are open-access databases. The research team was able to break down known, broad genetic signatures into more detailed, disease-specific categories, revealing a complex interaction between genome instability and the tumour's immune microenvironment.

 New DNA change patterns offer promise for improved diagnostics

The study identified eight de novo (newly extracted) DNA gain-and-loss signatures specific to breast cancer. It differentiated the distinct genomic effects of BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations and observed that patients with relatively stable ("quiet") genomes and low macrophage infiltration tended to have better survival outcomes.

These identified signatures could help refine future diagnostic tools, such as improving the detection of homologous recombination deficiency, to better match patients with targeted therapies like PARP inhibitors.

To ensure these findings benefit the wider scientific community, the researchers launched the CNA Visualizer. This open-access web tool allows scientists worldwide to interact with and visually explore the massive dataset of various cancer genomes. The development of this extensive framework and web portal provides vital biological insights into breast cancer and genomic instability, supplying the necessary tools for future studies across various cancer types.

Next steps

The next phase of this research will focus on validating these genetic signatures in clinical settings to assess their reliability in predicting patient responses to targeted therapy. Additionally, Dr. Pitt and his team plan to further explore how the interplay between genome instability and the tumour microenvironment influences long-term clinical outcomes.

Dry eye disease, also known as keratoconjunctivitis sicca, is one of the most common eye conditions, affecting more than 1.5 billion people worldwide. Far more than a minor discomfort, the disease causes corneal scarring, chronic pain, blurred vision and sensitivity to light. Various studies have linked it to depression, anxiety and reduced workplace productivity, as well as an economic burden estimated at US$3.84 billion annually in the United States alone. Current treatments such as cyclosporine A (Restasis®) and lifitegrast (Xiidra®) target inflammation through specific molecular pathways, but their high costs and adverse side effects limit long-term use.

At the cellular level, the disease is driven by a vicious cycle. Inflammation in the corneal region generates reactive oxygen species (ROS), chemically aggressive molecules that damage cells. Healthy eyes can neutralise ROS through antioxidant production that is driven by Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Phosphate (reduced form) (NADPH). But in inflamed eyes, ROS levels overwhelm the cornea’s natural defences, resulting in the generation of even more ROS – a death spiral.

A team led by Associate Professor David Leong Tai Wei from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS has developed a fundamentally different approach by transplanting functional plant-derived photosynthetic machinery into corneal cells, enabling them to harvest ambient light and produce NADPH independently from the cells’ own NADPH production pathways. In preclinical studies, the technology, delivered as simple eye drops at doses so low that it does not interfere with colour perception, reversed corneal damage to near-healthy levels within five days, outperforming Restasis®.

The study was published online in the scientific journal Cell on 15 May 2026.

An eye-opening biological crossover

Evolutionarily, plants and animals have taken divergent paths such that animals, with one exception, are not able to photosynthesise. This exception is the sacoglossan sea slug, which ingests and stores away the chloroplasts (organelles responsible for photosynthesis in plant cells) of microalgae within its intestinal cells. When starved, these sea slugs can live off the nutrients made through photosynthesis — the only known case of an animal being able to photosynthesise just like a plant. This unusual animal trait raised an intriguing question: could mammals also acquire some limited form of photosynthesis?

To test out their ideas, the NUS researchers chose the eye as it is one of the few organs in the human body that absorbs visible light — just like plant leaves. They engineered LEAF (Light-reaction Enriched thylAkoid NADPH-Foundry), a nanosized, structurally preserved version of the thylakoid grana — the tightly stacked membrane compartments inside the chloroplasts of plant cells where light energy is harnessed and converted to NADPH molecules. During photosynthesis, the NADPH molecules are subsequently used to produce glucose, providing energy and food for the plant.

The team’s core innovation was to strip away the part of the chloroplasts that consumes NADPH while keeping the thylakoids, where the light-reactions machinery of photosynthesis is, intact. This resulted in a nanosized package that acts as a dedicated NADPH factory capable of producing about 20 per cent more NADPH compared to unpackaged thylakoids. Prepared from the familiar spinach leaves using a patented, mild mechanical and chemical extraction method developed by the NUS team, the particles are roughly 400 nanometres across — small enough to be readily absorbed by cells. LEAF, when in the cells, then produces photosynthetic NADPH upon exposure to ambient light sources, and the NADPH produced tackles dry eye disease via two pathways – inside and outside the cell.

“This is an exciting finding as we have, for the first time, demonstrated that plant photosynthetic machinery can be transplanted into mammalian tissue to generate biologically useful molecules, powered entirely by the same light that enables our vision. We, too, can have limited photosynthetic abilities.” said Dr Xing Kuoran, the first author of the work.

Tested in living tissue

In laboratory tests on inflamed cells, LEAF restored NADPH levels within 30 minutes of light exposure, suppressed ROS and pivoted immune cells in the cornea from a pro-inflammatory to an anti-inflammatory state. When tested directly in tear samples collected from patients with dry eye disease, LEAF increased NADPH levels roughly 20-fold and reduced hydrogen peroxide, a key cell-damaging oxidant, by more than 95 per cent.

In their first preclinical trial in collaboration with ophthalmologists from Eye Centre of Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, LEAF administered as eye drops under ambient indoor lighting reversed corneal damage to near-healthy levels within five days, outperforming Restasis®. A second preclinical trial also confirmed the therapeutic effect. Safety assessments, including skin sensitisation, eye irritation and organ toxicity studies conducted over two months showed no adverse effects. The team plans to conduct clinical trials to further validate the technology.

More than meets the eye

“With LEAF, we now have a technology that harnesses ambient light to directly restore the molecule that dry eye disease depletes,” added Assoc Prof Leong. “As it is derived from spinach, delivered as a simple eye drop, requires no external device or power source and using the ambient light that is used for vision, we believe it has a strong potential for clinical translation. It is almost surreal when thinking of a possible future reality where human cells can have some limited but beneficial form of photosynthetic ability not only in the eye but elsewhere, too.”

In addition, as oxidative stress underpins a wide range of inflammatory conditions beyond dry eye disease, the team also sees potential for LEAF-based approaches wherever the body’s antioxidant defences are overwhelmed, particularly in tissues naturally accessible to visible light such as the retina, skin and underlying skeletal muscles. They are also developing new strategies that can produce therapeutically useful photosynthesised molecules in internal organs without the need for visible light penetration. 

The approach enables researchers to systematically evaluate how nanoparticle design, including shape, size and surface chemistry, influences their ability to accumulate in tumours and reach mitochondria. Among the candidates tested, two formulations emerged as standout performers. One, a folic acid-modified cubic gold nanoparticle, achieved 99 per cent tumour regression in preclinical studies when used in a combined treatment involving mitochondria-targeted RNA therapy and mild photothermal therapy.

Led by Assistant Professor Andy Tay from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the College of Design and Engineering and the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology at NUS, the study demonstrates how large libraries of nanomaterials can be screened efficiently inside living systems, providing a rational framework for designing nanoparticles that deliver drugs with far greater precision. The study was published in Advanced Materials on 17 February 2026.

A barcode system for navigating the body

Mitochondria are attractive targets in cancer therapy because they regulate key processes such as energy production and programmed cell death. Delivering drugs directly to these organelles can disrupt tumour metabolism and trigger cancer cell death. However, nanoparticles must overcome a series of biological barriers before reaching mitochondria: travelling through the bloodstream, entering tumours, penetrating cells and escaping cellular compartments that would otherwise degrade therapeutic cargo.

“Getting nanoparticles to the right place inside the body involves putting them through a complicated obstacle course,” said Asst Prof Tay. “Harnessing DNA barcodes enables us to track many nanoparticle designs simultaneously in living systems and quickly identify which ones can jump through various biological hoops successfully.”

In the study, each gold nanoparticle formulation was tagged with a unique DNA sequence, allowing the researchers to trace its distribution using next-generation sequencing. The team tested a library of 30 nanoparticle designs that varied in shape, size and targeting ligands. After administering the pooled nanoparticles to tumour-bearing preclinical models, the researchers analysed where each design accumulated — from whole organs to specific tumour cell types and ultimately to mitochondria.

This multiplexed approach generated more than 1,000 in vivo data points while requiring around 30-fold fewer in vivo models than conventional one-by-one screening experiments.

The work builds on the team’s earlier study published in November 2024, which first demonstrated the use of DNA barcoding to track nanoparticle biodistribution in tumours. While the previous study compared six nanoparticle designs at the tissue level, this new one greatly expands the library and extends the platform to analyse behaviour at cellular and subcellular scales.

“The results revealed an important insight: nanoparticles that accumulated efficiently in tumours were also far more likely to reach mitochondria,” added Asst Prof Tay. “In other words, successful tumour targeting appears to be a prerequisite for effective subcellular delivery.”

Among the nanoparticle formulations tested, two caught the team’s attention. Large spherical particles modified with folic acid accumulated strongly in tumours, partly due to a protective protein layer that prolonged circulation in the bloodstream. Meanwhile, large cubic nanoparticles entered tumour cells more efficiently through clathrin-mediated endocytosis — a cellular uptake pathway — enabling effective mitochondrial delivery.

A step towards precision nanomedicine

To explore the therapeutic potential of these findings, the researchers tested the cubic nanoparticle formulation in a combined treatment strategy. The particles were engineered to deliver small interfering RNA (siRNA) that disrupts mitochondrial gene expression, while also generating heat under near-infrared light through photothermal therapy.

This dual approach produced strong anticancer effects in preclinical studies. When applied together, the treatments led to almost complete tumour elimination after a single dose.

Beyond killing cancer cells directly, the nanoparticles also interacted with tumour-associated macrophages (immune cells that normally support tumour growth). The therapy appeared to shift these cells toward a tumour-fighting state, suggesting the approach may help reshape the tumour immune environment.

“Our findings show that nanoparticle design is not governed by a single factor such as shape or size,” added Asst Prof Tay. “Instead, multiple properties interact in complex ways. High-throughput screening platforms like ours allow us to uncover these relationships and move beyond trial-and-error in nanomedicine design.”

The platform could accelerate the development of precision nanomedicine by enabling researchers to rapidly identify nanoparticle designs suited for specific biological targets. Potential applications include targeted delivery of RNA therapies, gene-silencing treatments and photothermal agents for cancer and other diseases.

Looking ahead, the research team plans to expand the nanoparticle library further and integrate automation and artificial intelligence tools to analyse the large datasets generated by the screening platform. The researchers also aim to extend the method to target other cellular organelles, opening new possibilities for highly specific drug delivery within cells.

Results from the study, published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems on 6 April 2026, were an important output from a regional workshop organised by TMSI in 2023. The policy paper, which has contributions from experts in Singapore, Canada, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines, is the first of its kind on conserving giant clams in Southeast Asia. The study is a significant component of Dr Neo’s ongoing work as a recipient of the 2021 Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation which supports her research on conserving endangered giant clams in Southeast Asia.

“We conducted a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis based on our collective experiences in Southeast Asia.  Through the analysis, we discovered our common strengths and weaknesses, and overlapping opportunities that we can potentially expand upon to improve conservation and management of giant clams in our region,” said Dr Neo.

In Singapore, giant clams are threatened not by poaching but the degradation of habitats and sedimentation due to coastal development. Found mainly in the reefs of the Southern Islands, two giant clam species – the critically endangered fluted giant clam and endangered boring giant clam – are in very low numbers.

Dr Neo and scientists in the region have started breeding and culturing giant clams and restocking them in the wild. However, challenges to restocking in the region include low juvenile survival rates, high mortalities of restocked clams, poaching and high costs of production.

Following the policy paper, Dr Neo has plans to revamp giant clam conservation projects here and in the region.  She intends to work with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to conduct a species conservation planning exercise focused on Southeast Asia. The exercise will incorporate a population viability analysis which evaluates the threats faced by giant clam populations, their risks of extinction and chances for recovery. These new insights could potentially enhance conservation projects that are tailored for each country.

Read more about the study here.

A new platform developed by researchers from NUS could make that possible. Called Lytic Selection and Evolution (LySE), the system harnesses a modified bacteriophage — a virus that infects bacteria — to rapidly create and test many small genetic changes. It can improve long stretches of DNA (up to about 40,000 DNA letters), big enough to include most sets of genes needed for important chemical processes in cells.

A crash course in plastic-eating

To “teach” bacteria to break down new chemicals (such as ingredients in plastic), scientists give them a set of genes – called a gene pathway – that work together like an assembly line. After each round (called an “evolution”), scientists keep the bacteria that perform best (for example, the ones that grow better using the target chemical) and repeat the process. LySE is designed to speed up this “training” process.

In a proof-of-concept demonstration, LySE improved a set of five genes that let E. coli bacteria feed on ethylene glycol, a chemical used in making PET plastics. After only five cycles, the best-performing bacteria grew more than 50 per cent better on ethylene glycol. Because LySE changes only the chosen genes and uses fresh bacteria each round, scientists can move the improved genes into new bacteria easily, a critical step toward deploying plastic degrading microbes at scale.

Researchers led by Assistant Professor Julius Fredens from the Department of Biochemistry and the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI) programme at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, describe the platform in a paper published in Nature Microbiology on 1^st May 2026.

“Traditionally, scientists had to choose between slow but highly controlled evolution methods, or super-fast but uncontrollable continuous methods,” said Asst Prof Fredens. “Our goal was to create a best-of-both-worlds system: a tool that rapidly evolves large biological pathways while still letting us hit the pause button to control the process and prevent unwanted genetic errors.”

“Sloppy” by design

Directed evolution is a method scientists use to “speed up” natural selection in the lab. They make random changes (mutations) to a gene, then test and keep the versions that work best, repeating this process many times.

Another method, continuous evolution, such as phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE), can do these mutation-and-selection cycles very quickly, but they have two main problems: they can only handle small pieces of DNA (about 8,000 DNA letters long), and they can get “cheaters” where the bacteria mutate their own DNA in a way that tricks the test and helps them survive, without actually improving the target gene.

“LySE sidesteps those two problems by exploiting bacteriophage T7, a virus that infects E. coli bacteria,” explained PhD candidate, Shujian Ong, who conducted much of the research. “T7 replicates rapidly and breaks the bacterial cell open within minutes. We have engineered the virus so that, when it makes new virus particles, it also packs in an extra small ring of DNA called a phagemid which carries the group of genes they want to improve.”

To make a lot of the new versions of those genes, the phagemid is copied by a specially engineered DNA-copying enzyme (T7 DNA polymerase) that is intentionally error-prone. Think of a normal DNA polymerase as a precise photocopier: this engineered variant is deliberately sloppy, making many “typos” (mutations), — about 160,000 times more than the bacterium’s own DNA copying system.

Paradoxically, the high error rate is what makes the system controllable. Because the polymerase is so “sloppy”, it also messes up the virus’s own DNA. As a result, the phage becomes weaker, losing the ability to spread uncontrollably; it can only destroy the bacteria when added in large numbers.

By adjusting the ratio of phage to bacteria, the researchers toggle between a mutation phase in which the target genes get a lot of new mutations and these mutated genes are packed into new phage particles, and a selection phase, in which mutated genes are put into fresh, normal bacteria and tested for improved function.

From antibiotic resistance to plastic digestion

The NUS team validated the LySE method in two ways. In an antibiotic-resistance check, the improved trait persisted after the genes were moved into new bacteria, confirming the changes were built into the target gene cluster.

Second, the researchers tried improving a whole “mini-factory” in cells: a five-gene pathway that lets bacteria use ethylene glycol for growth and energy. After five rounds with less glucose each time, the best-performing strain produced 50.9 per cent more biomass using ethylene glycol as its sole food source.

Sequencing showed LySE changed both regulatory regions (switches that control how much a gene is turned on or off) and protein-coding genes, and each helpful mutation was confirmed by adding it back one at a time into a fresh host.

“Without LySE, a bacterium’s instinct is to mutate its own entire genome to find ways to eat more plastic, but it struggles to find optimal solutions that way,” added Asst Prof Fredens. “LySE improves the target gene cluster tremendously without accumulating unwanted mutations in the rest of the bacterium’s DNA. Because all the improvements are strictly contained within our specific gene cluster, we can easily transfer this highly optimised pathway into entirely different bacteria.”

Engineering new-to-nature biology

The platform’s capacity to handle gene clusters of up to 40 kilobases in length — five times the limit of the most  commonly used phage-based evolution method — opens the door to applications that were previously impractical. These include optimising biosynthetic pathways for pharmaceuticals, engineering microbes that break down environmental pollutants and evolving entirely synthetic metabolic routes for carbon capture. The workflow requires only standard laboratory equipment and the mixing of phage lysates with cell cultures, making the technology accessible to laboratories without specialist phage biology expertise.

A patent has been filed for the LySE technology. Looking ahead, the team plans to apply LySE to systems that are entirely synthetic and new to nature.

“A key target is engineering synthetic CO2-fixing metabolic pathways, taking computationally designed routes that have never existed in the real world and optimising them so they actually function efficiently inside living cells,” said Asst Prof Fredens. “With LySE, we can take AI-designed enzymes and metabolic pathways and rapidly optimise them to work in practice. That is where massive potential lies.”

The conservation project was kicked off at the NUS-ArCLab: Shaping Sustainable Heritage Futures event graced by Ms Indranee Rajah, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Finance and Second Minister for National Development, as the Guest-of-Honour. Mr Foo Cexiang, a Member of Parliament for the Tanjong Pagar Group Representation Constituency, attended the event as a special guest.

Housed in a conserved heritage building at 141 Neil Road, NUS-ArCLab was established in November 2022 as a research and training centre within the Department of Architecture under the College of Design and Engineering at NUS. It aims to advance conservation practice through research, capacity building and public engagement while supporting the advancement of Singapore’s climate resilience goals by reducing the environmental impacts and improving the sustainability of heritage buildings.

Turning research into restoration: Traditional materials, modern methods

This project will directly implement research outcomes developed over the past few years — demonstrating how evidence-based restoration can improve occupant comfort, sustainability and long-term building performance while retaining the building’s heritage values.

A key innovation is the use of roof tiles developed in collaboration with partners in Japan. The newly developed tiles, inspired by the properties of handmade v-shaped tiles used historically, reintroduces porosity to enhance passive cooling and improve occupant comfort in tropical conditions. These new v-shaped tiles will be installed as part of a modified roof system that will not include a metal sheet secondary roof commonly found in many historic buildings in Singapore. While widely used today, the metal secondary roof can disrupt passive cooling strategies and often render attics uncomfortable to use without air-conditioning. By restoring and enhancing roof performance, the project aims to reduce reliance on mechanical cooling, thus reducing the building’s carbon emissions.

NUS-ArCLab will also revive traditional lime-based repairs, chosen for material compatibility with historic fabric. Lime helps historic building elements “breathe”, supports passive cooling, and reduces downstream maintenance issues that can arise when modern materials are introduced into historic buildings.

To strengthen long-term stewardship, the project will deploy a digital twin powered by artificial intelligence to support facilities management, real-time monitoring of environmental conditions, and tracking of both lifetime embodied carbon and operational carbon. The system allows operators to ask simple questions about energy use, carbon emissions and efficiency and receive clear, real-time answers. The result is tighter control of carbon outcomes, lower operating costs, and a smarter, more resilient path to sustaining net zero performance. NUS-ArCLab aims to make this a practical model for managing heritage buildings more effectively, while supporting national sustainability goals.

Pilot retrofit strategies with wider relevance for Singapore’s heritage stock

This NUS-ArCLab conservation project is intended as a full-scale pilot, because demonstrating the effectiveness of new conservation and retrofit innovations often requires implementation on a real building. Strategies implemented at NUS-ArCLab are designed to influence how future restoration projects can balance conservation principles with climate resilience and net-zero ambitions.

With more than 7,000 historic buildings in Singapore, the approaches developed through this project are expected to have broader applicability for improving sustainability, functionality and occupant comfort across the nation’s heritage building stock. At a district scale, more effective passive cooling and reduced air-conditioning demand would also help lower carbon emissions and reduce the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect in conserved areas with clusters of historic buildings.

Although the laboratory will not be able to continue operating in the same way when undergoing repairs, the repairs present a unique opportunity. NUS-ArCLab will use the live restoration as a teaching platform for current students in the Master of Arts in Architectural Conservation (MAArC) programme, integrating site-based learning into modules.

In parallel, NUS-ArCLab plans to organise public events during the repair works to strengthen public awareness and to support the training of specialist contractors, contributing to capacity building for Singapore’s built environment sector.

Dr Nikhil Joshi, Principal Investigator at NUS-ArCLab, said, “As Singapore continues to evolve rapidly under pressures of redevelopment, climate change and technological transformation, NUS-ArCLab’s repair and upgrading works aim to demonstrate best practices for climate-resilient conservation. NUS-ArCLab seeks to become Singapore’s first historic building retrofitted to achieve net-zero operational energy and the first to attain BCA Green Mark Platinum Zero Energy certification, implementing scalable strategies to enhance sustainability, functionality and occupant comfort across historic buildings nationwide.”

Current treatments offer only partial relief. The two mainstay therapies — lactulose and the antibiotic rifaximin — work primarily by reducing ammonia production in the gut, but neither corrects the full spectrum of metabolic disruptions that drive the disease. Patients remain vulnerable to recurrence, and rifaximin carries the added risk of disrupting the gut’s natural microbiome. A fundamentally different approach is needed — one that can tackle several disease drivers at the same time.

A research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS), led by Professor Matthew Chang from the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI) has recently achieved a major breakthrough on this front.

The researchers, who are also from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, engineered strains of a naturally occurring beneficial gut bacterium to function as programmable therapeutics capable of restoring metabolic balance across the gut, liver and brain. The study was published in the scientific journal Cell on 24 April 2026.

Reprogramming bacteria to fight disease on multiple fronts

The researchers redesigned Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1 — a well-characterised commensal bacterium — into two complementary therapeutic strains. The first strain absorbs excess ammonia from the gut and converts it into branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), essential nutrients that are depleted in HE patients. The second strain breaks down L-glutamine in the gut before it can be converted into yet more ammonia, cutting off a key source of the toxin.

Laboratory studies using a cocktail of both strains for HE showed that the combination reduced circulating ammonia by up to 10-fold and lowered brain ammonia to levels comparable to those in healthy conditions. Key metabolic imbalances — including depleted BCAAs and elevated L-glutamine — were restored, alongside marked improvements in anxiety-like symptoms and cognitive function.

“We found that engineered gut bacteria can simultaneously remove toxic ammonia, restore essential nutrients, and improve brain-related outcomes,” explained Prof Chang. “This directly addresses a major limitation of current treatments, which typically target only a single root cause rather than the full spectrum of metabolic drivers.”

Distinct advantages over a front-line antibiotic

Compared with rifaximin, the engineered bacterial cocktail achieved stronger improvements in anxiety and short-term memory. In addition, neuronal signalling was normalised and neuroinflammation was reduced, suggesting gut metabolic correction can drive benefits in the central nervous system.

The engineered strains also preserved the natural diversity of the gut microbiome, a significant advantage over rifaximin, which markedly reduced microbial richness. In long-term safety studies, the bacteria were well tolerated, showed no signs of systemic toxicity, and were cleared within 72 hours of the final dose.

A platform for next-generation “living medicines”

The team’s findings point to a versatile platform for what Prof Chang calls a new class of precision therapeutics. As the bacterial strains are modular — each engineered to perform a specific metabolic task — they could be adapted to target other disorders involving the gut-liver-brain axis, including urea-cycle defects and other hyperammonaemic conditions.

“Our study demonstrates the development of a multi-functional, programmable microbial therapy that can coordinate several therapeutic actions simultaneously inside the body,” said Prof Chang. “Unlike standard treatments such as rifaximin, which broadly suppress gut bacteria, our approach uses live biotherapeutics to precisely reprogramme metabolism while preserving the natural gut ecosystem.”

A patent application has been filed to support translation of the technology towards clinical use. The team’s next steps include evaluating the long-term performance of the engineered strains and expanding the platform to target other diseases linked to metabolic imbalance.

“Our long-term goal is to translate this work into the clinic and develop a new class of programmable, microbe-based therapies,” added Prof Chang. “These findings establish a strong foundation toward realising that vision.”

Prof Hew has been actively involved in tropical orchid research for over 30 years. His lifelong research has resulted in significant advances in the understanding of the physiology and cultivation of tropical orchids, particularly in optimising their growth and development. His work expanded the understanding of the various patterns of carbon dioxide fixation in tropical orchids, partitioning of assimilates, advances in orchid tissue culture, flower senescence, and postharvest handling of orchid cut-flowers.

His research directly contributed to innovations in commercial orchid cultivation and postharvest management. His work on plant growth regulators and postharvest physiology enabled longer-lasting cut flowers, benefitting exporters and commercial growers in Singapore and the region.

His consulting expertise extended beyond academia, collaborating with government agencies, commercial enterprises, and international research institutions to drive orchid biotechnology, conservation, and sustainable cultivation practices.

Prof Hew has published more than 140 works in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Of his three books, The Physiology of Tropical Orchids in Relation to the Industry has been particularly well-received. 

Established in 2023, the AOSORA is regarded as AOS’, and possibility the world’s, first and most prestigious award dedicated specifically to orchid scientists and researchers. The AOSORA is administered and conferred by the AOS Research Committee, a panel made up of respected orchid scientists.

The selection process is highly competitive. To receive the award, a scientist must be nominated by a world-renowned peer, supported by multiple letters of endorsement from established international expert, selected by the vote of the AOS Research Committee and approved by AOS Trustees.

Prof Hew is the fourth recipient of the AOSORA.

Read more about Prof Hew’s research achievements here.

Published in Nature Communications on 10 March 2026, the study introduces a paired protein language model (PPLM) that learns from two interacting proteins simultaneously, rather than analysing them in isolation. This marks a significant shift in how AI is applied to biology, enabling more accurate prediction of protein–protein interactions that underpin nearly all cellular processes.

A new way to understand protein interactions

Protein–protein interactions are inherently relational, yet most current AI models are trained on single protein sequences. This limits their ability to fully capture how proteins recognise and bind to one another.

To address this, the research team developed PPLM, a model specifically designed to learn inter-protein relationships during training. By jointly encoding paired protein sequences, PPLM captures both individual protein features and partner-dependent interaction patterns within a unified framework. The model was trained on more than three million protein pairs, enabling it to learn interaction patterns at scale.

Strong performance across multiple tasks

Building on this foundation, the team developed three specialised tools: PPLM-PPI for predicting whether proteins interact, PPLM-Affinity for estimating binding strength, and PPLM-Contact for identifying interaction interfaces. Across benchmark datasets, the model improved interaction prediction accuracy by up to about 17 per cent over leading methods, with consistent gains across multiple species.

Notably, the model outperformed both sequence-based and structure-based methods in challenging scenarios such as antibody–antigen interactions. In addition, the model identified patterns that match how proteins interact in real life, indicating that it can capture biologically meaningful relationships between proteins.

“This work highlights the growing role of AI in transforming the life sciences. By moving from single-protein analysis to interaction-aware modelling, the study lays the groundwork for future advances in multi-protein complex prediction, systems-level biology, and AI-guided therapeutic design,” explained Prof Zhang, who also has appointments at the Department of Biochemistry at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and the Department of Computer Science at the NUS School of Computing.

Towards scalable and translational impact

By improving the accuracy and scalability of protein interaction modelling, PPLM could support a wide range of applications, including proteome-scale interaction discovery, drug target identification, and therapeutic development.

The NUS team is now working to further enhance the model by integrating structural and experimental data and extending its application to more complex biological systems such as host–pathogen interactions.

Professor Giorgia Pastorin and her team from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Science spent nearly a decade tackling this under-recognised but growing problem. “With more teenagers and young adults colouring their hair — and with allergies not being age-dependent — the number of sensitised individuals is expected to increase,” Prof Pastorin notes.

PPD’s chemistry has made it indispensable in commercial hair products. It delivers stable, long-lasting colour, but it also penetrates the skin easily and binds strongly to skin proteins. These very properties, however, can trigger lifelong allergic contact dermatitis.

The goal of the NUS team is simple yet challenging: create hair dyes that work as well as those with PPD, but without the painful allergic reactions.

The research, in fact, began when a clinician who treats patients with hair dye allergies posed an unexpected question to Prof Pastorin’s team: As pharmacists, you know how to deliver drugs into the body, but do you know how not to deliver them through the skin? That challenge sparked a research direction that has since expanded into a full translational effort.

A safer solution for hair colouring

Hair dye–induced contact dermatitis is not just uncomfortable; severe cases can lead to facial swelling, long-term sensitivity, and significant impacts on quality of life. While alternative hair dyes are available in the market, many still cause cross-reactions in up to 30 per cent of individuals already allergic to PPD, leaving few safe options for consumers. This gap is especially relevant in Asia, where use of hair dye is high, but comprehensive data on allergies remain limited.

To address these challenges, Prof Pastorin and her team collaborated with chemists, clinicians, and dermatologists to design and synthesise over 20 new PPD analogues. These compounds were engineered to minimise skin penetration and reduce reactivity with skin proteins to lower sensitisation potential, while retaining strong interactions with the hair shaft to provide intrinsic colour without the use of heavy oxidising agents.

Early safety tests showed promising results. Several of the new compounds developed by the NUS team demonstrated significantly lower sensitisation potential than PPD, and in some cases performed better than current commercial substitutes.

At the molecular level, the researchers achieved this by fine-tuning the structure of hair dyes, including the molecular weight, electronic properties, and water affinity. These adjustments produced molecules that minimally permeate the scalp, are less reactive toward key proteins involved in allergic responses, yet still retain the ability to produce stable, natural-looking colour when applied to hair. Striking this balance, says Prof Pastorin, “took multiple iterations and many discussions with collaborating clinicians.”

Next steps

With support from recently-acquired government funding, the team will now progress towards formulating leave-on and wash-off prototypes and scaling up dye production. They also plan to conduct genetic safety tests, which would determine whether their dyes are suitable for long-term use. Additionally, there are plans to expand clinical trials in the United States and across Asia, including with cohorts of individuals sensitive to PPD.

“We hope to confirm that our dyes do not show cross-reactivity in sensitised patients, and ensure they remain safe for Asian populations,” Prof Pastorin says.

If successful, this work could reshape how permanent hair dyes are designed, replacing a decades-old chemical standard with solutions built for modern safety needs, without sacrificing the performance that consumers expect.

Many successful language-learning apps are built around a simple idea of making learners guess a word based on a picture, even before they learn the answer. This design isn’t just for fun, but a strategy that draws on decades of cognitive psychology which suggests that attempting an answer first and then seeing the correct one strengthens memory.

Now, a new study by NUS provides formal experimental evidence confirming why this works. The research shows that word-picture guessing exercises with immediate feedback can significantly improve adults’ ability to recall new vocabulary in a second language.

“Millions of people learn new languages through apps that rely heavily on word-picture guessing tasks, but the scientific evidence for how much those activities actually help learners remember new vocabulary has been limited,” said Assistant Professor Steven Pan from the Department of Psychology, NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. “Our study shows that attempting an answer first, even if you may not have learnt the word yet, and then seeing the correct response boosts memory and supports lasting learning.”

So why does guessing help? “When you try to answer before knowing the correct response, your brain actively searches memory and engages more deeply with the material. Seeing the correct answer immediately afterwards strengthens memory by helping the brain encode and retain the information more effectively than passive study alone,” explains Asst Prof Pan.

The ‘pretesting’ effect in action

In learning science, this ‘guessing-then-feedback’ approach is known as pretesting. Learners attempt an answer before they have fully learned the material and then receive instant feedback on whether they got it right or wrong, and which is the correct answer. Even if the initial guess is wrong, the process primes the brain to encode the correct answer more effectively, making later recall stronger than passive study alone.

Although prior research has shown that an initial attempt can strengthen later memory, most studies have focused on purely verbal materials (e.g., word pairs or text). It has therefore remained unclear whether the same benefit extends to the word-picture matching tasks that are central to many digital language-learning platforms.

How the study was conducted

Asst Prof Steven Pan and NUS Department of Psychology Master’s student Ms Tabitha Chua designed four controlled experiments, across which a total of 341 adults who had no prior knowledge of Spanish participated. They were asked to learn Spanish nouns using two different learning methods:

• Guessing-with-feedback (pretesting), where participants made a multiple-choice guess before being told the correct word-picture pairing; and
• Study-only (reading), where participants viewed the word-picture pairs without guessing.

The experiments also varied the exercise format, or the direction in which information was presented, both of which are common in language apps:

• Word→image, where participants saw a Spanish word and chose the matching picture; and
• Image→word, where participants saw a picture and chose the correct Spanish word.

Memory was then assessed through cued recall (producing the answer from memory) and multiple-choice recognition tests.

Overall, the results showed that participants who guessed first, i.e. learned using the guessing-with-feedback method, consistently recalled words more accurately, whether they were presented with the word or image first.

“Second language learners often hesitate to guess until they feel confident, but the study’s results suggest that early attempts, even without full knowledge, can help learners engage more actively with words,” said Asst Prof Pan.

“For anyone using apps or self-study tools, choosing exercises that encourage trying first and learning from feedback is a simple way to strengthen vocabulary recall over time,” he added.

The findings of the study were published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications on 6 March 2026. The team hopes the work will guide the design of evidence-based learning activities in both digital language platforms and classroom practice.

Wearable devices could fill the gap by continuously tracking cardiovascular markers linked to the autonomic nervous system, but their readings degrade sharply during everyday movement. Motion artefacts from muscle activity, body movement and physiological interference overwhelm the faint heart and blood pressure signals these devices are trying to capture, and current mitigation strategies typically address only one type of noise or a narrow frequency band.

A research team led by Professor Ho Ghim Wei from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering under the College of Design and Engineering at the National University of Singapore, with Research Fellow Dr Tian Guo as first author, has developed a metahydrogel platform integrated with AI-driven signal processing that suppresses multiple sources of motion noise simultaneously. The system delivers an electrocardiograph (ECG) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 37.36 dB and blood pressure deviation as low as 3 mmHg during movement — accuracy that meets ISO clinical-grade standards and outperforms commercial trackers currently available in the market. Combined with machine learning, the platform classifies fatigue levels with 92 per cent accuracy, pointing towards objective, continuous mental health monitoring in real-world settings.

The findings were published in Nature Sensors on 24 March 2026.

Filtering noise at the source

Rather than relying solely on software to clean up noisy data, the team tackled the problem at the sensor-body interface itself. The metahydrogel artefact-mitigating platform (MAP) combines two filtering mechanisms in a single material. Nanoparticles self-assembled into periodic bands within the hydrogel scatter and absorb mechanical vibrations, much like how a soundproofing panel traps sound energy, blocking movement noise within targeted frequency ranges. At the same time, a biocompatible glycerol-water electrolyte controls how quickly ions travel through the gel, letting low-frequency heart signals (below 30 Hz) pass through, while suppressing higher-frequency muscle electrical noise. A machine-learning denoising algorithm then removes any remaining unstructured noise while preserving critical physiological features.

The platform is soft enough to match the mechanical properties of biological tissue, breathable with a water vapour transmission rate exceeding that of human skin and durable under repeated stretching. By combining improved hardware with smart algorithms, the system made the ECG signal much cleaner, boosting signal quality from 5.19 dB to 37.36 dB. This clearer signal helps it detect key ECG peaks more reliably, raising peak-detection accuracy from 52 per cent to 93 per cent and making it easier to tell fatigue-related patterns from normal heart rhythms.

“Compared with current commercial devices, our metahydrogel platform demonstrates superior performance, particularly under motion conditions where artefact suppression is critical. Current smartwatches typically achieve ECG signal-to-noise ratios of 10-20 dB, which can decrease by approximately 40 per cent under motion due to artefacts and unstable contact. Our system achieves around 37 dB during daily activities,” said Dr Tian.

From stable signals to mental-state decoding

Because fatigue disrupts the autonomic nervous system, it leaves measurable traces in heart rate variability, blood pressure patterns and ECG waveform features — but only if those signals can be captured cleanly during everyday activity. The team built a fully integrated, flexible wearable MAP system with wireless transmission and used it to monitor participants over multiple days, including simulated driving tasks designed to induce fatigue.

Using high-quality cardiovascular data collected from the hydrogel sensor, a deep-learning system identified fatigue levels with 92 per cent accuracy, versus 64 per cent when trained on data collected without MAP. The team also showed that the system meets the ISO 81060-2 gold-standard requirements for blood pressure monitoring.

Beyond fatigue tracking, MAP suppressed artefact across diverse biosignal types, including heart sounds, respiratory sounds, voice, brain-wave and eye-movement recordings, highlighting its potential for broader neurophysiological and mental health monitoring.

Towards real-world mental-health monitoring

The team spent about four years developing the underlying sensing technologies before arriving at the metahydrogel concept about two and a half years ago. Designing and fabricating the platform took about a year, during which the researchers built a library of metahydrogels with different material systems to target noise across different frequency ranges. A further year of system integration and application validation followed, including exploration of its potential for mental-health monitoring.

“We hope to work closely with mental-health physicians to better understand what types of physiological data are most relevant in real-world settings, as well as the level of accuracy required to meet clinical needs. Clinicians can provide valuable insights to help us establish meaningful links between the data and pathological conditions,” said Prof Ho.

On the industry side, the team is seeking partners to improve device consistency and scalability. “Our current material synthesis and system fabrication are still largely based on laboratory processes. We aim to collaborate with industrial partners to optimise manufacturing strategies and advance the platform toward practical, product-level implementation,” she added.

Recognising this shift from the outset, the National University of Singapore (NUS) has, over many years, embedded interdisciplinary research into its core research strategy, shaping how the University brings together expertise across science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and the humanities.

Professor Liu Bin, NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology), said, “Many of today’s challenges span technological, social and policy dimensions, and solving them requires integrated perspectives, close cross-disciplinary collaboration, and partnerships that connect research to real-world needs. At NUS, we intentionally build interdisciplinarity into our research platforms, funding schemes and collaborative environments, so our researchers can work beyond traditional academic boundaries.”

Addressing complex challenges through collaboration

To support this, NUS has developed platforms that empower cross-disciplinary collaboration both within the University and with partners in government, industry and academia. Researchers are connected through joint programmes, workshops and shared research environments, with common infrastructure that encourages collaboration and exchange of ideas.

One of the successful examples is the NUS Smart Nation Research Cluster (SNRC), established in 2018. Today, SNRC brings together more than 13 research centres and institutes, placing researchers from Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines alongside experts in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) to address national needs. Research under SNRC spans a wide range of areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, data and cybersecurity, green finance, logistics, and the public understanding of risk. Supporting these efforts is the innovation4.0 (i4.0) building, a hub for digital innovation and research under SNRC, allowing researchers to tap shared expertise and tools while working alongside partners exploring digital transformation solutions under one roof.

NUS’ interdisciplinary approach has enabled a pipeline of projects across domains, from digital defence and climate resilience to public policy simulation tools. For instance, NUS researchers are drawing on expertise from STEM and HSS to tackle challenges in the digital information space. Through the Information Gyroscope (iGyro) programme, a five-year initiative involving researchers from computing, social sciences, law, business, engineering and public policy, NUS teams study how false information spreads online and develop ways to strengthen digital information resilience. The programme also studies how policies and regulations evolve globally to counter misinformation, providing insights to support future governance approaches.

In a major push to deepen computationally powered social science and humanities research, NUS recently launched the Centre for Computational Social Science and Humanities (CSSH). This interdisciplinary hub combines AI, network analysis, and simulations with domain expertise to study social phenomena and tackle societal challenges in areas like social media, health, environment, and culture. For example, CSSH is leading a project to develop AI-enabled social simulations for policymakers to refine their ideas before real-world implementation.

These initiatives are resulting in stronger and broader scholarly collaboration. The share of NUS publications co-authored by STEM and HSS researchers has risen steadily, especially in the past five years, compared with the preceding period. Notably, more than 70% of these publications involved international collaborators, reflecting how interdisciplinary work can also be a catalyst for global collaboration.

An ecosystem that enables interdisciplinary research to flourish

At NUS, funding, shared research spaces and facilities, talent development and partnerships work together to catalyse collaboration across disciplines and spur the translation of research into real-world impact.

Strong institutional commitment

NUS has increased investment in interdisciplinary science research in recent years. In 2024, NUS has invested S$20 million, along with external funding, to kick-start the NUS Artificial Intelligence Institute (NAII), to advance foundational AI research, examine the policy and societal implications of AI, and translate capabilities into real-world applications across domains, such as education, healthcare, sustainability, logistics and supply chains. By pairing AI specialists with domain experts to support real-world deployment, NAII has strengthened industry and ecosystem engagement, enabled new collaborative projects, and served as a strong training platform for interdisciplinary, future-ready graduates.

Similarly, NUS Sustainable Futures was established to drive interdisciplinary solutions to climate and resource challenges, delivering scalable innovations in green energy, sustainable cities, and heat resilience for a balanced future. 

Complementing these efforts, since 2021, NUS’ research office has provided over S$10 million in seed funding to catalyse interdisciplinary collaborations and grow over 20 strong research projects. In FY2025, a further S$5 million was committed to support 19 interdisciplinary projects spanning multiple faculties, with a strong emphasis on STEM-HSS collaboration to strengthen the culture of interdisciplinary collaboration across faculties. Building on this momentum, NUS will be committing S$5 million annually for the next three years in seed funding to support interdisciplinary research.  

Cutting-edge platforms and research environments

By building cutting-edge research platforms and shared spaces, NUS brings diverse expertise together, enabling collaboration and accelerating translation from discovery to real-world impact.

To facilitate interdisciplinary research, NUS developed an online database showcasing several hundred high-value equipment and facilities available to researchers from NUS as well as collaborating institutes across Singapore’s research ecosystem. This builds on our ongoing participation in various nationwide facility sharing initiatives, including SingMass for mass spectrometry facilities, SingaScope for microscopy facilities, and SingEM for electron microscopy facilities. To foster national and international collaboration, these facilities are open to researchers from other universities and industry partners.      

These initiatives enable researchers across disciplines to access specialised tools, data and experimental capabilities, while creating natural spaces for collaboration and the exchange of ideas. The Engineering-in-Medicine hub, for example, connects engineering, medicine, science and entrepreneurship, bringing researchers, clinicians and external partners together to translate healthcare technologies from laboratory research into clinical workflows and real-world applications.

Talent development and interdisciplinary education

NUS strengthens interdisciplinarity by aligning talent policies and education pathways around team-based, cross-domain research and problem-solving.

Promotion and tenure at NUS incorporate frameworks that recognise contributions across disciplinary boundaries and team-based science. Cross-faculty hiring committees also support recruitment that strengthens multidisciplinary capabilities, including emerging areas such as AI+X and sustainability. In education, new interdisciplinary colleges, such as College of Humanities and Sciences (2020), College of Design and Engineering (2021) and NUS College (2022) were established to bring disciplines closer through shared curricula, thematic clusters and joint research platforms.

Innovation and Societal Impact

Partnerships with government agencies, industry and academic collaborators help connect research with real-world deployment and policy needs.  The Health District @ Queenstown is a vibrant living laboratory for interdisciplinary research, uniting expertise in healthcare, engineering, urban planning, and social sciences as NUS researchers partner with the Housing & Development Board, the National University Health System, and stakeholders from the public, private, and people sectors to develop, test, and deploy innovations such as devices  that help seniors monitor vital signs and manage chronic conditions at home.

With more than 200 technologies rigorously evaluated and refined down to the most impactful essentials, these solutions are being rolled out to enhance residents’ quality of life and support healthier ageing across the Queenstown community.

The future is increasingly interdisciplinary

“Looking ahead, NUS will further strengthen interdisciplinary platforms that translate research into real-world impact, while expanding strategic collaborations with government, industry and international partners. Concurrently, we are also deepening STEM–HSS collaboration across both research and education to support more holistic, impactful outcomes,” Prof Liu explained.

Together with continued interdisciplinary hiring and partnerships, NUS aims to harness expertise across disciplines to address the complex challenges facing Singapore and the wider region, translating research into practical solutions that deliver a positive impact beyond the University.

By attracting world-class talent, advancing innovation, and strengthening collaborations with key national and global partners, NUS will drive research and education with clear purpose, delivering tangible societal benefits and reinforcing our commitment to translational excellence for a brighter future.

The advance removes a long-standing bottleneck in biohybrid robotics — machines driven by living cells rather than conventional motors. Because muscle-based actuators are soft, quiet and efficient at small scales, stronger versions could unlock minimally invasive biomedical tools, soft environmental sensors and fully biodegradable robots that safely degrade after completing their task.

“For years, researchers have been interested in building robots powered by living muscle because biological actuation is soft, adaptive and energy-efficient at small scales. However, the performance of these systems has been limited by the low force output of cultured skeletal muscle. If the actuator is weak, the robot cannot move fast, generate meaningful thrust, or perform useful tasks,” said Assistant Professor Tan Yu Jun from the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS, who led the research.

“The purpose of this study was not just to build a faster robot, but to remove a fundamental bottleneck in the field and open the door to high-performance biohybrid systems designed with sustainability in mind,” Asst Prof Tan added.

The study was published in Nature Communications on 18 March 2026. In December 2025, the first author of the paper, Dr Chen Pengyu, won the Best Poster Award based on this study at the Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting 2025, one of the largest international conferences for materials science research.

Two muscles in an arm-wrestling match

The key insight came from a behaviour that biologists have long observed but rarely exploited: the spontaneous contractions that young skeletal muscle cells produce as they mature. Starting around day three of differentiation, engineered tissues begin twitching on their own, peaking by day five before fading as the cells reach full maturity. Although most researchers had treated this as a biological curiosity, the NUS team treated it as a training resource.

They designed a platform in which two muscle tissues are coupled through a sliding block, so that when one contracts, it stretches the other, which then contracts back. The result is continuous cycles of shortening and lengthening that run autonomously throughout the week of early maturation, with no external power source, control unit or manual intervention.

“As the cells mature, they naturally begin to contract spontaneously. Because the two tissues are connected, they continuously pull against each other, effectively exercising without any external control,” explained Asst Prof Tan.

The self-trained muscles generated a maximum force of 7.05 millinewtons and a stress of 8.51 millinewtons per square millimetre — the highest values recorded for this cell line in biohybrid robotics, and more than an order of magnitude above many previously reported figures. The method uses a commercially available muscle cell line found in labs worldwide, making it far more reproducible and cheaper than conventional approaches.

Optimising OstraBot to achieve personal bests

The team developed a physiology-based model tracing the full chain from electrical stimulation through calcium signalling and muscle activation to force output, then used it to guide OstraBot’s design. Inspired by the boxfish, which keeps its body rigid and propels itself entirely by oscillating its tail, OstraBot pairs this model-informed structure with a single trained muscle that drives two flexible tails. At optimal stiffness and 3 Hz stimulation, it swam more than three times faster than an identical robot powered by conventionally cultured muscle.

Beyond speed, the robot demonstrated something equally significant: precise controllability. Its speed could be tuned continuously by adjusting electrical field strength, and a sound-triggered system let it start and stop in response to clapping signals.

“The clap shows that the robot is not just alive — it is controllable. In the past, muscle-powered robots either moved constantly without clear control or were too weak to respond visibly. Our strengthened skeletal muscle allows the robot to react clearly to an external signal, similar to how nerves control muscles in the body,” said Asst Prof Tan. “This demonstrates that biohybrid robots can combine strength with precise regulation, which is essential for real-world applications.”

Robots with a vanishing act

The NUS team is now pursuing systems in which all structural materials are biodegradable — robots that perform their function and then safely break down. Possible applications include environmental monitoring devices deployed in sensitive ecosystems such as wetlands or coral reefs, as well as temporary implantable tools that perform a clinical task before dissolving inside the body, eliminating the need for surgical retrieval.

“Strength is one important milestone, but long-term stability, energy efficiency and lifecycle design are equally important,” said Asst Prof Tan. “Ultimately, we aim to develop biohybrid machines that are not only high-performance but also environmentally responsible by design.”

The team's next steps include integrating biodegradable structural materials, refining control strategies and improving the durability and efficiency of muscle-powered robotic systems.

Enhancing the nutritional value of everyday staples

The study integrates a purified betacyanin-rich extract (PBRE) derived from red dragon fruit peel into wheat bread at controlled concentrations. At an optimal fortification level of 0.75 per cent, the extract improves dough structure and bread texture while delivering measurable nutritional benefits.

Moving beyond the anthocyanin extracts they had previously studied, the NUS team turned to betacyanins from red dragon fruit peel—a novel and promising alternative for bread fortification. While the extraction methods are similar, betacyanins are more stable at common food pH levels and dissolve easily in water. This allows lower doses and more reliable interactions with gluten during processing. Additionally, in vitro studies indicate that betacyanins have higher bioavailability than anthocyanins, suggesting they may be more readily absorbed and could potentially deliver greater nutritional benefits.

“Functional staples such as PBRE-fortified bread provide a practical way to incorporate bioactive compounds into daily diets. With diabetes rates increasing globally, improving the nutritional quality of commonly consumed foods may help reduce glycaemic load and enhance antioxidant intake without requiring major changes in eating habits,” said Prof Zhou, who heads the NUS Department of Food Science and Technology.

Laboratory tests showed that betacyanins interact with gluten proteins in the dough; at moderate levels, the dough rises better, while high concentrations reduce dough elasticity and lead to compromise bread quality. To strike the right balance, NUS researchers identified 0.75 per cent fortification as the most effective level for maintaining baking quality while achieving nutritional gains.

The fortified bread demonstrated substantially higher antioxidant levels than conventional bread and slower starch breakdown during digestion, resulting in a lower estimated glycaemic index. The findings were published in the scientific journal Food Chemistry on 25 December 2025.

Turning food waste into functional ingredients

At a time when global food waste is at historically high levels, the NUS team see added value in converting agricultural by-products that are typically discarded into functional food ingredients. Instead of using whole fruit peel, the team worked with a purified extract to achieve more accurate and consistent results, while demonstrating how food waste can be reused in food production. 

The researchers are now studying how similar natural extracts can be added to other everyday foods, to help reuse food waste and improve both food nutrition and production efficiency. 

Asst Prof Li develops physics-informed AI systems that use medical imaging data to build personalised digital models of the human heart. Her work focuses on translating mathematical theory into clinical value, linking abstract equations with practical decisions in diagnosis and treatment.

At the centre of this translation is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), one of the most widely used tools in modern healthcare.

From raw signals to readable images

Unlike a camera, an MRI scanner does not snap a photograph. During a scan, tissues respond to magnetic fields and emit electromagnetic signals. The MRI machine records a stream of signals, and their frequency and timing (phase) tell the scanner where each signal comes from.

To convert these signals into images, MRI systems use a mathematical method known as the Fourier transform. The process separates complex signals into frequency components and recombines them to determine where the signals originated in space. π appears directly in the equations linking frequency, phase and periodicity, making it essential to accurate reconstruction. The consistency and precision of MRI depend on these stable mathematical foundations.

Each scan therefore involves large volumes of real-time computation, from signal capture and position mapping to image reconstruction and refinement.

In the future, as MRI expands beyond static anatomy towards functional imaging — such as measuring blood flow, tissue motion and cardiac mechanics — mathematics increasingly supports the understanding how the body functions, not just what it looks like.

The hidden mathematical complexity behind every scan

Although MRI is now a routine clinical tool, much of its complexity remains invisible to patients. Every scan involves extensive mathematical computation performed in real time. This rigour contributes directly to MRI’s safety, stability and repeatability.

As imaging technologies evolve to include higher resolution scans and more advanced functional measurements, mathematical reliability becomes even more critical, linking mathematics with engineering and medicine, linking theoretical foundations with clinical practice.

Where mathematics drive AI innovation in medicine

While π underpins image formation, Asst Prof Li’s research focuses on how MRI data can be interpreted more intelligently using AI.

Instead of treating AI models as black boxes, her team designs algorithms that reflect the physics and geometry of image formation, including spatial continuity, motion consistency and physical constraints. For MRI scans, this makes the results easier to interpret and less prone to erratic predictions across patients and scan settings.

“Our goal is not for AI to replace mathematics,” Asst Prof Li said. “Our AI algorithms build on imaging theory and mathematical modelling to translate image data with interpretable markers of heart function.”

A key focus of Asst Prof Li’s lab is the development of cardiac digital twins — patient-specific virtual heart models that integrate MRI data with electrophysiology, biomechanics and blood flow. These models treat the heart as a dynamic system rather than a collection of static images. Mathematical constants such as π naturally arise in geometric measurements, wave propagation and fluid dynamics within these simulations.

As research advances, personalised digital hearts could allow clinicians to simulate disease progression, assess patient-specific risks and test treatment strategies before medical intervention.

π still matters

As imaging datasets grow and AI models become more sophisticated, stable mathematical frameworks remain essential. Mathematics provides a shared language connecting imaging hardware, reconstruction algorithms and intelligent analysis tools.

“Higher resolution imaging and more advanced AI all depend on having a reliable mathematical backbone,” Asst Prof Li explained. “Constants like π represent a stable scientific framework that continues to support new technologies.”

On Pi Day, the role of π inside every MRI scan offers a reminder that fundamental mathematics quietly underpins everyday healthcare — enabling clinicians to see inside the body and powering research on the next generation of intelligent medical tools.

Norovirus is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis worldwide and is responsible for large outbreaks in hospitals, schools, and cruise ships. There are currently no approved antiviral drugs or vaccines, and treatment is largely limited to managing symptoms.

 Progress in developing targeted interventions had been challenging, as the virus could not be reliably cultivated in laboratory settings until 2023, when Assoc Prof Li and her team established a zebrafish embryo model that enables human norovirus to be grown and studied in the laboratory, overcoming a major bottleneck in the field. The model allows researchers to examine viral behaviour and evaluate potential interventions more consistently than earlier systems dependent on scarce human tissue samples.

 A safer alternative for vulnerable groups

In this study published in Food Microbiology on 25 October 2025, researchers focused on substances known as exopolysaccharides, which are complex sugars naturally secreted by bacteria. Unlike live probiotics which contain bacterial cultures, these compounds do not contain living microorganisms. This makes them potentially safer for vulnerable groups, including people with weakened immune systems who are often advised to avoid live probiotic products.

In laboratory tests, the team found that an exopolysaccharide produced by a probiotic bacterium, Bacillus subtilis CU1, binds directly to the norovirus particle. Instead of destroying the virus or activating the immune system, the compound acts as a physical barrier at the earliest stage of infection. The protective effect was observed against the GII.4 norovirus strain, responsible for most outbreaks globally.

 “Our findings show that it is possible to block the virus before it can establish an infection,” said Assoc Prof Li. “This could be especially useful for people who cannot rely on strong immune responses, such as the elderly, young children, or individuals with weak immune systems.”

 From laboratory discovery to practical application

To explore practical use, the team demonstrated that the probiotic bacterium can ferment carrot juice to produce high levels of the protective compound without losing its ability to block the virus. This approach offers an affordable, food-based method for producing functional food products or supplements that help prevent disease.

 Further studies are needed to ensure long-term safety and effectiveness before the findings can be developed into consumer products or used in clinical settings. 

 Held at NUS University Town from 31 January to 1 February, the forum titled “Towards Healthy Oceans” organised with international non-profit The Ocean Cleanup, brought together researchers, policymakers, investors, philanthropies and private sector partners to examine how science-based solutions, implementation partnerships, and blue finance can be aligned to reduce plastic leakage from rivers into the ocean.

 The discussions took place against growing evidence that marine plastic pollution is largely transboundary in nature. This is particularly relevant for Singapore, where a study by the National Environment Agency published in 2025 has shown that most plastic found on recreational beaches originates offshore, underscoring the need for coordinated, science-based regional responses.

 “Marine plastics have been a persistent environmental concern for oceans in Singapore and around the world. Marine pollution is also a transboundary issue as the prevailing winds and currents can move litter across regional water bodies. To address marine plastic pollution effectively, our responses must therefore be supported by robust science-based approaches to guide actions and solutions that protect our local resources and shared oceans,” said Dr Neo Mei Lin, Senior Research Fellow at NUS TMSI.

 Coordinated efforts needed to tackle ocean plastic pollution

The forum was structured around three core themes: science and technical solutions, partnerships and implementation, and finance and investment. Discussions included how advances in data, modelling and AI-enabled monitoring can help identify priority river catchments, guide river interception efforts, and support impact at scale.

 The programme also aligned with The Ocean Cleanup’s 30 Cities Programme, which focuses on intercepting plastic in rivers before it reaches the ocean using data-driven systems. Southeast Asia was highlighted as a priority region, given that many of the world’s most polluting rivers are located within shared river basins that send plastics across national borders.

 The first day focused on science and partnership development, covering marine plastic research, monitoring technologies, and remediation approaches. Speaking at the opening of the forum, Associate Professor Peter Todd, Director of NUS TMSI, highlighted regional marine plastic trends and the importance of coordinated scientific efforts. A keynote lecture on AI-enabled plastic monitoring was delivered by Dr Laurent Lebreton, Director of Research at The Ocean Cleanup.

 NUS researchers contributed across multiple sessions. Dr Liu Yulu from the NUS Centre for International Law discussed governance and research gaps in Southeast Asia’s marine plastic landscape. “As the region lacks a centralised repository for marine plastic research, we worked with regional scientists to build a peer-reviewed database of more than 700 publications. The inventory shows that pollution monitoring is the dominant research focus and brings non-English studies into the science-based policy process to help governments prioritise their actions.”

 Associate Professor Raymond Ong from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) in the College of Design and Engineering at NUS shared perspectives on engineering innovations for plastic interception. Professor Karina Gin, also from NUS CEE, co-led a showcase on coastal and riverine pollution modelling and monitoring networks, supported by Dr Ashwini Suresh Kumar from TMSI.

 The second day shifted attention upstream, exploring how cities, communities and policy design can reduce plastic leakage at source. Dr Neo from NUS TMSI moderated a panel session exploring the perspectives on community engagement and education approaches with local and regional representatives.

 Sessions on finance examined how blue finance, philanthropic capital, and blended finance structures can support scalable ocean interventions, and how closer collaboration between science, implementation and finance communities can accelerate future pilots and partnerships across Southeast Asia.

 “Plastic pollution does not respect borders because it travels with seas and crosses jurisdictions… progress at scale only happens when science, policy, business and communities move forward together. Singapore, with its strengths in science, policy, and finance, is well placed to bring together the partners and capital needed to address a transboundary problem through transboundary collaboration,” said Mr Boyan Slat, Founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup.

By convening regional stakeholders across disciplines, the forum aimed to strengthen collaboration pathways and support the development of practical, science-led solutions to marine plastic pollution at scale across Southeast Asia.

A team of food scientists at NUS has found a way to unlock the trapped nutrients in kombu and replace the unpleasant odours with more appealing scents, directly overcoming the two major challenges – limited nutrient bioaccessibility and poor sensory experience.

Enzymes and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) fermentation have been commonly used to improve kombu’s nutritional value by breaking down large proteins and carbohydrates into smaller, more digestible components. However, these approaches cannot effectively remove the compounds that give kombu its characteristic fishy and grassy odour.

Building on the knowledge that yeast fermentation can naturally produce pleasant fruity and floral aromas, the NUS scientists took the process a step further by co-fermenting enzyme-treated kombu with LAB and an aroma-producing yeast. The result is a novel probiotic kombu-based blend that is both healthier and more flavourful.

The team’s work was published in the scientific journal International Journal of Food Microbiology on 2 December 2025.

Banana and pear-flavoured kombu, anyone?

In their earlier work published in October 2025, the NUS team demonstrated that fermenting enzyme-treated kombu with LAB effectively releases trapped nutrients. In their latest work, enzyme-treated kombu was fermented using LAB together with an aroma-producing yeast. Analysis of the fermented kombu blend revealed that the LAB-yeast co-fermentation promotes the growth and survival of probiotics compared to LAB-only fermentation. One particular co-fermentation mixture (using the LAB, L. plantarum and the yeast, P. kluyveri) yielded more γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a well-known bioactive compound commonly linked to calming effects, stress reduction, and potential benefits for mental health. Importantly, the co-fermentation greatly reduced unpleasant off-flavour compounds while introducing compounds associated with the aromas of bananas and pears.

“Kombu has a tremendous amount of untapped potential to be a superfood, but for its health benefits to reach a wider population, kombu has to be more palatable and its nutrients more accessible,” said Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan from the Department of Food Science and Technology in NUS Faculty of Science. “While enzymatic treatment followed by lactic acid bacteria fermentation liberates beneficial nutrients, the combination with yeast fermentation further produces fruity aroma compounds, improving the flavour profile of the fermented kombu.”

Fermented kombu as a functional food

Following LAB-yeast co-fermentation, the fermented kombu product becomes exceptionally nutritious and is fortified with probiotics and GABA, which positively influences gut and mental health respectively. Subsequently, the fermented kombu blend could be used to develop fermented kombu-based functional foods – foods that provide health benefits beyond their basic nutritional value – and beverages that are healthy and tasty.

“Our unique co-fermentation method of processing kombu is the gateway to creating new health products. With our tastier fermented kombu, we could create fermented seaweed drinks, probiotic seaweed-based supplements or even use it as ingredients in plant-based foods,” said Dr Lu Yuyun, Senior Research Fellow and co-corresponding author of the research paper. “This approach may also be adapted to other seaweed species to broaden the range of appealing seaweed-derived products.”

Currently, few if any commercial kombu products are made using LAB-yeast fermentation, underscoring the innovative nature of this research.

“Elevating the flavour profile of kombu makes it more enticing to a broader range of consumers. Our next goal is to optimise fermentation conditions, such as fermentation sequence, time and temperature, to further improve process efficiency and product quality,” said Ms Geng Chenhan, third-year PhD student and first author of the research paper. “In future, we will also conduct sensory evaluation to better understand consumer preferences for seaweed-based foods.”

A protein’s function is dictated by its three-dimensional (3D) shape, which determines how it interacts with other molecules and provides crucial clues to how diseases develop and could be treated. However, determining these structures experimentally is often time-consuming and costly.

A team led by Professor Zhang Yang, who is from NUS’ Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, School of Computing and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, has developed D-I-TASSER, a new software tool that predicts the 3D shapes of complex proteins more accurately, supporting faster drug discovery, improved disease research and more precise design of targeted therapies.