The cancer expert and his wife, skin expert, Birgit Lane, will be quitting their jobs at Scotland's University of Dundee to work here at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) from September.

The couple returned to Dundee last year after a three-year stint in Singapore. In the last 18 months, the couple maintained their commitments to A*Star, the national science research body, on a part-time basis.

Since then though, Sir David has given up his three executive positions with A*Star. He is now chief scientist at A*Star and will be concentrating on research work at A*Star's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, where he will further his work on p53, a tumour suppressing gene he and his colleagues in 1979.

Lady Birgit is executive director of A*Star's Institute of Medical Biology.