25th Sept 2013 - Eight of the Republic’s top research scientists and engineers will receive the 2013 President’s Science and Technology Awards from President Tony Tan Keng Yam at an awards ceremony on 25 September 2013. The awards are the top honours in Singapore conferred on outstanding individuals and teams for their achievements in science and technology and their contributions to research and development (R&D) in Singapore.
Young Scientist Awards (YSA)
This year’s Young Scientists Awards (YSA) will be awarded to three promising research scientists and engineers aged 35 years and below, who have shown great promise to be world-class researchers in their fields of expertise. One of the recipients is Dr Khor Chiea Chuen from A*STAR’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), awarded “For his research on genetics and heredity”.
Dr Khor’s research is focused on defining genetic factors that influence susceptibility to common, Asian-centric human diseases. As a postdoctoral trainee, he has discovered a series of DNA sequence variations which show very strong association with severe infectious conditions, such as Dengue shock and Kawasaki disease.
Dr Khor currently leads an independent research group at the GIS. Together with partners at the Singapore Eye Research Institute, his research leverages on the knowledge of the Singaporean genealogy, using whole-genome analysis and familial pedigree information to dissect the hereditable basis of age-related macular degeneration, primary angle closure glaucoma, and extreme shortsightedness. These are eye diseases which are very common in Singapore and Asia, and, if detected early, could prevent a substantial proportion of blindness in this region. Knowledge gained from the Singaporean genealogy will also create a genetic resource which is scalable to benefit other local disease research domains such as cancer and metabolic diseases.
He has published over 55 papers, of which 13 of them were in journals of broad visibility and high impact (New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Genetics). With his clinical training, he developed a passion to work on research topics of clinical relevance for the benefit of patients. In 2001, Dr Khor was one of the pioneers to receive the inaugural A*STAR National Science Scholarship under the MBBS-PhD scheme. He received his DPhil from the University of Oxford and was trained in NUS for his MBBS degree. He also holds joint appointments as an Assistant Professor with the Departments of Ophthalmology and Pediatrics at the National University Health System, as well as at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health in NUS.
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