News

Our heartiest congratulations to Adjunct Associate Professor Mo Yin on her appointment as Co-Director of ADVANCE-ID, effective 1 January 2026.

ADVANCE-ID’s mission is to generate high-quality, context-relevant evidence to improve the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, while strengthening sustainable research capacity across the region. This appointment reflects the continued growth of ADVANCE-ID and reinforces its leadership as its research programmes and regional partnerships expand.

Adjunct Associate Professor Mo Yin is a clinician-scientist specialising in infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, with extensive experience leading large, multi-country clinical trials and research networks across Asia. Her work spans randomised trials, observational studies, methodological innovation, and policy-relevant research, supported by a strong track record in securing international funding and building regional research capacity.

We warmly welcome Adjunct Associate Professor Mo Yin to this role and look forward to her contributions to advancing the impact of ADVANCE-ID.

On 10 December 2025, the team from NUS Cambodia Programme, led by Assoc Prof Siyan Yi, attended a dissemination workshop in Lao PDR to mark the final milestone of the project titled “Developing and Piloting Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Interventions to Reduce the Incidence of Hospital-Acquired Infection in Cambodia and Lao PDR”, funded by the Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute. Assoc Prof Siyan Yi was joined by Ms Quach Van Thanh Mai and Ms Esabelle Yam Lo Yan on this trip.

Participants included representatives from national, provincial, and district hospitals involved in the project, as well as representatives from the Lao Ministry of Health, Lao TPHI, the NUS Lao Programme, and the Cambodia University of Health Sciences (UHS). Dr Dyna Khuon, Head of Public Health Unit at UHS, represented the Cambodia team and shared experiences from Cambodia to facilitate cross-country exchange and discussion.

Looking back – from development to implementation

Organised collaboratively by the Lao Tropical and Public Health Institute (Lao TPHI) and NUS Cambodia Programme, the workshop served as a platform to review the project’s results, achievements, and challenges, as well as an opportunity to discuss lessons learned and reflect on future implementation.

In their opening remarks, Assoc Prof Siyan Yi and Dr Somphou Sayasone (Deputy Director of Lao TPHI) highlighted the importance of maintaining high IPC standards in healthcare, as well as the value of collaborative efforts that support local partners, produce local evidence, and improve health systems in the local country. This was followed by the sharing of preliminary results and experiences from project development and implementation in Lao PDR and Cambodia by Dr Kanchana Thilakoun (Lao TPHI) and Dr Dyna Khuon (UHS), respectively.

Looking forward – lessons learnt for future IPC initiatives

Following the sharing of preliminary results, Dr Somphou Sayasone and Dr Kanchana Thilakoun facilitated the Q&A session where representatives from MOH and the participating hospitals shared their comments and reflections on past and future implementation of the project. The programme concluded with an award ceremony, the Hand Hygiene Champion certificates and certificates of participation were presented to the participating wards.

Collaborations for system-wide change

The event was a unique opportunity for participants to learn about IPC initiatives in both Lao PDR and Cambodia, fostering cross-country sharing and learning. Workshop participants also highlighted the importance of collaboration and systematic coordination between various levels of the health system to ensure that IPC initiatives were sustainable.

Overall, participants agreed that the project has benefited the participating hospitals in creating evidence for locally developed IPC interventions, re-focusing the priorities of the health system on IPC initiatives.

This project was funded by the Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute.

Starting next January, 13 primary and secondary schools will replace individual canteen stalls with a centralised kitchen system for unified purchasing, cooking and meal delivery, reshaping how school canteens operate. The move aims to address staffing challenges while ensuring students continue to receive healthy, diverse meals but has also raised concerns about food safety and the impact on existing stall owners.

Can centralised kitchens improve food quality and sustainability in schools, without compromising food safety or livelihoods?

Hear from Prof Teo Yik Ying as he explains how the centralised kitchen system works and discusses the implications of this transition.

Reflecting on formative moments from his medical training — from treating an injured fishball vendor to witnessing preventable deaths caused by systemic gaps and workplace hazards — these experiences shaped Prof Chia Kee Seng’s journey into public health. They reinforced a fundamental truth: prevention, underpinned by health education and systemic change, can make a profound difference.

Hear from our Founding Dean, Prof Chia Kee Seng, as he underscores the importance of strategic reforms to address pressing challenges such as population ageing, chronic disease, and obesity.

Our heartiest congratulations to Assoc Prof Cynthia Chen on her promotion to Associate Professor, with retrospective effect from 1 July 2025!

Since joining NUS, Assoc Prof Chen has distinguished herself as an outstanding educator, researcher, and leader in public health economics and ageing. Her dedication to teaching and student engagement has been recognised through consistently strong student feedback and the SSHSPH Teaching Excellence Award.

Her research focuses on the economics of ageing, health technology assessment, and the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions. Notably, she pioneered the adaptation of the Future Elderly Model for Singapore, providing policymakers with critical insights into disease trajectories and healthcare financing. As Principal Investigator, she has secured competitive research funding and published widely in leading journals, including Nature Aging and The Lancet. Her translational work has directly informed national health policy and practice.

Congratulations to Assoc Prof Cynthia Chen on this well-deserved achievement, and we wish her continued success in the years ahead!

Our heartiest congratulations to Assoc Prof Cynthia Chen on her promotion to Associate Professor, with retrospective effect from 1 July 2025!

Since joining NUS, Assoc Prof Chen has distinguished herself as an outstanding educator, researcher, and leader in public health economics and ageing. Her dedication to teaching and student engagement has been recognised through consistently strong student feedback and the SSHSPH Teaching Excellence Award.

Her research focuses on the economics of ageing, health technology assessment, and the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions. Notably, she pioneered the adaptation of the Future Elderly Model for Singapore, providing policymakers with critical insights into disease trajectories and healthcare financing. As Principal Investigator, she has secured competitive research funding and published widely in leading journals, including Nature Aging and The Lancet. Her translational work has directly informed national health policy and practice.

Congratulations to Assoc Prof Cynthia Chen on this well-deserved achievement, and we wish her continued success in the years ahead!

The race for innovative drugs has become a defining front in US-China competition. While the United States continues to lead in original drug innovation, China is rapidly advancing through strategic investment, scale, and efficiency, reshaping the future of global pharmaceutical development.

On 28 October 2025, the National Cohorts Office (NCO) hosted a networking event bringing together cohorts and their teams in Singapore. Also in attendance were members of the NCO’s Scientific Advisory Board – Professor Andrew Morris, Director of Health Data Research UK; Dr Joe McNamara, former Head of Cohort Strategy, UK Medical Research Council; and Professor Per Hall, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet.

The event began with a networking lunch, followed by a keynote lecture from Professor Morris and a presentation by the Singapore Strategic Cohorts Consortium (SSCC). SSCC is a collaboration of four major population cohorts (Singapore Chinese Health Study (SCHS), Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Diseases (SEED), Singapore Longitudinal Ageing Studies/ Yishun Study (SLAS/YS) and SG100K) working to integrate data and expertise into a unified research resource of more than 160,000 participants.

In his talk, Professor Morris highlighted the opportunity to treat health data as national infrastructure capable of transforming healthcare, research, and productivity amid global pressures from ageing populations, rising healthcare demand, and diminishing workforce capacity. He underscored that advances in AI and medical science depend on large-scale, high-quality, responsibly governed data, and that countries with strong public health data systems such as the UK and Singapore have a significant advantage in driving future innovation. Professor Morris also described the UK’s investment in a trusted, secure, and interoperable data ecosystem through HDR UK, which fosters national and international collaborations across academia, healthcare, industry and charity while maintaining public trust through robust governance and transparency.

SSCC followed with a presentation on the consortium’s progress in establishing governance frameworks, harmonizing diverse datasets, developing a trusted research environment for secure data access, and launching demonstration projects that expand molecular, clinical, and imaging capabilities. Key achievements include building shared data dictionaries, onboarding imaging and omics data, standardizing clinical chemistry assays, enhancing genotyping through imputation and sequencing, and applying AI-driven analyses to DXA images. The consortium is actively promoting coordinated, multi-institutional collaboration and encourages other population cohorts interested in partnering or sharing knowledge to get in touch.

Catch the session via Youtube!