\n| Degree and Institution<\/b><\/td>\n | Year(s)<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n\n| Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering), University of Cambridge<\/td>\n | 2006<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| M.Phil. (Chemical Engineering), University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology,<\/td>\n | 2002<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| B.Eng. (Chemical Engineering), University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology<\/td>\n | 2000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nProfessional Experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n| Position and Institute<\/b><\/td>\n | Year(s)<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n\n\n| Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS<\/td>\n | 2013-Present<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| Associate Professor, Singapore Institute of Technology<\/td>\n | 2013 – Present<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University<\/td>\n | 2006 – 2013<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nBiodata<\/h3>\nSusanna Leong\u2019s research interests are in biochemical engineering and synthetic biology. Her current research involves biomolecular engineering of antimicrobial molecules for improved structure-function understanding, leading to extended applications of these molecules for in vitro protection. Her group has recently established a correlation between tuning charge and hydrophobic attributes of antimicrobial peptides and inter-residue interactions which modulates antimicrobial potency. She is also interested in identifying targets for elucidation of the mechanism of action. Dr. Leong is also interested in biochemically engineering microbes for biofuels production. Her current work targets the development of genetic tools for the production of biofuels in an oleaginous microbial strain, as well as engineering chimeric enzymes and protein scaffolds to complement pathway construction to improve product flux. Her group has recently tweaked a native inner membrane transporter in bacteria by evolutionary methods to improve efflux of small fuel molecules. The utilization of such optimized native efflux pumps will increase productivity of biofuels synthesis and alleviate toxicity and difficulties in production scale-up in current microbial platforms.<\/p>\n | | | |