Global Young Scientists Summit: What drives some of the world’s brightest minds?
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(Clockwise from top left) Nobel Prize winner Louis Ignarro, Dame Sue Black and Professor Joan B. Rose were among the scientists at the annual Global Young Scientists Summit.
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SINGAPORE - Some of the world’s brightest minds gathered in the Republic from Jan 6 to 10, to mingle with and inspire more than 340 younger counterparts
The Straits Times spoke to these prominent scientists about their work and what drives them.
Professor Louis Ignarro
jugyss07/ ST20250107_202511600190/Ng Sor Luan/Mr. Louis Ignarro, Nobel Prize winner, Physiology/Medicine (1998) at the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025 on Jan 7, 2025.
The Straits Times
Never overlook the small things, said Nobel Prize winner Louis Ignarro.
It was this approach to science that led Professor Ignarro, to discover how nitric oxide, a gaseous chemical in both the earth’s atmosphere and in human cells, could be used in medications to treat not only heart and cardiovascular diseases, but also impotence.
It is no wonder that Prof Ignarro, now 83, is sometimes called “the father of Viagra”. His experiments with nitric oxide in the 1990s found that the compound is the one that transmits signals in the body for erectile function.
His research showed that nitric oxide widens blood vessels and increases blood flow.
He was not directly involved in the development of Viagra, nor was he paid royalties for the sale of the drug.
Professor Joan B. Rose
jugyss07/ ST20250107_202511600190/Ng Sor Luan/Professor Joan Rose, an expert in environmental microbiology at the Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025.
The Straits Times
Being on the losing team turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Professor Joan B. Rose.
Hers was the team that lost when two groups vied for the Newater project in 1998.
Prof Rose had signed an exclusive contract to join a consulting engineering group bidding on a wastewater reclamation project in Singapore.
Although this team lost the bid, she had made her mark. Her name was put forward to be on the independent advisory panel, overseeing the science, research and engineering of the project.
And so began a 25-year relationship between Prof Rose and Singapore to come up with better ways of developing clean, safe water. READ MORE HERE
Professor Sue Black
jugyss07/ ST20250107_202511600190/Ng Sor Luan/Dame Sue Black, an expert in forensic anthropology at the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025.
The Straits Times
Dame Sue Black, a world-renowned forensic scientist, has spent her life immersed in the mysteries of death, a relationship that she first began to understand through the wisdom of her late grandmother.
“It was my (paternal) grandmother who talked to me from a young age about death. She would always say to me, ‘Death walks beside you every single day of your life, and at some point or another, your paths are going to cross, and if death is going to walk alongside you, best to make her your friend, because you do not want to walk every day with an enemy,’” said 63-year-old Professor Black.
Because her grandmother was born in the 1800s, it was improper to have a man as a friend. “Death to me has always been female,” she told The Straits Times.
