Professor Yousin Suh
Charles and Marie Robertson of Reproductive Sciences in Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Professor of Genetics and Development
Director of Reproductive Ageing in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University
Yousin Suh, Ph.D., is the Charles and Marie Robertson of Reproductive Sciences in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Professor of Genetics and Development, and Director of Reproductive Ageing in Obstetrics and Gynecology in the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. She investigates the (epi)genetic component that underlies the interface of intrinsic ageing and disease based on the identification of (epi)genome sequence variants associated with age-related disease risk or its opposite, i.e., an unusual resistance to such disease. read more To investigate the functional impact of (epi)genetic variants, she applies specific functional tests, including in silico modeling, cell culture assays and mouse models. Her contributions in the field have been recognized by the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Ageing. She has organized numerous international symposiums on functional genomics of ageing, is on the Editorial Boards of numerous Journals including PLoS Genetics and Ageing Cell as an Associate Editor, and participates in advisory committee members for several research institutions and companies. hide
Professor William Ledger
Head of Discipline of Women’s Health, Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales
Director of Reproductive Medicine, Senior Staff Specialist at the Royal Hospital for Women and a fertility specialist at City Fertility in Sydney
Professor William Ledger is Head of Discipline of Women’s Health, Faculty of Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Director of Reproductive Medicine and Senior Staff Specialist at the Royal Hospital for Women and a fertility specialist at City Fertility in Sydney. He founded the Fertility and Research Centre (FRC), a joint venture between University of New South Wales and South East Sydney Local Health District as a centre for translational research in reproductive biology and reproductive medicine. read more The FRC has Government funding to provide a Statewide service in oncofertility: preservation of sperm, oocytes and embryos for young people prior to gonadotoxic chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The centre is unique in Australia and is currently running three randomised trials, two observational studies and an early stage translational project to improve techniques for in vitro maturation of human oocytes. The work of the centre has generated two patents.
He is Chair of the RANZCOG Research Committee and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Fertility Society of Australia. Recently, he was a member of an NHMRC Working Party to review national guidelines on ethics and ART and Chair of the MBS Working Party on costs of ART.
He is Chair of the Postgraduate Board of the Discipline of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, which manages Masters programs in Reproductive Medicine and in Women’s Health Medicine. He is a member of the Editorial Board of 8 scientific journals. His h-index is 50 (Scopus) and 48 (Web of Science). He is author of 344 journal articles and 17 books (6 authored, 11 edited). He supervises Honours and PhD students and is actively involved in clinical training of junior clinicians. hide
Professor Brian K Kennedy
Director, Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality, NUS
Director, Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme
co-Director, Centre for Healthy Longevity, NUHS
Dr. Brian Kennedy is a Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Physiology at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University Singapore. He serves as co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Longevity at the National University Health System and Director for the Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme and the Asian Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality. Collectively, NUS ageing research seeks to demonstrate that longevity interventions can be successfully employed in humans to extend healthspan, the disease-free and highly functional period of life. read more From 2010 to 2016, Dr. Kennedy was the President and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing and he maintained a professorship there through 2020. Dr. Kennedy has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington and, where he was a faculty member from 2001 to 2010. Dr. Kennedy is also actively involved with a number of Biotechnology companies and also served as a Co-Editor-In-Chief at Ageing Cell from 2011-2021. Finally, Dr. Kennedy has a track record of interaction in China, where he was a Visiting Professor at the Ageing Research Institute at Guangdong Medical College from 2009 to 2014. His Ph.D. was performed in the laboratory of Leonard Guarente at M.I.T., where he published the first paper linking Sirtuins to ageing. hide
Professor Wei-Jun Jean Yeung
Director (Social Sciences) at Singapore Institute of Clinical Science at A*STAR
Professor of the NUS Department of Paediatrics in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Professor Wei-Jun Jean Yeung is Director (Social Sciences) at the Singapore Institute of Clinical Science at A*STAR and a Professor of the Department of Paediatrics at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Professor Yeung is a leading expert in social demography and family studies. She is the inaugural President of the Population Association of Singapore and the founding Director of the Center for Family and Population Research at NUS. read more She has received many prestigious awards and led national surveys on family and children’s well-being in countries including the USA, China, and Singapore. She has published extensively in leading journals and is cited widely in academic publications and high-impact global media, and served on the editorial boards of many leading international journals. She is the Principal Investigator of the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study (SG LEADS). Her recent publications include volumes on Family and Population Changes in Singapore, Family and Demographic Transition in Southeast Asia, Productive Ageing, Young People in Uncertain Labor Markets, and Family Policies and Care Regimes in Asia. hide
Professor Andrea B. Maier
Oon Chiew Seng Professor in Medicine, Healthy Ageing and Dementia Research
National University of Singapore
Professor of Gerontology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Andrea B. Maier (1978), a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP), graduated in Medicine (MD) 2003 from the University of Lübeck (Germany), was registered 2009 in The Netherlands as Specialist in Internal Medicine-Geriatrics and was appointed Full Professor of Gerontology at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands) in 2013. She was the head of Geriatrics at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center from 2012 to 2016. From 2016 to early 2021 Professor Maier served as Divisional Director of Medicine and Community Care at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia, and as Professor of Medicine and Aged Care at the University of Melbourne, Australia. read more Professor Maier’s research focuses on unraveling the mechanisms of ageing and age-related diseases. She is heading international longitudinal cohort studies and geroscience interventions. During the last 12 years she has published more than 370 peer-reviewed articles, achieving an H index of 68, spearheading the significant contributions of her highly acclaimed innovative, global, multidisciplinary @Age research group. She is a frequent guest on radio and television programs and book author to disseminate ageing research. Furthermore, she is invited member and advisor of several international academic and health policy committees, including the World Health Organization evaluating the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing. She is the past President of The Australian and New Zealand Society for Sarcopenia and Frailty Research, the Founding President of the Healthy Longevity Medicine Society and serves as selected Member of The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. hide
Professor Robert B. Gilchrist
NHMRC Investigator
Research Lead, Discipline of Women’s Health
University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia.
Professor Robert Gilchrist is an oocyte biologist whose research encompasses basic and applied aspects of ovarian folliculogenesis, oocyte maturation and preimplantation embryo development. He conducts discovery research on oocyte-somatic cell interactions as a determinant of subsequent embryonic development. His work demonstrated that oocyte paracrine signalling determines cumulus cell differentiation and function. He identified cumulin, a heterodimer of GDF9 and BMP15, and showed that it regulates cumulus cell function and oocyte quality. In addition, he leads a translational research program with the objectives of improving oocyte in vitro maturation (IVM) procedures for treatment of infertility and fertility preservation in women/girls with cancer. He is a pioneer of biphasic IVM procedures which are now in clinical practice. read more Professor Gilchrist completed his D.Sc.Agr. (Magna cum laude) in 1996 on oocyte maturation at the University of Göttingen in Germany. He then returned to Australia, where he spent 18 years at the University of Adelaide, initially as a post-doctoral fellow and then as a research group leader. He is currently Research Lead of the Discipline of Women’s Health at the University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia. He is an NHMRC Investigator Fellow. He has published 153 peer-reviewed papers including 29 reviews/chapters. He currently has an H-index of 56 with >9,000 citations [Scopus]. hide
Professor Mary Zelinski
Professor in the Division of Reproductive & Developmental Sciences at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, Beaverton, Oregon, USA and in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA.
Her research is centered on understanding the basic mechanisms underlying the development and function of primate ovarian follicles with the goal of applying this knowledge through translational research in important areas of women’s reproductive health. She has over 30 years of experience using nonhuman primate models of infertility and contraception. read more Her current research interests focus on female fertility preservation, including ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation, and 3-dimensional culture of macaque preantral follicles. She recently received a Senior Scholar Award from the Global Consortium on Reproductive Longevity and Equality to investigate interventions for ovarian ageing in macaques. hide
Professor Cuilin Zhang
Professor at the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, NUS Medicine
Director of the Global Centre for Asian Women’s Health (GloW)
Lead, Population Health Study program, NUS Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE)
Adjunct Professor, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Professor Cuilin Zhang is a professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and the founding Director of the Global Centre for Asian Women’s Health (GloW) (www.glownus.org), and the Lead for Population Health Study program of Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equity (ACRLE). Prof. Zhang holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. read more Before joining NUS, Prof. Zhang was a Senior Investigator with tenure and interim Chief of the Epidemiology Branch, Division of Population Health Research, NICHD, National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA (2007-2021). Prof. Zhang served in the NIH Nutritional Research Task Force Writing Group for developing strategic plan on national nutritional research in the next 10 years (2021-2030) and was the NIH Intramural Subject Matter Expert of multiple themes: Nutrition Across the Lifespan, Foundational Nutrition Science; Approaches, Methods, and Tools for Dietary Intake Assessment.
Prof. Zhang is a clinical epidemiologist whose work unites nutrition. biochemistry, genetics, clinical medicine, and public health, and is at the interface of disease etiology and prevention strategies in the arena of women's and children's health over lifespan and across generations. She is leading a multi-disciplinary research program focusing on the improvement of women’s health and human potentials through diet and lifestyle modification, omics research, and early screening in general. One of the focuses is on nutrition and lifestyle, metabolic and genetic determinants, and health consequences of obesity, gestational diabetes and type 2 diabetes, and related comorbidities across the lifespan. Professor Zhang was the recipient of the Director Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Understanding of Etiology and Risk Factors of Gestational Diabetes, NICHD, NIH. hide
Assistant Professor Ethan Greenblatt
Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
Dr. Greenblatt performed doctoral studies in biophysics in Ron Kopito’s lab at Stanford University, working on the endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation (ERAD) pathway. He identified a central role for membrane rhomboid pseudoproteases in the trafficking of misfolded secretory proteins to the cytoplasm en route to proteasomal destruction. He then joined Allan Spradling’s lab at the Carnegie Institution for Science for his postdoctoral fellowship, where he established a novel system for studying the biology of developmental arrest using quiescent mature Drosophila oocytes. This led to the identification of a key role for aberrant translation in the loss of oocyte function during normal ageing or in the absence of disease-associated genes such as Fmr1.read more The long-term goal of Greenblatt’s laboratory is to understand the mechanism of Fmr1-dependent translation and to further elucidate the role of translation dysfunction in meiotic errors associated with oocyte ageing. hide
Assistant Professor Queenie Li Ling Jun
Assistant Director, Public Affairs, Global Centre for Asian Women’s Health (GloW)
In Dr Li’s early career in research, she used advanced retinal imaging technology and state-of-the-art computer-based image analysis to study pregnancy outcomes and early life diseases. By examining retinal microvascular function and structure—a “window” of general microcirculation in vivo—her research investigated its diagnostic and predictive values in relation to maternal (gestational diabetes and gestational hypertension) and child health outcomes (fetal growth restriction and childhood obesity). read more Dr Li's current research program focuses on the determinants and transgenerational health consequences of maternal obesity and diabetes based on a life course approach. More specifically, Dr Li’s interest lies in the feasible and effective predictive panels using quantitative assessments to tailor precision and personalized intervention programs, including lifestyle modification among pregnant women at risk of prolonged fertility and pregnancy complications. hide
Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Singapore
Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Singapore — the largest and the most active international business association in Singapore and Southeast Asia representing over 650 companies. Hsien is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, member of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Advisory Board, Vice President of the Precision Public Health Asia Society, board member of TalenTtrust, member of the United Women Singapore STEM Advisory Panel, board committee member of SATA CommHealth, and member of the 2023 FIRST Global Challenge host committee. read more
Prior to AmCham, Hsien was Vice President, Medical and Scientific Affairs, Medtronic Asia Pacific, where she was responsible for the Medtronic Innovation Centers in Japan and Korea, training and education, and the company’s health systems transformation strategy in the region. Hsien has extensive experience in scientific affairs, corporate and healthcare communications, advertising, public relations and government affairs.
Hsien has lived and worked in the US, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, UK, and is now based in Singapore. She holds a BA (with honors) in Human Biology from Stanford University and a PhD in Epidemiology from The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health where she was the recipient of a US National Institutes of Health Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology Training Grant. Her doctoral thesis explored the genetic epidemiology of end-stage renal disease and type 2 diabetes. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at National Taiwan University Hospital in the Department of Internal Medicine. hide
Georgette Tan
President, United Women Singapore
Georgette Tan is President of United Women Singapore (UWS), a non profit organisation advocating gender equality, women’s empowerment and focused on building the pipeline of future female leaders.
She is on the board of the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations (SCWO) and is Chair of BoardAgender, an initiative of SCWO focused on increasing the number of women on boards in Singapore. She is also a board member of SG Her Empowerment (SHE), an NGO that gathers the views and input on issues surrounding the advancement of women and girls, land advocates policies that helps women and girls optimise their family, career and personal lives.
read more She serves on the Climate Action SG Alliance (CASA), other Alliance for Action (AFA) Committees relating to tech-facilitated gender violence and other women’s issues in Singapore, and serves on the industry advisory panel for the Global Women in Public Relations Singapore.
Georgette served on the Taskforce on Family Violence, co-chaired by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
Georgette was previously Senior Vice President, Communications at Mastercard, where for over 18 years, she was responsible for external and internal communication, and launched Mastercard’s Knowledge Leadership strategy with the establishment of numerous consumer, lifestyle and gender indexes. She also spearheaded Mastercard’s Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, which focused on education and development programs to help empower women and children across the Asia Pacific region.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Georgette was Vice President of Communications at CNBC Asia and Dow Jones Asia, and also held Senior Communications roles at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board.
Georgette also advises female entrepreneurs of start-up ventures and social enterprises in the region.
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Adj. Assistant Professor Zhongwei Huang
Deputy Director, NUS Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE)
Consultant, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, NUH
Deputy Director, Undergraduate Medical Education, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, NUS Medicine
Dr Huang completed clinician scientist residency training in Obstetrics & Gynaecology and is currently a Consultant at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, National University Hospital, Singapore, subspecializing in Reproductive Medicine, IVF and Sexual Medicine. He completed his medical studies at the National University of Singapore and did his doctorate studies at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, on human oocyte biology and fertility research. read more He is helming as Deputy Director of NUS Bia-Echo Asia Centre for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (ACRLE), specialising in research for women’s reproductive health, ageing and digital medicine, and leading the conversation in women’s reproductive longevity and equality. hide
Dr Susan Logan
Consultant in Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, NHS Grampian, Scotland, UK
Senior Clinical Lecturer (Scholarship), University of Aberdeen, Scotland UK
Dr Logan completed her under and post graduate training at the University of Aberdeen, UK. In addition to specialist training in Obstetrics & Gynaecology (O & G), she also completed RCOG subspecialty training in Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare (SRH), ATSM in Menopause care, obtained MFSRH and was awarded the higher research degree of MD (with commendation). She was a Consultant in SRH & Honorary Senior Lecturer O & G in Aberdeen from 2007 until moving to Singapore in 2012. read more In Singapore she was a senior consultant in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, National University Hospital, leading in the areas of SRH, menopause, paediatric & adolescent gynaecology, sexual assault, and sexual problems. She was the Director of Residency Training & Postgraduate Education for NUHS Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Family Medicine Residency Program Deputy Site Director, and Co-Chair Faculty Development Committee. She was an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore and actively involved in research relating to menopause, osteoporosis, SRH and medical education. She was a council member of the Obstetrical & Gynaecological and Osteoporosis Societies of Singapore and the Sexual & Reproductive Health Committee of AOFOG. In June 2023, she returned to Aberdeen to take up her previous Consultant post in a new integrated service. She is a Senior Clinical Lecturer (Scholarship) and Deputy Lead for Medical Admissions for the Institute of Education in Healthcare and Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences & Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, the top Medical School in the UK (Guardian University Guide 2024). She is on the Examination Committee for the MFSRH and shadow convener for the OSCE Group. hide
Dr. Adelyn Lim
Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, NUS
Research Associate in the Centre for Family and Population Research NUS
Dr Adelyn Lim is an anthropologist and ethnographer of gender and sexuality, with a focus on cultures of fatherhood, reproductive health, as well as intersectional and transnational feminisms. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and a Research Associate in the Centre for Family and Population Research at the National University of Singapore.
Dr. Pek Jun Wei
Principal Investigator, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, NUS
PEK Jun Wei received his B.Sc. (Hons) (2008) and Ph.D. (2011) from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He did his graduate research in the laboratory of Dr. Toshie Kai at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) where he studied the roles of nuage and small RNAs in the Drosophila germline. In 2012, he joined the laboratories of Drs. Joseph Gall and Allan Spradling at the Carnegie Institution for Science (Department of Embryology) as a Carnegie Collaborative Fellow. He developed a research program to study a novel class of noncoding RNAs (stable intronic sequence RNAs or sisRNAs) in Drosophila. read more He was later named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation and awarded a fellowship from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund. He returned to TLL as a Young Investigator in November 2014 to start his independent research group. He is currently a Principal Investigator at TLL and an adjunct Assistant Professor in DBS, NUS. hide
Dr. Lindsay Wu
Senior Res Fellow (NHMRC)
University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia.
Lindsay Wu is a metabolic biochemist whose lab studies the molecular and metabolic mechanisms that underlie biological ageing, with a focus on applications for female fertility. A key interest for the lab is the role of altered metabolism as a cause of reproductive ageing, including unexpected mechanisms for the biosynthesis of the redox cofactor nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). read more His group previously showed that declining levels of this cofactor are a reversible cause of reproductive ageing in mice, resulting in an undergoing a prospective clinical trial in IVF patients, and other ongoing research includes its applications in chemotherapy induced infertility and late-life female health. He is an American Federation for Ageing Research (AFAR) / Hevolution Investigator, and leads an active research team at UNSW Sydney. hide
Dr. Mya Thway Tint
Principal Investigator at Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), A*STAR
Adjunct assistant professor at Human Potential Translational Research Program, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore.
Mya Thway Tint is a Principal Investigator at Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and an adjunct assistant professor at Human Potential Translational Research Program, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore. She obtained MBBS from the Institute of Medicine-1, Myanmar, and a MSc and a Ph.D. from National University of Singapore.
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Her research focuses on developmental influences on offspring’s obesity and metabolic health through large-scale longitudinal birth cohort studies of Singapore, the epidemiology of muscle and bone health in women and children, and the integration of understanding from observational cohorts in promoting lifecourse preventive approach and developing early interventions to reduce the risks of diabetes and improve musculoskeletal health. hide
Dr. Noel Ng
Postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine & Therapeutics of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Dr Noel Ng is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medicine & Therapeutics of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr Ng has background in molecular biology and biotechnology and has a masters degree in clinical research. In her PhD studies, she applied different analyses to describe the epidemiology and pathogenesis of glucose intolerance in polycystic ovary syndrome.
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She has also obtained much training in clinical research, participating in several PCOS projects, and shows much promise as a young researcher, receiving several young investigator awards at regional and international meetings during her postgraduate study, including the young investigator award at the Annual International Androgen Excess-PCOS Society conference. She has published her PhD work in a top-tier medical journal PLoS Medicine. She has also been invited to be a member of the evidence synthesis team for the 2023 update of the International evidence-based guideline for the assessment and management of PCOS which is led by Professor Helena Teede and other experts in the field. hide