Head’s Message
| Happy New Year and Happy Lunar New Year to everyone! I hope that your new year has started well, with in person gatherings and celebrations and of course, travel. Each new year signals new beginnings, and this new year is especially poignant in view of the ‘lost’ past few years. We cannot rewind the clock but we can appreciate the freedom that we now have in this era of ‘living with COVID’. Perhaps the lessons that we should learn from the past few years are to count our blessings and not to take life for granted. Indeed the year 2022 was worthy of celebrations for the Department. On the international front, Asst Prof Gloryn Chia received the L’Oreal Women in Science Fellowship in Life Sciences in late Dec 2021/Jan 2022, while Asst Prof Brandon Morinaka was one of eight scientists in Asia selected as new members of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) Global Investigator Network from Jan 2022. Remarkably, Asst Prof Shruti Bhatt also followed suit in Jan 2023 and was selected as a new member of the EMBO Global Investigator Network. Dr Han Zhe was selected as one of the twenty #FIPWiSE (FIP Women in Science and Education) rising stars by the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP). Nationally, Asst Prof Shruti Bhatt and Asst Prof Tang Wei both won highly competitive National Medical Research Council (NMRC) grants. We are very proud of the achievements of our junior colleagues and look forward to celebrating their future successes. The successes of our colleagues are also celebrated in the home front with Dr Han Zhe winning the Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2022 as well as being placed on the Teaching Honour Roll. In terms of Faculty awards, Mr Eng Chun Heng won the Teaching Assistant Award (full time), while Dr Chng Hui Ting and Dr Leroy Koh both won the Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. Two of our E&A staff, Ms Adreana Liew and Ms Winnie Wong, won the Faculty Outstanding Service Award. We also celebrate the recent academic promotion in the Department – Dr Chng Hui Ting to senior lecturer, where her leadership in teaching pedagogy, curriculum development and helming Sci-PhI are just some examples of her achievements. For our E&A staff, we have had a bumper crop of promotions – Ms Chew Ying Ying (to Associate Director), Ms Adreana Liew (to Asst Senior Manager), Ms Winnie Wong (to Scientific Manager) as well as Ms Yong Sock Leng and Mr Johannes Murti Jaya. These are all well-deserved and one could argue, long overdue! Change is inevitable and the ability to embrace change has been one of the toughest lessons in the past 3 years. This includes letting go and starting afresh, which is always a little hard and a little scary. The retirement of our 3 senior colleagues, Professor Paul Ho, Assoc Prof Paul Heng and Assoc Prof Go Mei Lin in 2022 has significantly touched the Department as all three colleagues have been pillars of the Department. Their legacies are their contributions to what we are and who we are as a Department. We shall miss them heaps – their absence is an emptiness in the Department meetings and their words of wisdom will not be forgotten. Their retirements mark a major change in our “pharmily”. Fortunately for us, they are still involved in the Department in some way: Paul Heng as a consultant to GEA-NUS; Paul Ho as Emeritus Professor; Mei Lin as an Honorary Fellow. We wish them a fulfilling and enjoyable retirement and thank them for the training of our pharmacy students for the past decades, their dedication to NUS and the Department, and especially for their friendship throughout the years. The year 2022 has also seen the departure of two instructors, Dr Zhang Ruirui and Dr Tan Yeong Lan who has taken up new positions overseas and locally, respectively. We wish them all the best for the future. We also welcome new Faculty members to our ‘’pharmily”: Assoc Professor Wu Wei, a joint appointee with SIgN A*STAR who joined us from Utrecht University; Asst Prof Liu Boxiang, who joined us from Baidu Research Centre in the Silicon Valley; Dr Lisa Brennan who is a Senior Lecturer in the area of Pharmacy Practice, recruited from Wingate School of Pharmacy, NC, USA; Drs Camillo Benetti (from Chiesi Farmaceutici Italy), Jiangnan Dun (from Hoffman La Roche, Switzerland) and Linda Hong (from University of Fribourg, Switzerland) as Lecturers in the area of Pharmaceutics and Nur Syafiqah Hussein as a Teaching Assistant. Our new adjunct Faculty members are Dr Parijat Kanaujia (ISCE2), Ms Lee Hui Keng (HSA), Dr Calum Macbeath (ISCE2) and Dr Elaine Lo (NUH). There is no doubt that our new colleagues will share their wealth and diversity of experience to our ecosystem and enrich our Department even further. Wishing you all a very happy and successful year ahead. No doubt that we have new year resolutions, and high expectations of what the year should bring. If all fails, we can surely find another new year* for new beginnings! *(footnote: Songkran; Muharram; Diwali to name a few) With best wishes,
Christina Chai |
