Computational Biology alumna Ms Rajoshi GHOSH started out as a genomics researcher but discovered that she was not cut out for research. It was in working with entrepreneurs in Ghana, in an environment out of her comfort zone, that she found her true calling.

She co-founded Hasura in 2017 and launched its commercial offerings in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Its open source platform offers solutions that automate backend software development. Developers can now tap disparate sources of data more efficiently, to build and scale their applications (apps) easily. This leads to significant cost and time savings for businesses and faster time-to-market for their apps.

Hasura achieved unicorn status in February 2022.

To address food waste, Mr PHUA Jun Wei (Life Sciences, 2017) co-founded Insectta, which extracts biomaterials from the black soldier fly for use in various industries.

Insectta is the first company in Singapore to develop proprietary technology to extract lucrative substances such as chitosan, melanin and probiotics from the fly. Chitosan has anti-inflammatory and wound-healing properties and is useful in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Melanin conducts electricity and can be used in organic semiconductors and supercapacitors.

The team is scaling up to produce its biomaterials on a larger scale.

Mr Kit YONG (Life Sciences, 2018) witnessed how members of his extended family in the prawn farming business suffered huge losses as a result of prawn disease. To address this, he founded Forte Biotech to bring its Robust Accurate Prawn Infection Detector (RAPID) kit to rural farms. The onsite laboratory-grade molecular diagnostic test is simple, affordable and accurate, allowing farmers to identify pathogens and disease outbreaks early. 

Farmers can conduct tests regularly and spot diseases before symptoms appear. This enables them to take timely mitigative action to save their livestock and avoid losses. Kit’s team plans to reach out to more farms in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The adoption of autonomous mobile robots has increased recently. However, limitations remain, such as the lack of vision perception ability and cumbersome software integration.

To address these issues, Ms LOW Yin Yi (Life Sciences, 2019) co-founded Vilota Pte Ltd, which specialises in developing three dimensional (3D) vision technology solutions that are modular and reliable. It currently offers visual inertial odometry and depth-sensing algorithms that provide localised information for robotics autonomy.

Her team is developing a depth map for obstacle sensing, end user visualisation as well as an autonomous vision-based navigation system. They plan to venture into the autonomous mobile robot industry, and eventually, 3D environmental digitisation.   

Cosmologist Dr Marc VAN LOO (Physics, 1994) fell in love with Indonesia and went on to open LooLa Adventure Resort in Bintan in 2000, which has since been recognised as a world leader in sustainability. LooLa’s team is also behind the Safe Water Garden (SWG) initiative which brings life-saving and affordable sanitation to rural homes. SWG was certified as part of Indonesia’s sanitation standards in 2019.

Dr van Loo and his partners have built almost 700 SWGs and transformed Bintan into the largest live sanitation research laboratory in the world. He plans to scale up and bring safe sanitation to all Indonesian villagers by 2028.

Loola received Singapore’s Best Sustainable Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) accolade (2016, 2017) and was the overall winner in the World Responsible Tourism Awards (2015).

When PANG Yu Fei, a Year 3 Food Science and Technology student who minors in Technopreneurship, took a shine to entrepreneurship, he had the opportunity to run not one, but two deep technology startups – Probicient and Xavoury Foods. 

At Probicient, the team successfully integrated probiotics into beverages using flavour, nutrition and advanced fermentation techniques. Through its probiotification-as-a-service initiative, it seeks to incorporate probiotics, which are important for gut health, into our daily diets. Xavoury Foods utilises patented fermentation technology to upcycle meat byproducts that contain nutrients, such as meat sawdust, into savoury food products with customised flavour and taste.   

Farms around the world wrestle with pest control. A potential solution came from a 10-member interdisciplinary team from Applied Mathematics, Biomedical Engineering, Computational Biology, Life Sciences, Pharmaceutical Science and Statistics. The students took part in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition (2021), facing off against over 350 teams globally to become the first Southeast Asian team to emerge as a finalist.

For their project, ‘PRYSM’, they used synthetic biology techniques to cultivate yeast which can produce beta defensins, a human immune protein that is used to kill bacteria.  The result – a safe, environmentally friendly and cost-efficient biopesticide for farmers.

Year 1 Life Sciences student Rosarita Ridhwan DE CRUZ, an avid player in mobile multiplayer online battle arena games, decided to bring her interests to the next level by participating at the inaugural Association of Pacific Rim Universities Student Esports Paper Competition and Awards (2021).

Her paper on the psychological impacts of eSports gaming bagged the top prize in the Health / Wellness category. It examines the benefits of eSports and stressors that could lead players to suffer mental health issues. Rosarita also won a scholarship prize and her paper was published in the International Journal of eSports (May 2022).  

Year 2 Environmental Studies student LAW Li Zhe believes that fighting climate change is a collective responsibility. This conviction placed his team among the top five winners at Sustainability Exchange, an initiative by non-profit organisation EB Impact which seeks to advance the Singapore Green Plan through youth engagement.

His proposal, ‘Ecologue’, leverages technology to facilitate the joint creation of climate projects between businesses and citizens. By ‘democratising’ climate decisions, he hopes to generate more discussions and bring about a more participatory approach on climate and sustainability policies.  

Li Zhe is reading a Second Major in Data Science and Analytics and Minors in Economics and Geographical Information Systems.