NRF Research Fellows to carry out world-class research here

The National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Fellowship launched last May, received applications worldwide. Ten inaugural Research Fellows were selected. Knowledge Enterprise profiles some of these brilliant, passionate researchers who will receive up to US$1.5 million each to carry out cutting-edge research in Singapore.

MAKING AN IMPACT: From left: Barbaros Ozyilmaz, Yeo Yee Chia, Gijsbert Grotenbreg, Eugene Makeyev, Jose Dinneny, and Cynthia He (extreme right).

Dr Yeo Yee Chia, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, has more than 300 patent applications, including more than 60 issued US patents, many of which have been used in commercial electronic products. He pioneered the application of new materials, including silicon-carbon and diamond-like carbon, in nanoelectronic devices. His team demonstrated the world’s smallest strained transistor of only
5 nm, or 20,000 times smaller than the diameter of the human hair.

Dr Yeo works closely with the Singapore semiconductor industry, helping local companies train more than 500 engineers in advanced semiconductor technology. The NRF Research Fellowship will allow him to train even more research manpower and develop new and industry-relevant technologies for Singapore.
“I hope to widen NUS’ global lead in nanoelectronics, particularly in next-generation electronic devices,” he said.

Dr Barbaros Ozyilmaz, Department of Physics, is an experimental physicist specialising in the newly emerging fields of spintronics and carbon-based nanotechnology. A Turkish-German scientist, he joined NUS last December after completing his postdoctoral research at Columbia University.

“I was attracted to NUS and Singapore because it is one of the most dynamic places for research. The nanofabrication infrastructures ranging from a number of state-of-the-art clean rooms to an in-house synchrotron facility provide the necessary means to compete with the world’s leading institutions. Singapore reminds me of the other great city, New York, but with sunshine all year round... a tropical version of Manhattan,”
he said.

Dr Ozyilmaz plans to build a strong interdisciplinary research group at NUS which merges graphene physics and spin transfer torque into a new field of graphene-based spintronics where scientists exploit both the “spin” of electrons and their loss of mass. Their work will pave the way for faster and more energy-efficient microelectronic device applications. “It will also allow me to study exciting fundamental physics which usually takes places in black holes and gigantic particle accelerators,” he said.

Dr Gijsbert Grotenbreg works at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, combining synthetic organic and biochemistry methods to address important questions in immunology. When he moves over to NUS, Dr Gijsbert will research a novel peptide exchange strategy to identify epitopes (viral fragments) that attach themselves to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) molecules found in Asian populations. When the immune system’s CD8+ T cells recognise these epitope-HLA compounds, they will eliminate the infected cell. “By incorporating all epitopes in vaccine formulations, it should be possible to stimulate the immune system of any individual, and ensure protection against the virus,” he said.

For a start, Dr Gijsbert will work on the dengue virus and respiratory syncytial virus which are prevalent in Asia.

Dr Cynthia He, Department of Biological Sciences, is probably the first scientist in the world to image a Trypanosoma brucei cell (responsible for the parasitic African sleeping sickness) through an entire cell division cycle that lasted almost 10 hours under a microscope. During the process at Yale University, she discovered a structure in the cell which is responsible for its duplication.

In the next few years at NUS, Dr He aims to unravel the mysteries of this structure, further understanding the regulation of cell cycle in this parasite as well as in other organisms. The hope is to develop new therapies to treat these persistent pathogenic organisms.

Dr Eugene Makeyev will be joining Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) later this year. Currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University, Dr Makeyev has made significant discoveries in the area of molecular neuroscience.

“During brain development, neural stem cells undergo a complex differentiation process, which requires a precise control of gene expression. Errors in this process have been shown to cause a number of human diseases. Gene expression can be regulated at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels. The transcriptional level of regulation affects the synthesis of messenger RNA precursors (pre-mRNAs) from genomic DNA templates, whereas the post-transcriptional level determines the exact nature and amount of protein produced from a given messenger RNA,” Dr Makeyev explained.

Two specific post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, alternative pre-mRNA splicing and the microRNA pathway, are known to be involved in brain development and function. “I identified a link between these two pathways by showing that a nervous system-specific microRNA called miR-124 reduces the levels of a protein inhibitor of alternative splicing called PTBP1,” he said.

His laboratory here will study molecular mechanisms and biological functions of this specific microRNA. “I hope that the research will expand our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying nervous system development and cell differentiation, inspire the development of novel technologies, and open up new avenues in treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and cancer,” said Dr Makeyev.

Dr José Dinneny, now with Duke University, will start his research with TLL soon. His work here will provide an understanding of how plants respond to environmental stress. “My greatest breakthrough was in the use of a developmental approach to understand a classical physiological stress. Most of developmental biology is focused on understanding how cells attain certain fates or identities. Very little has been done to determine how these initial developmental steps lead to a cell with unique physiology, behaviour or responses,” he said.

“My research utilises new technology to characterise gene expression at the cell-type specific level in roots of the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. I have generated a high resolution gene expression map that explores responses to salt stress in different tissue layers of the root,” he said. Understanding how plants respond to salt is of great practical importance as high salinity is the most ubiquitous agricultural contaminant on earth, he added.