Appointment of new Assistant Deans
Published: 16 Oct 2019
Professor Roger Foo has been appointed as Assistant Dean for Research at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, with retrospective effect from 1 October 2019.
Prof Foo is from NUS Medicine’s Department of Medicine and is a Senior Consultant for the Division of Cardiology at the National University Heart Centre, NUHS. His lab. the FooLab, was the first to publish an epigenomic map of the failing human heart in 2012. More recently, his lab has published the first deep analysis of the heart failure chromatin 3D organization, and also reported the discovery of a long non-coding RNA, called SingHeart, which turns out to be a key epigenetic factor for cardiac gene program control. The approach of the lab dives deep into the epigenome of the heart and uses advanced technology which includes single cell transcriptomics and CRISPR-genome editing to explore frontiers in ongoing aspirations to establish new avenues for therapies or biomarkers. Prof Foo is also a keen advocate for clinical genomics. He leads the NMRC Rare Disease research programme, SUREkids, which has developed a clinical whole exome sequencing pipeline which is ready for clinical use in Singapore and regionally.
Assistant Professor Tan Ker Kan has been appointed as Assistant Dean for Research Integrity and Compliance in NUS Medicine, with retrospective effect from 1 October 2019.
Asst Prof Tan is currently with NUS Medicine’s Department of Surgery and a Senior Consultant for the Division of Colorectal Surgery in the National University Hospital. Asst Prof Tan is also a theme Principal Investigator for the NUHS National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Centre Grant, Singapore Population Health Improvement Centre (SPHERiC). He was also awarded the Health Services Research Grant from the NMRC in 2017 and studied the impact of colorectal cancer on patients and their family members’ perspectives towards cancer screening. Additionally, he is the Associate Chairman (Research) of the NUH Medical Board, and Head of the Research Integrity and Compliance unit in the NUHS Research Office. He is also the Deputy Principal Person-In-Charge for Human Biomedical Research Act (HBRA) compliance for NUHS and the institution lead for HBRA compliance in NUH.
Congratulations to both Prof Foo and Asst Prof Tan on their new appointments!
