BIC 30th Anniversary Awards
BIC30 Anniversary Awards Nomination Committee
Tan Tin Wee (Chair)
P Kangueane
Shoba Ranganathan
BIC30 Anniversary Awards Selection Committee
Tan Tin Wee (Chair)
Caroline Lee
N Latha
AMBIS ExCo for National Endorsement
APBioNet ExCo for Regional Endorsement
Awards Process
Nominations Committee solicits, collects and collates nominations from the community and processes the nominations for CV/BioData/draft Citation and decides to escalate the nominees to Selection Committee, for BIC30 Anniversary event (14 Oct 2026 NUS Univ Hall auditorium), or for future awards, particularly if the nominee is not ready or for whatever reasons. Nomination Committee also reviews suitability for the category of award, and decides new categories if necessary.
Selection Committee reviews the candidates for awards according to category and determines if candidates are suitable and sufficiently meritorious for the award nominated for.
Once the awardees are determined, Nomination Committee will escalate it to AMBIS ExCo for their endorsement or not at National Level.
For those endorsed at National Level, they will have the AMBIS designation prefixed to the name of their award, e.g. AMBIS-BIC30 Award. These awardees shall be escalated to APBioNet ExCo for their endorsement, or not, at the Regional Level. If accepted, they will have the APBioNet designation prefixed to the name of their award, e.g. APBioNet-AMBIS-BIC30 Singapore Awards
Awardees will have their citations edited and sanitised for website display prior to the award ceremony on 14 Oct 2026 (evening dinner at NUS University Hall Nexus room)
Awardees may be invited by the InSyB 2026 symposium programme subcommittee to present a short paper during the 10th InSyB 2026. They may be invited to say a few words in their acceptance speech during the award ceremony.
Awardees will have a small trophy as a token of their award, and will have their citations and photograph kept in the online websites of the various relevant organisations.
Award Nominees
Dr Goutham Reddy Edula
https://www.linkedin.com/in/goutham-edula-77486470/
BIC 30th Anniversary 2026
BIC30 Industry Leadership Award
Dr Goutham Edula, (Osmania Medical College, Hyderabad) obtained his medical qualifications in 2000, and yet decided that he would pursue a MSc in Bioinformatics from the Dept of Biochemistry, NUS Medicine from 2000 to 2002.
Armed with bioinformatics skills, one of the few and the earliest in the world back then, he secured a job first at Lilly Systems Biology (LSB) in Singapore in 2002 and later at AstraZeneca R&D Sweden. Since 2005 he has set up a global network of companies across USA, Singapore, Sweden, Dubai and India.
His enterprises in Healthcare Technology include Zebl LLC, Florida, USA; GED Biomedical Innovations AB, Malmö, Sweden; Indus Healthcare Consulting LLC, Georgia, USA
In the EduTech space he has established NextSteps Career LLC, Wyoming, USA; Yudenta Private Limited, India.
In event tech, conferences and publishing space he is co-founder and board member of United Scientific Group, Texas USA; and Yuktan Technologies Pte Ltd, Singapore; Zebl Events LLC, Dubai.
He owns a chain of eye hospitals and multi-speciality hospitals in India (VEB Healthcare Private Limited); and one cardiology center in Atlanta, USA.
All of these companies and institutions are thriving till today, and it is testimony to his amazing founding entrepreneurial skills and his diverse talents and interests in multiple fields that has led him to his successes.
He attributes his many successes in enterprise to the mentorship and guidance of colleagues in BIC during his formative years in the Biochemistry Department, NUS Medicine, and to his basic training in bioinformatics.
Dr Xie Chao
https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiechao/
BIC 30th Anniversary 2026
BIC30 Industry Leadership Award
Xie Chao graduated from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry in 2004 on an MOE Scholarship, and obtained his PhD in Bioinformatics from NUS in 2010 on an NUS Research Scholarship.
He made significant contributions to the field of bioinformatics during his academic career. His research publications have garnered more than 18,600 citations, including 12 publications with over 100 citations each.
While in academia, Xie Chao began extending his expertise beyond research to real-world industrial and computational challenges, participating in machine learning and algorithm competitions open to the public.
In 2013, together with two colleagues in Singapore and Germany, he won the US$1 million DTRA Algorithm Challenge, organised by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. His team developed the fastest and most accurate algorithm in the competition for identifying microorganisms in clinical samples, supporting U.S. government efforts in bioterrorism surveillance. The team emerged as the sole winner from 2,789 teams worldwide.
In 2016, he won the US$10,000 first prize in TopCoder’s inaugural Data Science Marathon as an individual participant. He has participated competitions in Kaggle’s early days, achieved both high site-wide overall ranking (the 14th) and individual competion ranking.
In 2014, Xie Chao joined Human Longevity, Inc., the pioneering genomics and biotechnology start-up founded by J. Craig Venter, as part of its early team in Singapore.
In 2016, he joined Grab as Principal Data Scientist and was subsequently promoted to Data Science Lead and Senior Manager in 2019, where he played a key role in applying data science and machine learning at scale across the business.
In 2019, he became Head of Data at AirAsia, helping to drive the transformation of its operations and commercial businesses through data and analytics.
In 2020, he joined Singapore biotechnology start-up Lucence as Chief Data Scientist, where he built and led its data science capabilities.
In 2021, Xie Chao joined GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, where he has since led the development of data science, AI and innovation capabilities. He was appointed Managing Director and Head of Data Science and Innovation in 2025.
Today, Xie Chao continues to drive AI strategy and initiatives at GIC, applying advances in artificial intelligence and data science to strengthen investment capabilities and support the long-term stewardship of Singapore’s financial assets.
Harry Lim Teck Sin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/harry-lim-728161257/
BIC 30th Anniversary 2026
BIC30 Industry Leadership Award
Harry Lim Teck Sin is a tech entrepreneur and technology leader with over three decades of experience driving innovation across bioinformatics, urban technology, and venture building.
An NUS alumnus (BSc 1990, ISS 1991), Harry was among the earliest in the region to work on genetic algorithms and neural networks. He later earned his MSc from the University of Oxford (1994–95) and completed an industrial attachment at Cambridge (1995) while on leave from the Centre for Natural Products Research (CNPR).
Between 1993 and 2000, Harry served as the IT Manager at CNPR and was cross-appointed as a Principal Investigator at the NUS Bioinformatics Centre (BIC). In 1998, he was the principal lead for the SGD 3 million BIC-CNPR bioinformatics grant funded by Glaxo Wellcome—a historic sum of industry research funding for a project at the time. Under his leadership, his team built an IT system to collect, curate, and computerise data from indigenous flora and fauna, which eventually led to the commercial spin-off, Merlion Pharmaceuticals.
Out of this grant, Harry led the spin-off of KOOPrime Pte Ltd in 2000, which later evolved into Integral Omni Inspire (IOInspire) Pte Ltd. As one of Singapore’s earliest bioinformatics companies, KOOPrime developed bespoke solutions for MNCs and government agencies. The exceptional quality and durability of their technology are proven by the fact that one of their DNA sequencing systems ran more than 17 years at a client site in Biopolis.
Throughout his entrepreneurial career, Harry has established several major initiatives:
- HKUST-KOOPrime-HP Centre (2006): Served as the Founding Partner of the tripartite Bioinformatics Centre in Hong Kong.
- iGATES BioInnovation: Formed a joint venture with Eu Yan Sang International to build IT systems for farm-to-fork tracking of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) products. The venture grew out of a project supported by the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office and the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (now the Singapore Food Agency).
- i3 Precision (2009): Spun off in partnership with Red Dot Ventures, with support from the Singapore National Research Foundation and an innovation hub set up with NUS.
In 2019, Harry became the CTO of the Smart Urban Co-Innovation Lab, Singapore, and in 2022 served as the CTO of ripple2wave. Today, he continues his entrepreneurial work while actively mentoring and inspiring the next generation of young founders.