What are your research interests and ultimate career goals?
My research interests include pharmacogenomics, epigenomics, molecular biology and their respective translational and clinical applications in precision medicine. I started in the field of cancer, where my PhD lab and thesis has exposed me to identifying gaps and answering clinical and scientific questions in treatment resistance in both solid tumors and hematological cancers using pharmacological and genomic tools. During my PhD training, I soon realized that the study of human health is predominantly from disease perspectives, which shifted my interests and foreseeable future career towards preventive medicine. I pivoted from my PhD training to my current post-doc training at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden to study aging and how we can use pharmacological tools to slow down or reverse age-related decline.
What inspired you to pursue graduate school at Duke?
I was working as a hospital pharmacist in Singapore. Our constant struggle, together with other healthcare professionals, with countless unanswered clinical questions in many different medical fields often results in frustration in clinical practice and patient care. My first-hand experience with that struggle inspired and motivated me to contribute to research in the biomedical field.
What is your favorite memory from graduate school at Duke?
Running on campus at 5:30am 2-3 times weekly with an undergraduate student (currently pursuing her MD/PhD at Harvard/MIT) who was working in our lab. Our 4-mile route starts from the Chapel to East Campus via Campus drive and back. Our running conversations were about anything from life to science in or out of our lab, accompanied by the morning bird calls, fresh crisp air (sometimes freezing cold during Winter), rising sun and even the worker driving the mini road sweeper saying ‘Good morning’ to us. It’s a great way to start my day.
How do you hope to make an impact with your research?
I hope to promote healthy aging and preventive medicine as the near future for healthcare and implement/ influence my anti-aging research in clinical practices.
Read more about the Class of 2021 at medschool.duke.edu/graduation2021