Dear Reader,
As we begin a new year, I would like to highlight some of our recent accomplishments.
Outstanding Students
This past July we graduated 302 new doctors and 158 new nurses. With 216 receiving support through bursaries and scholarships, many of these new healthcare professionals would not have been able to complete their medical studies without help from the School’s generous supporters. It is very heartening to note that 22 of the 68 bursaries at the School were established by our alumni.
Our graduates benefited from a curriculum that goes well beyond traditional teaching methods. As an example, using the Virtual Interactive Simulation Environment, they “became” members of an emergency medical response team, learning how to triage casualties and perform respiratory, circulatory and physical disability assessments. As part of a community service elective, they took part in community initiatives under the School’s GoHelp programme, such as the Public Health Service, which provides health screenings to thousands of HDB households. It is important to us that as doctors of the future, they are motivated to actively give back to the community even as students.
Another hallmark of an NUS medicine graduate are the qualities of adaptability and innovation. To this end, our annual Medical Grand Challenge, another donor-supported initiative, is designed to spark these qualities in our young doctors-to-be. In this annual competition, they identify an unmet or unaddressed medical or healthcare issue, develop a solution, prepare a prototype, and design a business implementation strategy. Fourth-year student Julian Low continued innovating after his team won the 2016 competition and set up a healthy food social enterprise.
Life Changing Research
In the past year, our researchers have received accolades and recognition for their life-changing work and this is also thanks to our donors. Professor John Eu-Li Wong, past Chief Executive of the National University Health System and the holder of the Isabel Chan Professorship, was accorded one of the highest medical honours in the world last year when he was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Medicine. Another colleague, Prof Dario Campana, was awarded the prestigious Jacob and Louise Gabbay Award for his breakthrough work in CAR-T cell therapy. This is an immunotherapy regimen that has dramatically improved outcomes for certain leukaemias and lymphomas. Prof Campana and Associate Prof Allen Yeoh, through their work at the VIVA-NUS Centre for Translational Research in Acute Leukaemia, continue to drive efforts to classify and treat leukaemia cases more effectively for better outcomes for children living with the disease.
As a medical school affiliated with a university, we are in a privileged position to foster the careers of clinician-scientists who apply research discoveries to advancing medical care. Last year, our clinician scientists garnered several National Medical Excellence and National Medical Research Council awards, including the National Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award (Adjunct Professor Goh Boon Cher), the STaR Investigator Award (Professor Toshio Suda), as well as multiple Clinician Scientist and Transition Awards. One Transition Award winner, Dr Andrea Wong, is being mentored through the Cancer Summit Research Programme, one of six initiatives supported by the Yong Loo Lin Fund. The award enabled her to develop a therapy aimed at cancer cell metabolism, one of the last frontiers in cancer research.
Exceptional Faculty
Central to everything we do is the quality and dedication of our faculty. Last year, we hired five tenure-track faculty in the areas of orthopaedic surgery, cancer biology, neurodegenerative diseases, healthy ageing, dementia care and nursing education. Among these was Dr Dennis Hey who has won various young researcher awards and the Best Teacher Award in the NUHS Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program. Another newly tenured faculty member, Dr Vivian Wu, is involved in work that is funded by the NUS Mind Science Centre, a research initiative at the School’s Department of Psychological Medicine that is strongly supported by our donors. Two of our existing faculty, Drs Long Yun Chau and Shefaly Shorey, were awarded the University-wide Annual Teaching Excellence Award in recognition of their efforts and dedication to teaching.
Many of these successes, whether they be opportunities given to financially needy students to realise their potential as Singapore’s next generation of physicians, or life-changing medical treatments brought about by innovative research, are made possible by our generous benefactors. We thank them and look forward to their continued partnership.
With best wishes for a very healthy and successful 2020.
Yours sincerely,
Yap Seng