Life After... blazing biomedical research trail in S’pore: Renowned scientist breaks new ground at 59

SINGAPORE - Professor Jackie Ying, a pint-sized dynamo never seen without her signature headscarf, dark suit and track shoes, has always lived life on her terms.

As she approaches 60, she has again met change head-on.

The world-renowned nanotech scientist has relocated from Singapore – where she spent two decades as one of the pioneers transforming the nation into a research powerhouse – to Saudi Arabia.

Prof Ying has given up all she has accomplished here to move to the Middle East, where she is building a laboratory in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh to advance novel diagnostics and treatments in genetic diseases, which are particularly prevalent there. 

It is yet another milestone in a career of many firsts for the Taiwan-born, US-trained scientist.

“I’m really excited. I feel 20 years younger because of all these new things I want to do,” she told The Straits Times.

“Physically, I think I’m running after myself because of the excitement of my lab and the collaborators.”

The plan is to help advance Saudi Arabia’s budding biomedical scene, as Prof Ying did for Singapore many years ago.

Blazing a trail in Singapore

Prof Ying, 59, is among a pool of top researchers, coined “whales”, who were wooed here from all over the world more than two decades ago by then A*Star chairman Philip Yeo to turn Singapore into a biomedical hub. Among other achievements, she helped to establish Biopolis.

One of the youngest people to make full professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the age of 35, she moved to Singapore in 2003 to become the founding director of A*Star’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), which has since been merged with a consortium to form the A*Star Institute of Bioengineering and Bioimaging.

In 2018, Prof Ying and her team built A*Star’s NanoBio Lab, a research incubator, from scratch.

Prof Ying is a master of building materials thinner than a strand of hair which can be harnessed in areas as varied as medicine, chemistry and energy. She has helped to build more than 13 start-ups, invented and patented hundreds of technologies, and won numerous awards. 

Among her inventions are a device that can test for dengue within 20 minutes with just saliva, and tiny particles that automatically deliver insulin to diabetic patients when their blood glucose levels are high.

One of her start-ups, Cellbae, developed the first made-in-Singapore antigen rapid test kits for Covid-19, which were subsequently exported to Europe. 

With her many awards and accolades, Prof Ying is a well-known figure in Singapore, and is often approached by strangers for photographs when she is in the country.

But her last few years working in Singapore were not easy, she said, as leadership changes led to major changes that impacted various institutes under A*Star. 

Without divulging details, she said: “We didn’t have the same level of independence as what we used to have, and that really affected our smooth operations.”

In mid-2023, Prof Ying was invited to become a visiting distinguished professor and senior adviser to the president of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia, which had just formed a bioengineering department. 

The move took substantial courage

Moving to a new environment was not an easy decision because of her strong ties with Singapore, admitted Prof Ying.

She lived in Singapore as a child and studied at primary and secondary schools here when her father, who taught Chinese literature, was a faculty member at the former Nanyang University.

But she took the leap, and moved to Saudi Arabia in 2023.

“I also looked at potentially returning to the US, but this possibility opened up in Saudi Arabia, and I think that was far more exciting... something different in another continent,” said Prof Ying.

“It was a very difficult decision to leave Singapore. Our lab was very nicely established, and blessed with excellent staff who have worked with me for many years. It was very painful to leave them; they are like family members,” she added.

Now, while she is with King Fahd University, her main appointment is head of the bioengineering and nanomedicine department of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) in Riyadh.

In less than two years, she has set up the foundations of her new office: a 1,500 sq m lab – the size of more than 10 four-room Housing Board flats.

“We have received major funding internally from KFSHRC to build a large, new lab with lots of state-of-the-art equipment. We have successfully recruited over a dozen research staff and students in a year, and will continue to grow in the coming years,” said Prof Ying.

“I find I’m just racing (against) time to get as much done as possible. In your 50s, to make a major change in your working environment, especially in one that has been so productive, took substantial courage,” she said.

On a mission to tackle Arab world’s genetic diseases

The doors to Saudi Arabia opened wide for Prof Ying in 2023 when she became the first woman to receive what is known as the “Arab Nobel prize” – the King Faisal Prize in Science for her work in nanomedicine. Some past laureates have gone on to win a Nobel Prize. 

At the same time, research received a boost as pursuing biotechnology and improving public health became a focus area under the Saudi Vision 2030 – a government push to diversify the Saudi Arabian economy beyond oil and gas. 

The kingdom had recently set out a strategy to advance its self-sufficiency in vaccines, biomanufacturing and genomics. 

Prof Ying is particularly interested in tackling genetic diseases. People in the Middle East and North Africa region have a malaise of inherited disorders – higher than the global average – a result of the cultural practice of marrying within tribes. 

Walking up to her lab in the hospital, she sees children in wheelchairs – afflicted with cancers such as leukaemia and neurological diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disorder that causes muscle weakness and breathing problems. 

“The doctors will be knocking on your door; they are anxious to do research. We see the frustrations some clinicians have when it comes to genetic diseases. They know what their patients are suffering, but there’s a lack of therapies that are effective and affordable,” said Prof Ying.  

Her team is working on identifying genetic clues called biomarkers that indicate the presence of a disease. New gene therapies can then be developed to attack the disease-causing biomarkers. 

For example, her team is developing man-made patches of DNA that attach to molecules that produce disease-causing proteins and block their production. This is a form of RNA (ribonucleic acid) therapy.

“Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, we hope to accelerate the creation of effective RNA therapies that could be much less expensive than the available DNA therapies, which can cost over $2 million for a patient with spinal muscular atrophy,” said Prof Ying.

She added: “KFSHRC specialises in the most challenging diseases. In the region, patients with complicated diseases will flock to the hospital. Access to the patients really helps with biomarker discovery and clinical trials.”

She is also keen on tracking emerging infectious diseases, and her lab is collaborating with Cellbae to monitor wastewater for traces of viruses at hospitals, farms and religious sites. 

‘A citizen of the world’

In early 2025, Prof Ying was appointed to lead research and innovation at KFSHRC, which has three main hospitals in the kingdom. 

“I’m really trying my best because I’m at a certain age. I really want to see this happen. But more importantly, I want to train the students, those doing their PhD, and the more senior people, so that they can front a lot of things.” 

Prof Ying, who has a 23-year-old daughter pursuing a dual doctorate in medicine and scientific research at Texas A&M University, said she takes pride in nurturing many young researchers who pass through the doors of her labs.

Several of her former A*Star colleagues from IBN and her NanoBio Lab have followed her to Saudi Arabia. The move was not easy for some, who have young families in tow, added Prof Ying.  

One of them is Dr Muhammad Nadjad Abdul Rahim, who was Prof Ying’s PhD student back in the NanoBio Lab, which has since closed down. 

Dr Nadjad, 37, is now operations and product development director of Cellbae, which expanded to Saudi Arabia in 2024. It was founded in Singapore with another branch in the US.

In addition to producing Covid-19 test kits, Cellbae creates test kits for various pathogens, and for food and environmental monitoring, and other medical devices. 

The company is looking at improving diagnostics for genetic diseases and cancers that are more pronounced in the kingdom, like Hodgkin’s lymphoma – an aggressive form of blood cancer that is increasingly afflicting young people there. 

It is also developing a method to amplify signatures of virus families so that scientists can keep an eye on circulating diseases in wastewater. 

Said Dr Nadjad: “Prof Ying doesn’t sleep enough. Our team has no idea how she finds that energy. But I think this is encapsulated in her belief of how hard we must work to solve problems in the world.” 

Commenting on Prof Ying’s move to Saudi Arabia, he added: “A scientist is a citizen of the world. She is always rolling up her sleeves to solve difficult problems and not one who would be comfortable sitting down collecting salary.”

Prof Ying, a devout Muslim who has been to Mecca in Saudi Arabia more than 15 times to perform the haj and umrah pilgrimages, said she has fit in well in her new home. Born into a Christian family, she converted to Islam in her 30s.

“There is this notion that Saudi Arabia has issues with human rights. I have told others: ‘Please come and see for yourself.’ Over the last few years, I would say people are very well treated – women or men, it doesn’t matter. It’s a very safe, very secure, very peaceful place,” she said.

“I love living here. Riyadh is a dynamic and rapidly growing city, with lots of great restaurants.”

Working harder as a minority 

In the light of her many achievements, it can be hard to remember that the odds were stacked against Prof Ying, who has been known to call herself a “minority of minorities”, as a Chinese Muslim female in the male-centric world of science.

In the early 1990s, she was the first female Asian American professor at the MIT School of Engineering, and the lecture hall blackboards were not built for those with a smaller stature. 

“I could only reach the bottom half of the lowest blackboard. After writing just a few equations, I had to erase them because I couldn’t reach the higher blackboards,” she said with a laugh. 

In the locker room of her New York high school – famous for being where folk rock duo Simon and Garfunkel first started performing together as students – a couple of taller teenage girls would stare her down to intimidate her. 

“I wouldn’t say it was bullying, but there are people who are not particularly friendly. You go to high school through metal detectors. I wouldn’t say students were carrying guns, but some of them certainly had knives,” she said.

Those moments helped her build grit. 

“As a minority, I told myself I’ve got to work twice as hard.”

And she did.

In 2017, she received the highest accolade for academic inventors as a fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors. And each year since 2012, she has been listed among the world’s 500 most influential Muslims.

“It’s important to speak up despite being a minority. I am not a yes-man and don’t expect my staff to be yes-men,” she said.

Looking ahead towards the next phase of her career in the kingdom, Prof Ying said: “It’s a lifetime of work ahead. We always pray hard and wish for good health and abundant resources.”