News In Brief: April 2022

NTU’S RANKINGS RISE ACROSS FIVE BROAD SUBJECT AREAS 

NTU Singapore has risen in its rankings across five broad subject areas, with four of them placing in the global top 50. Within these broad subject areas, NTU’s Engineering & Technology maintains its 4th position from last year, while its Natural Sciences (13th) moved up one position. Both NTU’s Social Sciences & Management (11th) and Arts & Humanities (35th) moved up six places each. Life Sciences & Medicine broke into the global top 100 for the first time, making the biggest jump of 38 places to be ranked 81st position from 119th position. Furthermore, NTU has seven subjects ranked in the global top 10, and 25 subjects in the global 50, demonstrating its strength and global competitiveness across multiple disciplines. LKCMedicine continues to be in the top 100 in the world for Medicine. These results were released in the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject on 6 April.

LKCMEDICINE RESEARCH ASSISTANT WINS ASIAN SCIENTIST LAB TECH OF THE YEAR

Karen Chung, LKCMedicine research assistant from Professor George Augustine’s Lab, won the Ace Award at the Asian Scientist Lab Tech of the Year 2021. The national competition is organised by Asian Scientist Magazine and honours laboratory technicians who are making waves in Singapore’s research and innovation ecosystem. Karen is among 15 lab technicians who received the awards from Mr Alvin Tan, Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth & Trade and Industry at a ceremony on 18 March.

LKCMEDICINE STUDENTS EMERGE AS SECOND RUNNERS UP IN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

A team of LKCMedicine students snagged the overall second runner-up prize at the 11th Siriraj International Medical Microbiology, Parasitology and Immunology Competition, organised by the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in Thailand, held in March. The team, comprising Year 4 students Chen Mingwei, Bryan Lee Heng Yi, Lee Jun Ye and Muhammad Danish Bin Massuryono, beat 40 teams in the qualifying and live team rounds before reaching the game show-style final where they met their competitors from Indonesia and India. Jun Ye also clinched the bronze medal for his outstanding performance in the individual stage.

LAUNCH OF LKCMEDICINE WOMEN IN SCIENCE PODCAST SERIES

On 1 March, LKCMedicine launched “Breaking new Ground”, a Women in Science monthly podcast series that features the work and successes of women scientists, alongside their challenges and aspirations. The very first episode featured Christine Mummery, Professor of Development Biology at Leiden University Medical Center, who recently gave a talk about disease modelling using pluripotent stem cells. In the podcast, she addressed questions after her talk and gave advice for young female scientists. The second episode featured two inaugural LKCMedicine Early Researcher Network award winners: Research Fellows Dr Bilge Ercan from Nanyang Assistant Professor Yasunori Saheki lab and Dr Dorrain Low from Professor John Chambers lab. They share their thoughts on winning the award, their journey to scientific research and how to keep their passion during down-times. Listen to the first episode here and second episode here.