Year 1 student CHAN Kwai Wei was drawn by the flexibility of exploring diverse academic domains under the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS). He believes that insights from his various courses – Major in Life Sciences and Minors in Philosophy, Bioinformatics and Japanese Language Studies – will broaden his perspectives on scientific endeavours and their value to life.

Learning philosophy has made him more critical of various assumptions and concepts in science, such as the paradigm shifts in science and the nature of the scientific method.

Note
CHS students’ course combinations are accurate as at Academic Year 2021/2022

Year 1 student Jaclyn CHAN has always been interested in wildlife, from how they interact with each other and the environment to human-wildlife interactions. She decided to take the Cross-Disciplinary Programme in Environmental Studies, which adopts an interdisciplinary and broad-based approach to address national, regional and global environmental challenges.

She plans to pursue a career in wildlife conservation, to formulate scientifically informed solutions that address the impacts of climate change and urbanisation on flora and fauna.

Note
CHS students’ course combinations are accurate as at Academic Year 2021/2022

One of the fundamental units of the brain is a neuron – millions of these are required to form an intricate network to regulate human behaviour. Year 4 student NG Shi Jun received the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize (2022) for describing how a protein known as fasciculation and elongation protein zeta-1 (FEZ1) could impair the formation of the neural network by not only decreasing the dendritic complexity of each neuron, but also dysregulating the intricate balance of excitatory and inhibitory input in the neural circuit. This paves the way for further study on the progression of neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia.

Current gene therapies are mainly delivered using viruses, which have various limitations. To overcome these challenges, our alumni Asst Prof LE Thi Nguyet Minh (2005) and Asst Prof SHI Jiahai (2008), Scientific Co-Founders of Carmine Therapeutics, harness red blood cell vesicles as vehicles for gene therapy, the first in the world to do so. 

Instead of chemical drugs or surgery, their patented Red Cell EV Gene Therapy (REGENT^®) platform efficiently and safely delivers genes to diseased cells or tissues, restoring the tissues’ normal functions. This could potentially be applied to a wide range of critical and rare genetic diseases. 

Year 4 Life Sciences student Karl PNG is no stranger to environmental conservation. He co-founded Singapore Youth Voices for Biodiversity in 2019 to encourage Singapore youths to step up to the challenge of environmental conservation.

Under the National Parks Board’s Youth Stewards for Nature programme, Karl led campaigns to engage youth on greenery and biodiversity topics. He is a member of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network, an international network of youth organisations working together to preserve Earth’s natural resources. He also started Project Sarimbun, to transform the Sarimbun Scout Camp in Lim Chu Kang into a biodiversity centre.