Commencement 2014
Undergraduate Research
I graduated with a Merit Diploma in Biotechnology from Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore in 2006 where my two main research areas were on the adsorption properties of Escherichia coli J-proteins and the growth and adhesion properties of Acidovorax temperans for wastewater treatment. After a stint as a pilot (trainee) in the armed forces, I graduated in 2014 from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a B.Sc. (1st Class Hons) in Life Sciences (Environmental Biology) and a 2nd major in Business Management.
During my four years in NUS, I rediscovered my childhood love of the sea and joined the Experimental Marine Ecology Laboratory (EMEL). Here I researched the shell patterns of button snails (Umbonium vestiarium) and published my first peer-reviewed article in May 2016.
PhD
From 2014 to 2018, I did my PhD as a President’s Graduate Fellow at NUS, supervised by Prof Peter Todd (EMEL) and Prof Martin Stevens (at the University of Exeter in the UK). Building upon my experience with animal colour patterns, I published a computer program called PAT-GEOM and used it to study the patterns of crabs, sea cucumbers, and sea slugs! This software has been used for a surprising variety of applications even beyond animal colouration, including in neural stem cells, zinc batteries and turbostratic graphene!
On the side, I was heavily involved in SCUBA-based and intertidal fieldwork (on topics such as coral-macroalgal interactions, herbivory on coral reefs and the greening of seawalls) and President of the department’s Graduate Students’ Society.
Organisms I worked on during my PhD. Left: A sea apple (purple) and sea anemone (brown) on a bed of seagrass in Singapore. Right: A furrowed crab on a rock in Cornwall, England.
My wife, parents and me at my PhD Commencement in July 2019.
Postdoctoral Research
Having defended my PhD in March 2019, I joined Prof Antonia Monteiro at the Monteiro Lab in the National University of Singapore as a Research Fellow and Grant Manager of a multi-million dollar grant on using structural colouration in butterflies.
My research focused on the colour patterns of butterflies: how they develop and how butterflies use them to communicate to both predators and potential mates. I also forayed into using Scanning Electron Microscopy, RAMAN Spectroscopy and CRISPR to investigate how the butterflies’ vivid wing colours are inherited and produced through the structure and chemical composition of their scales.
Lecturer
After two years as a Research Fellow, I joined the National University of Singapore as a Lecturer in July 2021. Aside from my main teaching areas in Conservation and Statistics for Ecology, I also teach Biology and Sustainability. I have won a few teaching and mentorship awards and am deeply passionate about partnering with my students to create knowledge in our shared classroom.
Outside the classroom, I advise both the undergraduate and postgraduate student societies of the department – something that is very close to my heart and allows me to impact the lives of a wide range of students here in NUS!
Teaching Principal Component Analysis in a class on multivariate statistics using good ol’ Play-Doh on a white board.
Further Info
My: Publications List | CV |Google Scholar page |NUS Webpage