The Agency for Science, Technology and Research is Singapore’s equivalent to NIH or the UK’s Crick Institute with intramural and grant funded research programs aligned across several research institutes. A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs is a relatively new institute covering infectious biology from cellular level pathogenesis through to design and validation of diagnostics. A large proportion of the senior investigators have links to Duke MGM, and A*STAR continues to encourage its PhD scholars to apply to Duke graduate programs. A*STAR has hosted several MGM faculty and alumni seminars over the last couple of years and looks forward to seeing more in the future!
Dr. Eve Chow (postdoc, Heitman Lab 2013-2016), has continued her work in fungal genetics to investigate mechanisms of anti-fungal resistance and virulence in Candida spp at A*STAR (https://doi.org/10.1111/mmi.15229; https://doi.org/10.1128/mbio.02688-23). Leveraging techniques learned during her time in the Heitman Lab working with Cryptococcus, she has developed a transposon mutagenesis approach to identify novel drug resistance and susceptibility pathways in Candida auris. She was recently awarded an intramural grant developing new anti-fungal compounds.
Dr. Matthew Tay (PhD, Georgia Tomaras Lab 2013-2018), joined A*STAR after graduating. He used his training in HIV-1 vaccine immune correlates analyses for helping assess vaccine and infection-related immune responses during the COVID-19 pandemic (https://doi.org/10.15252/emmm.202115227). Further building on concepts learned in HIV-1 vaccine development, he now leads a lab that is focused on monoclonal antibody and vaccine development for pandemic preparedness and combating antimicrobial resistance. Given the multidisciplinary environment in Singapore and at A*STAR, he is applying new techniques such as high-throughput microfluidic assays to bypass bottlenecks in the traditional discovery processes for more effective therapeutics discovery (https://doi.org/10.1039/D2LC00018K).
Dr. Stefan Oehlers (postdoc, Tobin Lab 2012-2016), was recruited to A*STAR in 2022 after 6 years leading a lab in Sydney. He still studies fluorescent infections with the zebrafish model system with major themes in non-tuberculous mycobacterial infection (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28638-5), supported by the Singaporean NMRC, and the impact of infection on ageing. Stefan’s lab makes extensive use of techniques adapted/developed during his time in the Tobin Lab merging live imaging and histological analyses to understand pathogen subversion of host processes.