I am a bioinformatician and data scientist working at the interface of integrative biology and computation. Trained at the National University of Singapore (B.Appl.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D.), my research spans viruses, immune responses, vaccines, drug design, and disease biomarkers — connecting genotype to phenotype through biological data warehousing and applied bioinformatics. Across more than two decades and six countries, this work has produced over 90 peer-reviewed publications and three granted US patents, and attracted more than 3,600 citations.
My career has moved across six countries. After training and early research in Singapore — at the National University of Singapore and Johns Hopkins' Singapore division — I joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in the United States in 2010. In 2011, I was selected for the team that helped establish Perdana University in Malaysia, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where I joined as its sole bioinformatics faculty member and, building a team over the following years, became Founding Director of its Centre for Bioinformatics, Founding Dean of its School of Data Sciences — the first such school in Malaysia — and Founding CEO of the spin-off company Alterquo. From 2020 to 2023, while on secondment from Perdana University, I was a Professor at Bezmialem Vakıf University in Türkiye, on a TÜBİTAK International Fellowship for Outstanding Researchers, and co-founded the clinical-informatics start-up BioAct. Since February 2023, I have been Professor and Associate Dean at the College of Computing & Information Technology, University of Doha for Science & Technology (UDST), in Qatar, where I help steer academic strategy, accreditation, and interdisciplinary capstone work with industry, and helped establish its Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics.
Teaching has run alongside all of this. I have taught genomics, immunology, bioinformatics, data science, and computing across four countries — to roughly 1,500 students at the National University of Singapore, medical and bioinformatics students at Perdana University in Malaysia, students in Türkiye, and, most recently, computing and IT students at UDST in Qatar. I have supervised 16 research students to graduation (12 MSc and 4 PhD) and currently advise three PhD candidates. I have led the development of several undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across Malaysia and Qatar, led their accreditation in Malaysia, and contributed to programme accreditation at UDST.
Much of my service has gone into building the regional bioinformatics community. Through the Asia-Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNET) — the oldest regional affiliate of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) — I helped drive much of its recent growth: expanding the InCoB conference series, launching the inaugural Asia & Pacific Bioinformatics Joint Congress (which united 15 regional organisations in 2024), and establishing new capacity-building programmes, a Student Council, an awards programme, a Bioinformatics Research Consortium, and a 2024 memorandum of understanding with ISCB. I serve as its Vice President (Operations) and Immediate Past President. I am also Chairperson of the Global Organisation for Bioinformatics Learning, Education and Training (GOBLET), and I led the Bioinformatics Grand Challenges Consortium (BGCC) in defining seven systemic challenges in bioinformatics training. In 2025, I served as one of the Editors-in-Chief of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (Elsevier). Beyond these roles, I run 10 data-science interest groups that connect close to 1,000 practitioners across the region.
