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Currently a practising senior consultant obstetrician at the National University Hospital (NUH), Singapore, Associate Professor Chan Shiao-Yng is also Deputy Chief Clinical Officer at A*STAR IHDP and a clinician-scientist at NUS. 

Before moving to òòò½Íøin 2014, Associate Professor Chan was a consultant obstetrician in the UK with special interest in the management of pregnant women with medical disorders. After completing her PhD in 2004, she was subsequently awarded a prestigious five-year Health Foundation Clinician Scientist Fellowship and grant funding from the Medical Research Council (UK) and other research charities to establish a basic science research group at the University of Birmingham, UK. 

Her research work at NUS now focuses on endocrine and metabolic dysfunction in pregnancy and their impact on maternal and child outcomes as well as on placental development and function. She’s also extensively involved in world-class birth cohort studies like GUSTO and S-PRESTO, and is the Lead Principal Investigator in òòò½Íøfor the multinational NiPPeR (Nutritional Intervention Preconception and during Pregnancy to maintain healthy glucosE levels and offspRing health) trial.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Cambridge, received her PhD from the University of Birmingham, and is a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (UK).

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Maria De Iorio is a senior principal scientist and senior biostatistics consultant at A*STAR IHDP, a professor of science at Yale-NUS College, and a professor of biostatistics in the Department of Statistical Science at the University College London. Her previous appointments were as a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Oxford and lecturer/senior lecturer at the Imperial College London.

De Iorio’s research interests include Bayesian statistics and how to apply Bayesian methods to analyse data, Bayesian nonparametrics, biostatistics and computational methods, medical statistics, genomics, and metabolomics. She boasts an impressive track record in modelling complex biomedical data and analysing high throughput data in genomics and metabolomics.

She obtained her undergraduate degree in economics from Bocconi University, Italy, and her MSc and PhD in statistics from Duke University in the U.S.

Additionally, De Iorio and her team at A*STAR IHDP provide customised statistical solutions for research projects, from planning and data collection to analysis and presentation. Find out more .

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In addition to her role at A*STAR IHDP, Neerja Karnani is also Deputy Executive Director at the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute. Her postdoctoral work at the University of Virginia, in association with the ENCODE consortium (NHGRI) involved understanding the epigenetic landscape and instability in human genome.

Her research work is focused on identifying diagnostic markers and interventions related to women and child health adversities. She uses multi-omics approaches (genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, metagenomics and lipidomics) and integrates big data to develop better molecular insights into metabolic diseases, micronutrient deficiencies, and mental health adversities.

Besides helming the systems biology and biomarker research group at SICS, Karnani is also an executive committee member of the GUSTO and S-PRESTO birth cohorts, a part of the science management group for EpiGen consortium – a collaboration between Singapore, New Zealand and the U.K. – and a key member and contributor of Singapore’s National Precision Medicine programme that aims to study human genetic variation for population stratified risk prediction of health adversities. Her group’s research findings have attracted major nutrition, pharma and diagnostic industries and fostered translational programmes.

Karnani received her PhD from the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University in India, where she worked on multidrug resistance in pathogenic yeast. During her graduate studies, she was a recipient of the C. R. Krishna Murti Memorial Young Scientist Award.

Find out more about her .

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Brian Kennedy is an internationally recognised leader in ageing research and healthy longevity. In addition to his role at A*STAR IHDP, he is also Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Physiology at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and serves as Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at NUHS, Director of the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme, and Director of the Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality. Through these roles, he has played a pivotal role in establishing òòò½Íøas a global centre for longevity science and translational ageing research.

Kennedy’s research focuses on understanding the biological mechanisms of ageing and translating discoveries into interventions that can delay ageing, prevent age-related diseases, and extend healthspan — the period of life spent in good health. His laboratory employs multidisciplinary approaches spanning systems biology, genetics, pharmacology, and translational medicine to identify pathways that influence ageing and longevity.

He is widely recognised for pioneering contributions to the biology of ageing. During his doctoral studies, he co-authored the first paper linking sirtuins to ageing, a landmark discovery that helped shape modern longevity research. Subsequently, while at the University of Washington, he contributed to seminal studies identifying the role of the mTOR pathway in regulating lifespan and healthspan.

From 2010 to 2016, Kennedy served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, the world’s first independent biomedical research institute dedicated solely to ageing research. He remained a faculty member there until 2020 and continues to hold an adjunct appointment at the University of Washington. He has also maintained longstanding scientific collaborations across Asia, including appointments and research partnerships in China.

A prolific scientist, Kennedy has authored more than 240 scientific publications and is a strong advocate for targeting the biological processes of ageing to improve health outcomes. Beyond academia, he is actively involved in the biotechnology sector as a founder, advisor, and consultant to companies developing longevity therapeutics, diagnostics, and preventive health solutions. Through his research, leadership, and public engagement, he continues to advance efforts to translate ageing science into practical interventions that improve quality of life worldwide.

Kennedy received his bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Cellular Biology from Northwestern University, and earned a PhD in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he conducted pioneering studies on the role of sirtuins in ageing. He subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center before joining the faculty of the University of Washington, where he established an internationally recognised research programme in the biology of ageing.

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A Senior Principal Scientist with A*STAR IHDP, Professor Koh Woon Puay is also Assistant Dean for Faculty Development at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, lead investigator for the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme at NUS Medicine, and Director of the Clinician-Scientist Development Unit at NUS Medicine.

Being a population health scientist, her research interest and expertise is in unravelling the epidemiology of chronic diseases of importance to òòò½Íøand the world at large, such as cancer, cardio-metabolic, musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative diseases. Being medically qualified in Singapore, and having had PhD training in experimental research and postdoctoral training in epidemiology, she seeks to integrate biology, medicine and epidemiology in etiological studies of the aforementioned chronic diseases.

Koh’s research incorporates her knowledge in clinical medicine and training in laboratory science with epidemiologic methods to unravel putative mechanistic pathways in disease etiology. Beyond establishing associations between exposures and risk of disease, her research uses molecular and genetic tools to identify modifiable factors (such as lifestyle factors) that could be applicable to disease prevention, or biomarkers (including but not limited to genetic markers) that could be developed for early detection or screening of disease. In addition to bringing benefit to the scientific community, she also aims to translate her research into public health outcomes by providing evidence for the foundation of public health education and policy in Singapore.

Since 2003, Koh has been the principal investigator of The òòò½ÍøChinese Health Study. Together with local and overseas co-investigators, she has examined lifestyle and dietary factors associated with chronic diseases common among Singaporeans using this cohort, and has co-authored over 500 scientific papers in peer-reviewed international journals, including several noteworthy and novel scientific contributions of reports on dietary, genetic and lifestyle factors that are of importance to Asian populations. The òòò½ÍøChinese Health Study is an example of world-class epidemiologic research that integrates rigorous prospective study design with cutting-edge biochemical measures that provide better information for causal inference. The study represents a unique constellation of strengths highlighting the importance of òòò½Íøas a hub for biomedical research: a well-defined motivated study population leading to low non-response and nearly complete follow-up, strong expertise in epidemiology and biochemical measurements, and an Asian setting that importantly complements studies conducted in western countries.

For her groundbreaking research efforts, the Ministry of Health, òòò½Íøawarded her the NMRC Clinician Scientist Award (Senior Investigator Category) for the years 2014 to 2019 and 2020 to 2025. In 2016, she received the Duke-NUS Medical School Dean’s Excellence Award 2016 for outstanding accomplishment in research.

Koh obtained her MBBS from the National University of òòò½Íøand her PhD in Immunology from The University of Sydney.


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Evelyn Law is a clinician-scientist specialising in the area of developmental and behavioural paediatrics. In addition to her role as Senior Principal Scientist at A*STAR IHDP, she’s also an assistant professor in the Department of Paediatrics at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and a consultant in the Department of Paediatrics at Khoo Teck Puat-National University Children's Medical Institute, National University Hospital (NUH).

Law’s research interests centre on the life course of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from preschool to adult years and the influences of family and child factors, including socioeconomic status (SES), parental psychopathology, and health on developmental outcomes of children. Her current studies and grants examine a prediction model of ADHD diagnostic stability in preschoolers and trajectories of executive functioning among children from different SES and family backgrounds in the GUSTO birth cohort study.

She received her Bachelor degree in Biological Sciences with cum laude and departmental honours from Northwestern University in 2002, and then pursued research in germ cell development at the Division of Reproductive, Stem Cell and Perinatal Biology at Stanford University School of Medicine before continuing her medical training. She completed residency in Paediatrics at the Harvard Medical School/Boston University School of Medicine joint programme in 2010, and completed subspecialty medical training in Developmental-Behavioural Paediatrics at Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital. During her subspecialty training, she also completed the Clinical Effectiveness (Biostatistics and Epidemiology) Programme at the Harvard School of Public Health. 

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Melvin Leow is a senior principal investigator at A*STAR IHDP; the Director of the Clinical Nutrition Research Centre (CNRC), which is part of A*STAR's òòò½ÍøInstitute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI); a professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine; an adjunct professor at Duke-NUS Medical School; and a senior consultant endocrinologist affiliated to the Department of Endocrinology at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Leow's scientific work focuses on energy metabolism and metabolic physiology, in particular understanding the control over energy balance, neuroendocrine function and metabolism that is exerted through the critical centres of the brain and feedback loops involving the intricate network of the gastrointestinal tract, pancreas, adipose tissue, liver and skeletal muscles.

His research interests include looking into the metabolic effects of the thyroid hormone, brown adipose tissue and browning of white fat, mathematical modelling of endocrine physiology, functional foods and nutraceuticals as interventions for obesity, diabetes, ageing and cancer. Notably, he has done significant research on brown adipose tissue, thermogenesis and the browning of white adipocytes with nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals and endogenous peptides and hormones.

Leow received his MBBS and MMed from the National University of Singapore, and obtained his PhD from the Nanyang Technological University.

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In addition to her role with A*STAR IHDP, Keri McCrickerd is also an Assistant Professor with the Department of Paediatrics, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine's Centre for Behavioural and Implementation Science Interventions (BISI), and Executive Director at the Centre for Holistic Initiatives in Learning and Development (CHILD) at NUS. 

A research psychologist specialising in eating behaviour and a chartered psychologist with the British Psychological Society, McCrickerd’s work focuses on defining the cognitive and sensory factors influencing appetite regulation and understanding the early drivers of eating behaviour. Her research combines behavioural studies with insights gained from the GUSTO birth cohort and partnerships with local schools. Through her scientific work, she aims to understand why we eat the way we do and develop strategies to promote health and well-being through regulation of appetite and food intake.

Since joining A*STAR IHDP in 2015, she has achieved several awards, including the New Investigator Travel Award by the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behaviour in 2017, the first runner-up for the Drummond Early Career Nutrition Scientist Award by the British Nutrition Foundation in 2018, the Rising Star Award by the Asia Oceania Association for the Study of Obesity in 2019, and the A*STAR Career Development Award Grant for her project ‘Testing a bio-behavioural toolbox to promote eating self-regulation in preschool children’ in 2020.

McCrickerd obtained her BSc in Experimental Psychology from the University of Bristol and her PhD in Psychology from the University of Sussex.

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Neena Modi holds the positions of Distinguished Principal Scientist and Deputy Executive Director at A*STAR IHDP. She is also Professor of Neonatal Medicine and Vice-Dean (International Affairs) at the Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London and Consultant with Neonatal Medicine at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust.

A fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and president-elect of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine, Modi is a past president of the British Medical Association, Medical Women’s Federation, and the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She has also headed the research organisations, The Neonatal Society and Academic Paediatrics Association of Great Britain and Ireland.

Modi leads a multidisciplinary neonatal research group tackling the care of sick and preterm newborn infants to improve life-long health. Her contributions have included national reports on children’s biomedical research and child health in the UK, and campaigning in relation to UK health services, environmental issues and child refugees. She led the establishment of a Child Health Research Collaboration and Children's Research Fellowship Fund. She has held by election, the three leading national children’s research positions in the UK, President of the Neonatal Society, President of the Academic Paediatrics Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Vice-President for Science and Research. She chaired the British Medical Journal Ethics Committee for five year, currently serves on a number of research committees and working groups, and is a trustee of the charities TheirWorld and Action Cerebral Palsy. 

She leads the UK National Neonatal Research Database and eNewborn, an International Neonatal Research Database, registries of real-world clinical data curated for research. Her work on real-world clinical data for patient benefit has been widely acclaimed. In 2018 she received the Royal College of Physicians of London, “Excellence in Patient Care Award for Innovation” and in 2022, the US Critical-Path Institute International Neonatal Consortium “Data Pioneer Award for contributions to health data research” and the Medical Women’s International Association award for “a physician who has made outstanding contributions to the cause of women in medicine”. She is an advocate for child health and well-being, and youth enfranchisement, and a campaigner for the retention of the National Health Service as a primarily publicly funded, publicly delivered healthcare system.

Modi qualified from the University of Edinburgh, and undertook specialist training in neonatal medicine at University College Hospital London, and the University of Liverpool.

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Besides her role at A*STAR IHDP, Ong Yi Ying is also a Research Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore, a Principal Investigator with the Human Potential Translational Research Programme at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and a Junior Editor for the Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology Journal.

Ong's research vision is to maximise human potential through a life course epidemiology approach, focusing on the interaction between multiple early life exposures using various growth modelling and mixture modelling techniques. From a life course perspective, building a strong foundation in early life has implications for many different aspects of health later in life, from physical to mental health. Her research on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) investigates how early life growth/nutrition influences child outcomes (such as cardiometabolic risk, neurodevelopment, and puberty). She also investigates objective prenatal biomarkers (plasma, tooth) of poor foetal growth for risk stratification, uncovering mechanistic insights, and potential interventions.

Her first research study investigated the developmental mismatch hypothesis, a major hypothesis in the field of DOHaD, which postulates that if the postnatal nutritional environment is richer than predicted from foetal nutritional cues, predictive adaptive responses may become maladaptive and lead to increased cardiometabolic risk. She subsequently investigated whether rapid postnatal growth after poor foetal growth might improve cognitive outcomes by compensating for inadequate brain development in the womb. Her third study addresses a key gap from “Barker’s hypothesis”. Seminal epidemiological studies by Barker et al., who started the field of DOHaD, have associated low birthweight with cardiovascular risk. She investigated whether the fat mass or fat-free mass component of birthweight was associated with cardiovascular risk.

She also studies several epidemiological cohorts, including Growing Up in òòò½ÍøTowards healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) and Project Viva. 

Ong obtained her BSc in Life Sciences from the National University of Singapore, and her PhD in Epidemiology from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. 

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Dr Quek Boon-Kiat double-hats as both Deputy Executive Director at A*STAR IHDP and Department Director of the Social and Cognitive Computing (SCC) department at A*STAR’s Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC).

A pioneer of psychographic modelling and inference technology within the SCC department of IHPC, Dr Quek boasts extensive experience in software prototyping, research validation, and IP creation. He is well-versed in artificial intelligence (AI) – specifically autonomous robotic systems, with emphasis on computational modelling and simulation of social information processing mechanisms.

He joined IHPC in 2008 as one of two pioneering members of the Computational Social Cognition visiting investigatorship programme (VIP), led by Northwestern University’s Prof Andrew Ortony, a world-renowned researcher in computational social cognition and affective computing. The VIP eventually led to the formation of the SCC department in 2014. Since then, Dr Quek has been leading a multidisciplinary team of computer scientists and AI researchers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and engineers, to translate the understanding of human psychology and cognition into real-world solutions.

His pioneering work on the development and use of network models of socio-cognitive constructs to perform psychographic inference and reasoning has gained industry attention especially in the HR, Consumer, Healthcare, and Fintech application domains, where productisation and commercialisation efforts with A*ccelerate are currently underway. Such efforts also include the deployment of some of his research work towards internal use, such as the trial deployment of a career self-discovery portal that could generate inferences about users’ innate psychological traits, vocational interests, and career inclinations.

Dr Quek was also a recipient of the prestigious A*STAR Graduate Scholarship in 2003, and the A*STAR Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2010. As a form of giving-back, he has been actively involved in A*STAR Graduate Academy (A*GA)’s scholarship outreach activities, including speaking to prospective scholarship applicants and science teachers from secondary schools and junior colleges, mentorship of junior A*GA scholars, serving on scholarship interview panels and judging various science competitions (A*STAR Talent Search, òòò½ÍøScience & Engineering Fair, A*STAR Research Attachment Symposium).

He obtained both his Bachelor of Engineering and PhD in Robotics and Autonomous Systems from the National University of Singapore.

Find out more about him . 

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Besides her role with A*STAR IHDP, Tan Ai Peng is also an Assistant Professor (Clinician-Scientist funded by the National Medical Research Council) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and a Senior Consultant Pediatric Neuroradiologist at the National University Hospital, Singapore.

At A*STAR IHDP, Tan assumes leadership of the Neuroimaging domain and spearheads neuroimaging research pertaining to GUSTO, the biggest birth cohort study in Singapore. She completed her Pediatric Neuroradiology Fellowship at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust, which included a pivotal research attachment at the Centre for the Developing Brain, King’s College London. This experience laid the foundation for a distinguished career in paediatric brain mapping research.

Tan possesses in-depth knowledge of various advanced neuroimaging techniques, including diffusion tensor imaging and functional MRI, that form the basis of human brain mapping. Her research focuses on clinical translation of MRI-based brain connectivity profiling, particularly in neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders. She is currently recognised as the sole neuroradiologist in òòò½Íøactively conducting research in the mapping of the developing human brain.

Driven by a vision to embed MRI-based brain network profiling into clinical practice for children with neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, Tan is actively engaged in the development of brain-network targeted interventions to further advance this critical field of research. 

Tan obtained her medical degree in 2006 from the National University of Malaysia, and completed her postgraduate neuroradiology training at the National University Hospital, Singapore. She obtained her Master of Medicine (Diagnostic Radiology) in 2012 and was awarded the Fellowship of the Royal College of Radiologists (FRCR) in the same year. She was awarded the Academic Medicine Development Award (AMDA) in 2016 and completed her fellowship in paediatric neuroradiology at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust in 2017. In 2019, she was awarded the European Diploma in Neuroradiology (EdiNR) by the European Society of Neuroradiology (ESNR).

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In addition to her role at A*STAR IHDP, Ada Teo is also an Associate Consultant at the Endocrinology department in the National University Hospital (NUH).

Having completed the Cambridge MB-PhD programme under A*STAR, Teo has been appointed Clinical Lecturer under the NUS Clinical Faculty Scheme. Her research is focused on the molecular genetics of hypertension, in particular aldosterone-producing adenomas. This led to the discovery of a subtype of adenomas with hallmark somatic mutations and a genotype-phenotype correlation. This work enabled both clinical insight and research expertise to be intertwined, with patients benefiting from, and contributing to, research into their own hypertension – culminating in her first publication in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015.

Having serendipitously discovered a novel somatic mutation in adrenal tumours during her PhD years in Cambridge, her research has been focused on the molecular genetics of such tumours driving secondary hypertension. Having completed her Specialist Endocrinology training, she hopes to continue her research into primary aldosteronism, with the aim of bridging the gap between bench and bedside. She is excited by the possibility of combining clinical insight with research to pursue the goal of eventually developing therapies for hypertension personalised to each individual.

Teo obtained her Bachelor's Degree in Pharmcology and her MB/ BChir and PhD in Medicine from the University of Cambridge.

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Besides her role at A*STAR IHDP, Twila Tardif Zoe is also a Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and a Professor Emerita of Psychology and Asian Languages and Cultures and faculty associate at the University of Michigan’s Lieberthal- Rogel Center for Chinese Studies and Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies. Previously, she served as Director of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, of the Center for Human Growth and Development, and Associate Dean for Social Sciences in the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts. She is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory group for the òòò½ÍøCentre for Chinese Language and is thrilled to be involved in promoting healthy child development among Singaporean children.

Zoe's primary research interests explore relationships between language, culture, and cognition with a focus on early language learning and predictors of reading in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Her work includes naturalistic, experimental, and brain-imaging studies in children and adults, and she has led large, international research teams in the norming of vocabulary and syntax instruments, the longitudinal development of Chinese children from Hong Kong, Beijing, and rural China, and also examined language and reading development in Chinese- and Spanish-English bilinguals. She has done work looking at the biopsychosocial process of emotion regulation in young children, and the effects of neonatal iron deficiency and supplementation on early development. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoe led an interdisciplinary research team examining social distancing behaviors, attitudes, and effects across 18 regions and countries. 

She received her PhD from Yale University and was a Fellow in the University of Michigan Society of Fellows, Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Visiting Scholar at Nanyang Technological University, as well as on the Scientific Advisory Council of the òòò½ÍøCentre for Chinese Language. 

Find out more about her .

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