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Presented with the opportunities to access developmental cohorts strategically positions Cai to study infant sleep alongside subsequent developmental stage outcomes such as cognition, mood, behaviours, growth, adiposity and cardio-metabolic health. Aside from infant sleep, she also has a keen interest in multidisciplinary research, linking psychology and neuroscience with metabolic conditions such as gestational diabetes.

She won A*STAR IHDP's Emerging PI award in 2019, Best Poster award at the 8^th World Congress on Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) in 2013, and the Young Investigator Award (Clinical) at the University Obstetrics and Gynaecology Congress in 2012.

Cai received her PhD from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

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Chen Li's research focuses on multi-omics studies across several key areas: ageing (telomere length, biological age, and reproductive age); cardiometabolic risk (such as Gestational Diabetes Mellitus and Type 2 Diabetes); diet-disease relationships; and metabolic pathways (One-carbon and tryptophan metabolism). Her work involves applying a comprehensive multi-omics approach – integrating genomics, epigenetics, metabolomics, proteomics, and lipidomics data – to large datasets from the GUSTO and S-PRESTO cohorts.

Chen obtained her bachelor’s and master's degrees in engineering from Tianjin University, and her PhD from the National University of Singapore.

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She holds a Bachelor of Science from Nanyang Technological University and a PhD in Integrated Biology and Medicine from Duke-NUS Medical School.

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Professor Johan Eriksson is the Executive Director and Programme Director for Human Development at A*STAR IHDP, and Director of the Human Potential Translational Research Programme at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. He is also the principal investigator of the Singaporean birth cohort studies GUSTO and S-PRESTO, as well as the iAdoRe study. A specialist in internal medicine and general practice, Professor Eriksson was last full professor at the faculty of medicine, University of Helsinki, and chief physician at Helsinki University Central Hospital in Finland. He holds clinical interests in diabetes and related metabolic diseases.

His research focuses on the early programming of health and disease, as well as on the prevention of type 2 diabetes and related metabolic outcomes by lifestyle interventions. He is in charge of the Helsinki Birth Cohort Study, a unique birth cohort study with a follow-up of over 20,000 individuals from birth until the age of over 80 years. Furthermore, he has been involved in the gestational diabetes prevention study RADIEL, in which a lifestyle intervention was shown to successfully reduce gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM); and the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study (DPS) – the first randomised study to show that lifestyle intervention is effective in the prevention of type 2 diabetes.

Professor Eriksson received his medical degree and specialist qualifications from the University of Helsinki.

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In addition to her role at A*STAR IHDP, Evelyn Loo is also an adjunct assistant professor at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Department of Paediatrics.

Her research interests include examining environmental influences during the early years of one’s life – such as nutrition, microbiome and exogenous stressors – that affect epigenetic plasticity and immunological maturation during development. Loo’s work revolves around the study of epidemiology of a child’s health as well as identifying critical periods where environmental microbiome can exert the most influence, identifying factors that can affect environmental microbiome, and understanding the interactions between environmental microbiome and allergens, with outcomes on the skin microbiome and the subsequent development of non-communicable diseases. She hopes that her research will be useful in the implementation of strategies to prevent childhood diseases. 

Loo was awarded the Open Fund – Young Individual Research Grant by the National Medical Research Council to lead a project that looked into identifying the effects of household environmental microbiome in early life on development of allergic diseases in children.

Before joining A*STAR IHDP, Loo was a postdoctoral fellow at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Department of Paediatrics where she studied the epidemiology of allergic diseases in children. She now continues her research in the field of developmental origins of health and disease at A*STAR IHDP with the GUSTO and S-PRESTO birth cohort studies.

She obtained her PhD in biomedical sciences from the National University of òòò½Íøthrough the NUS research scholarship.

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Jean Yeung is Director of Social Sciences under the Human Development domain at A*STAR IHDP and a Professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. She is also the inaugural President of the Population Association of Singapore, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Family and Population Research at NUS. She was previously a Provost-Chair Professor at the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Sociology Department. 

Yeung's research focuses on various aspects of family and population transitions in Asia including ageing, marriage, family values, and child development. She has led national studies on family and children’s well-being in the U.S., China, and Singapore, been on the editorial boards of several top-ranking international journals, and on numerous scientific review committees and advisory boards. She is the principal investigator for the òòò½ÍøLongitudinal Early Development Study (SG-LEADS), which examines human development in òòò½Íøby using innovative methods to understand factors that can promote Singaporean children’s early childhood development, and provide input that can help address these factors.

Her current research includes various family demographic issues in Asia and America. Her work appears in leading journals and is cited widely in academic publications and high-impact media such as BBC News and The Economist. Her recent publications include changing family values and behaviour, children's well-being, human capital, and ageing.

Yeung obtained her MA in Sociology from the Illinois State University, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Alberta.

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Navin Michael is part of the Metabolic Imaging group which lends its expertise in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy (MRI and MRS) to studies in the Human Development domain.

His research focuses on understanding the developmental origins and mechanisms of cardiometabolic diseases within the framework of longitudinal observational mother-offspring cohort studies. His work focuses on identifying non-modifiable/modifiable risk factors and non-invasive imaging-based biomarkers that can enable early risk stratification and pre-emptive prevention strategies. He has used MRI and MRS techniques to track intrahepatic and intramyocellular lipids, and renal function. He also has a keen interest in growth modelling, understanding underlying drivers of growth patterns and studying their links to cardiometabolic risk.  He has recently initiated a new research thrust focused on developing exposome-based approaches to study environmental drivers of growth patterns and health outcomes in adolescence.

He received the second prize for Best Oral Presentation at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Paediatric Study Group Meeting in 2016, the Magna Cum Laude Award from ISMRM in 2015, and the Merlion PhD Scholarship (2007 to 2011) from the Embassy of France.

Michael obtained his Bachelor of Technology, Information and Communication Technology from Dhirubhai Ambani University in India, and his PhD from the School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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Professor Neena Modi holds the position of Distinguished Principal Scientist 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, Prof 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.

Prof 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.

Prof 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, Mya Thway Tint is also an Assistant Professor at the Human Potential Translational Research Programme at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

Her expertise is in advanced body-composition assessment using criterion methods such as air displacement plethysmography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and quantitative magnetic resonance technology.

Her research adopts a life-course approach to understanding body composition, spanning early development to adult phenotypes. A key focus of her work examines how developmental factors shape offspring obesity, and metabolic risk leveraging Singapore’s major longitudinal birth cohorts – GUSTO and S-PRESTO.

She has a strong interest in metabolic and musculoskeletal health across the life course, with a particular emphasis on identifying early, silent phenotypes that predispose individuals to later cardiometabolic and musculoskeletal disorders.

In 2021, she received the NMRC Young Individual Research Grant to study the impact of adiposity, low muscle mass and metabolic health on bone health in young women.

Her aspiration is to prevent sarcopenia, frailty, and related comorbidities through early risk profiling, systematic screening, and tailored intervention strategies.

Tint obtained her MBBS from the Institute of Medicine (1) in Myanmar, and her Master of Science and PhD from the National University of Singapore.

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Pan Hong's research involves identifying molecular signatures related to health and development for women and children. In addition to studying high-throughput genome wide measures such as genetics, epigenetics, transcriptomics, lipidomics and metabolomics for Singaporean cohort studies, she also investigates the correlations and interactions among multiple omics for in-depth understanding and novel discovery through association studies and quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses.

Possessing a background in computer science, Pan has a keen interest in cellular gene regulation from both computational methods and single cell technologies, and optimised computing and machine learning algorithms. She developed a R software package for efficiently computing the relations between gene, environment and methylation (GEM tool suites). Her other notable achievements include developing an integrative multi-omics database (iMOMdb) for Asian pregnant women and lipid quantitative trait loci (LipidQTL) of the longitudinal lipidomics for Asian mothers and children.

Prior to joining A*STAR IHDP, Pan was with A*STAR Genome Institute of òòò½Íøand A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research where she received honours, awards, patents and publications for informatics and computational biology. She also boasts industry experience in Eli Lilly ‘s now defunct òòò½ÍøCentre for Drug Discovery where she was involved in award-winning projects for disease ontology and precision medicine.

Pan obtained her Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Signal processing from Anhui University in China, and her Master of Computer Vision and PhD in Computer Science from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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Dennis Wang helms A*STAR IHDP’s Bioinformatics platform, which integrates expertise in computer science with biology and mathematics to support analytics with large and/or multi-dimensional data. Additionally, he holds the Academy of Medical Sciences Professorship (Chair in Data Science) at Imperial College London.

Wang’s research focuses on translating patterns in the human genome into actionable information that accelerates the development of treatments for complex diseases. Specialising in big data analysis, drug development (small molecules and biologics), algorithmic development, software design, web service development, genomic profiling, and statistical inference, his experience includes applying machine learning and statistical approaches to identify patterns from large genomic data sets and providing clinically actionable biomarkers to drug development teams.

Having worked in both academia and industry, Wang enjoys mentoring junior bioinformaticians and clinicians wanting to apply genomics to patient care and marrying research and teaching to promote data driven approaches for personalising medicines. Among his most significant projects are a crowd-sourcing machine learning challenge to predict drug combinations involving partners from pharma and technology industries; improving whole genome sequencing methods for the diagnosis of complex diseases, such as dementia, motor neurone disease and COVID-19; and developing computational methods for integrating omics data from patients to advance precision medicine for treating lung cancer and pulmonary hypertension.

He has received numerous awards, including the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies grant in 2021, the Rosetrees Seedcorn Award and Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Award in 2019, the MRC Proximity to Discovery Award in 2017, and the AstraZeneca Innovative Medicines Award in 2016.

Wang obtained his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Microbiology and Immunology from The University of British Columbia, and both his Master of Philosophy in Computational Biology and PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Cambridge.

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Karen Tan is part of the Human Development domain at A*STAR IHDP, and she works on the longitudinal cohort studies GUSTO and S-PRESTO. 

Trained in Chemical Pathology, Tan’s research interests lie in using clinical biomarkers in the development of precision medicine to improve human health and potential. Her clinical interests are in the areas of healthy longevity and metabolic disease. 

Tan obtained her BSc (Hons) and MBBS from the National University of Singapore, and her PhD from the University of Cambridge.


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Anna Fogel studies the behavioural and psychosocial factors that shape healthy and unhealthy growth in childhood, with a particular focus on eating behaviours as a core component of early development. Her research examines how children’s appetite and eating patterns emerge from the interaction of intrinsic traits, family dynamics and broader environmental influences.

Much of Fogel’s research, conducted as part of the GUSTO cohort, has centred on early childhood, where she has investigated how eating behaviours relate to maternal mental health, parenting and feeding styles, behavioural clustering with physical activity and screen use, and early biological mechanisms such as neural correlates of appetite. She has also examined eating behaviours as key modifiable factors contributing to distinct growth trajectories and increased obesity risk from infancy through middle childhood.

Fogel also leads translational work that bridges research with real-world impact. Beyond identifying early behavioural pathways, she works to translate this evidence into practical tools, caregiver programmes and population-level recommendations. Her efforts span evidence synthesis, intervention design and collaboration with healthcare and community partners. Collectively, her work has informed numerous national policies and guidelines in Singapore, supporting healthier feeding environments and promoting better developmental and health outcomes for children and families.

She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Systems Biology from the University of Sunderland, her Master of Science from Bielefeld University, and her PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Birmingham.

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Xu Jia is a Principal Scientist at A*STAR IHDP. She leads microbiome research in two landmark multi-ethnic Asian cohorts – GUSTO and S-PRESTO – to map life-course gut–microbiome trajectories and their roles in women’s health, healthy ageing and child development, including neurocognitive outcomes. Her work has helped elucidate how early-life gut microbiome and antibiotic exposure influence childhood adiposity, and how infant gut microbiome diversity differs by ethnicity even before complementary feeding. She has also shown how gut microbiome–host interactions links to accelerated biological ageing and women’s reproductive health, and how the toddler gut microbiome may shape later emotional health via changes in brain network connectivity.

Xu has established an in-house longitudinal multi-omics workflow to identify and integrate biomarkers of microbiome–host crosstalk in disease and disorder development. This integrates shotgun metagenomics, metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics and other deep phenotyping with advanced machine learning modelling and causal inference to move from association to mechanism exploration and to prioritise modifiable targets for precision prevention.

Her research is supported by an A*STAR Career Development Fund and National Medical Research Council Open Fund Young Individual Research Grant, and her work has been published in leading journals such as Nature Communications, Genome Medicine, Gut Microbes, International Journal of Obesity and ISME Journal. She collaborates with academic and industry partners to translate microbiome science into dietary and prebiotic strategies that support metabolic and brain health, and is extending her work towards healthy ageing.

Xu obtained her PhD from the Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

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