About me
I'm a Senior Principal Research Scientist at Duke-NUS Medical School, with close to 15 years of research experience. My research applies system biology approaches to the field of virology, to understand how viruses cause disease in humans. We believe that in-depth multi-omics analysis can provide mechanistic insights into viral pathogenesis and protection.
People know me as:
Flavivirus Researcher
I have been researching on dengue viruses since my undergraduate years. Started my research career investigating how antibodies can enhance dengue virus infection.
Omics Research Data Scientist
My postdoc career started with handling and analysing big transcriptomics datasets. Further into my career, we ventured into proteomics and metabolomics, which provided deeper insights into how humans respond to viruses and vaccines.
Mentor & Instructor
I'm active in teaching undergraduate and post-graduate modules in Duke-NUS. Have also trained undergraduates and Ph.D. candidates, and many continue to pursue their passion in research after graduation
EDUCATION
National University of Singapore (NUS)
PhD in NUS Graduate School of Integrative Sciences and Engineering (2008 - 2013)
BA of Science (Hons) in NUS (2004 - 2008)
GRANT AWARDS
Individual Research Grant (2021)
Khoo Pilot Award (Collaborative) (2019)
What we believe
High impact discovery through gene expression and regulation research
Interpreting transcriptomics data to gain insights into biological mechanisms can be challenging. We develop multiple bioinformatic approaches, tools and pipelines to provide different perspectives of the data, ensuring that any gene expression data will be comprehensively analysed. We are also capable of analysing single-cell sequencing data to allow host response characterisation at the single-cell level.
Data curation as a pre-requisite to interpret omics datasets
We strongly believe that biological mechanisms from omics datasets can only be understood if we can compare with a larger number of datasets. Hence, in-house and publicly available datasets are routinely curated in our lab to build customised gene sets that can provide deeper biological insights.
Development of web tools for omics data analysis
Data analysis of omics datasets can be challenging, especially for non-bioinformaticians. We are hence interested in developing web tools for omics research so that researchers can divert their precious time on the science, rather than struggling with data analysis.
Elucidate metabolic underpinnings behind flavivirus infection
How viruses exploit the host metabolites for productive infection is still largely unknown. Together with Yie Hou and Cui Liang from the SMART-MIT Alliance, we have the state-of-the-art mass spectrometry that allow us to measure metabolites in virus-infected cells and in blood plasma. We also have optimised workflows for measuring cellular bioenergetics in virus-infected cells, and hope to understand how genetic mutations in the virus genome can impact host cell metabolism and cellular bioenergetics.
Educate the young on applied bioinformatics
We are passionate about educating the younger generation on the current bioinformatics tools that are becoming essential for scientific research. We educate these contents in the undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and continue to train interns and PhD candidates so that they can apply this knowledge to their future research.
Our Lab Address
Duke-NUS Medical School
Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases
8 College Road, Singapore 169857
Contacts
+65 9005 8277
kuanrong.chan@duke-nus.edu.sg