Unmasking Alzheimer’s disease with a simple, accurate and cost-effective blood test

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is typically diagnosed at a late stage with subjective, expensive or invasive methods. Despite intense interest to develop alternative blood-based detection technologies, these technologies are limited by low sensitivity and poor accuracy to brain pathology. With the APEX technology, sensitive, accurate and direct detection of the earliest and most reflective marker of AD brain pathology from a small volume of blood can be done. The blood test can facilitate early detection and intervention, as well as treatment evaluation, which can improve the success of disease-modifying therapies.

About Carine Lim

Carine is an enthusiastic Biomedical Engineering graduate student at the National University of Singapore. She works at the crossroad of multiple disciplines to tackle challenges in medical diagnostics, with the hope of making a positive impact in patient care. Her research focuses on circulating markers for precision medicine and molecular stratification. Her recent work in developing an accurate blood-based detection for Alzheimer’s disease was highlighted in Nature Communications and major media. She believes accurate disease detection with circulating biomarkers will benefit patients in facilitating early detection and treatment evaluation, which can improve the success rate of disease-modifying therapies.

Developing data centric solutions to eliminate prosthetic pain and discomfort

About Connor Talbot

Connor is a graduate Electrical Engineer from the University of Auckland. From working with injured animals and thinking of 3D printed prosthetic solutions, he realized there is a major opportunity to create better prosthetics for humans instead. Connor and his team are working to address the problem of poor fitting prosthetic sockets in human amputees by utilising Selective Laser Sintering, an industrial version of 3D printing. They have transitioned towards developing data centric solutions, capturing vital limb information in new ways which can then be used by prosthetic companies to improve patient outcomes.

Created an IoT smart feeding solution and leverages on data and its network to increase fisheries’ efficiency and profitability

As a fish farmer-turned-agriculture tech entrepreneur, eFishery founder and CEO Gibran Huzaifah is revolutionizing the relatively untapped $9.4 billion-valued Indonesian aquaculture market. eFishery uses cloud-based smart-feeding technology in fish and shrimp farms across the vast archipelago, to ensure that fishes are healthy, and waste is minimized. The IoT startup doesn't just sell products, it also collects data from feeding, production, water quality and fish behavior to create predictive algorithm and value-chain services. The company uses the data platform to provide and connect farmers with services like financing, market access, and supply.

About Gibran Huzaifah Asmi El Farizy

Gibran completed his degree in Biological Science at Institut Teknologi Bandung. He started his own catfish farm while in college, which grew from a single pond to 76 ponds upon his graduation. In 2013, he found eFishery, a smart feeding technology that radically changed the way fish and shrimp farmers feed, helping them become more cost effective and environmentally sustainable. Since its commercialization, eFishery has been adopted by thousands of farmers across Indonesia. Gibran and his team expanded eFishery’s functionalities to credit scoring, predictive on-demand feed supply, and even a fish marketplace that uses the data from its IoT. His company now employs 164 people, with products deployed in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Bangladesh. Gibran was in Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia in 2017 and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (Innovation Category).

Bringing delicious and healthy crustacean meat to consumers by harvesting cells instead of animals

The way the world eats at present is unsustainable and unhealthy for the environment, animals and ourselves. It is impossible to produce the amount of seafood required to feed the growing population by 2050. Shiok Meats have created a solution by cultivating meat in the lab. By using stem cells and biotechnology, cultivated crustacean meats can be brought to your table, which are health-, animal- and environment-friendly. In this talk, Ka Yi will share the background and technology of cultivated crustacean meats and the journey of setting up Shiok Meats.

About Ka Yi Ling

Ka Yi is a developmental and stem cell biologist with over 10 years expertise in tracing and studying stem cells during development. Ka Yi received the prestigious A*STAR’s National Science Scholarship and graduated with a Bachelor’s and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked closely with stem cell and developmental biology experts like James Thomson, Davor Solter and Barbara Knowles. Following graduation, Ka Yi did her postdoc at IMCB, A*STAR in Singapore. She is an active science communicator since her days in Madison; and frequently takes part in science outreach and speaks at food sustainability and career management events. She also did a podcast called “Science Now” and “Life after PhD” with fellow colleague/scholar. Ka Yi is passionate about marrying her experience in biotech research and her love for food to produce sustainable food products. In August 2018, she co-founded a cell-based crustaceans startup called Shiok Meats, along with Dr Sandhya Sriram.

Built a cloud-based supercomputing system emulation engine for supercomputing software development, testing and validation

Archanan Development Cloud (DevCloud) is a supercomputing system emulation engine, which enables development, testing and validation of high-performance computing codes at the desired scale using a fully-featured, web-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Furthermore, it enables supercomputer pre-sizing and emulation to find the best system specifications for given workflows, making it an invaluable tool for both supercomputing centers and OEMs during tendering process.

About Lukasz Orlowski

Lukasz is a passionate software engineer and computational scientist with interest in large-scale computational software, supercomputing systems and distributed computing systems. He has over 8 years of experience in distributed and parallel software development. Having worked at Intel and A*STAR Computational Resource Center, Lukasz experienced first-hand the woes of a distributed software developer and decided to challenge how large-scale simulation software is developed. He cofounded Archanan – a startup developing innovative supercomputer emulation engine, for supercomputer software development, testing and validation.

MycoTimber; wood from no wood. A global paradigm shift in building industry.

Future economic and ecological development worldwide is strongly connected to the question where our resources for future prosperity come from. As our mines are running dry, our forests are disappearing and CO2 levels are reaching alarming levels, we need to think radically different in all economic sectors. The building industry alone is responsible for 40% of our solid waste production, for 40% of the use of primary energy resources and for 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide. To address this issue, we need to build a sustainable environment using alternative construction materials and systems. In this regard, mycelium, the structural part of fungi which forms its vegetative growth and mass can revolutionize the construction sector. Mycelium forms a net like structure and works as a binder which gets denser during the cultivation process on plant-based waste products. New age green technology to upcycle, transform and repurpose organic waste into “wood from no wood” can address several environmental, economical and socio-cultural concerns over construction industry.

About Nazanin Saeidi

Nazanin is a postdoctoral researcher and project coordinator of Mycelium-based composite materials lab at Future Cities Laboratory, where she is working on upcycling plant-based waste products and turning them to ecological products with the aid of fungal mycelia as natural binder. Dr Nazanin Saeidi attained her BS degree in chemical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran in 2008. She received an A* Star scholarship and pursued her post-graduate studies in chemical and biomedical engineering at Nanyang Technological University, where she worked on engineering microbes to sense and eradicate a human pathogen. In 2013, she became a postdoctoral research fellow at the Singapore Membrane Technology Center where she studied the development of improved strategies to control Biofouling of membranes in water industry. In 2014, she joined the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at National University of Singapore to pursue a new research experience and focused on emerging microbial contaminants of concern in tropical urban catchments and the effect of diverse land use on the geospatial distribution of Emerging microbial contaminants of concern in tropical environments.

Multifunctional Metallic Backbones for Next-Generation Soft Robotics

Po-Yen's work focuses on the tight integration of actuation, sensing, and wireless communication capabilities into robotic bodies, enabling the development of new-generation soft robots with multiple built-in functionalities. The integration of functional nanomaterials (especially 2D materials) into soft matter allows for the fabrication of soft robotic materials with required multifunctionality and reconfigurability. Po-Yen and his lab have developed strategies to integrate a wide range of 2D materials with various soft matter, including a post-stabilization approach to produce reconfigurable and multifunctional metallic backbones (e.g., Pt-elastomer) for the fabrication of origami robots with built-in strain sensing and wireless communication capabilities. Compared with traditional robotic materials (papers and elastomers), the soft robots with Pt-based bodies demonstrated distinct capabilities without the needs of external electronics, such as built-in strain sensing, and wireless communication.

About Po-Yen Chen

Po-Yen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at National University of Singapore. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded a Hibbitt Independent Postdoctoral Fellowship at Brown University. He was also awarded AME Young Investigator Award at Singapore and AIChE-SLS Outstanding Young Principal Investigator Award 2019. He aims at building a multidisciplinary research group that focuses on the mechanically patterned 2D materials that are capable of undergoing large and reversible stretching and deformations for the fabrication of stretchable electronics and smart soft robotics.

Advanced hand-held microfiber-based sensor for water quality monitoring

Water quality monitoring used to be is laborious, time-consuming, costly and in some rural areas, inaccessible. Stephanie developed a hand-held sensor that can detect various heavy metals such as cadmium and lead in five minutes, at a fraction of the cost of conventional measurement. It is also more affordable to public/private use, allowing for water quality monitoring to be conducted thoroughly and frequently. Using the developed sensing platform, Stephanie is currently working on extending the applicability of the sensor for other organic and biomolecule water contaminants as well as incorporating IoT for large-scale distributed sensing.

About Stephanie Hui Kit Yap

Stephanie received her B.Eng. in Electrical-Telecommunication (1st Class) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in School of Electrical Electronic Engineering in Nanyang Technological University. Her invention of a handheld water quality monitoring sensor for heavy metal detection has received recognition from international exhibitions such as the 46th International Exhibition of Invention Geneva 2018 (AFJ Gold medal) and International Trade Fair Invention 2018 (Gold medal). Stephanie is currently working on extending the applicability of the invention for other organic and biomolecule water contaminants as well as incorporating IoT for large-scale distributed sensing.

Building modular hardware for quantum computers

Quantum computers offer a powerful new paradigm of information processing that harnesses the unique features of quantum mechanics. A robust quantum computer has far-reaching impacts, capable of transforming a wide range of industries from every facet of life, from drug discoveries to logistics optimisations. Yconne will talk about the key modular quantum hardware she built using electrical circuits, which are cooled below a fraction of a degree to capture their quantum behaviour. These circuits can be manipulated to reliably store, process, and transfer quantum information. They offer a promising platform for realising robust large-scale computation.

About Yvonne Gao

Yvonne is a quantum physicist focusing on developing crucial hardware building blocks for quantum computers. She holds a B.A. from the University of Oxford and Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University. Yvonne is now working on establishing a new research initiative in Singapore, specialising in manipulating electrical circuits to store and process quantum information. Outside the lab, Yvonne plays an active role in building a vibrant quantum ecosystem in Singapore through public talks, panel discussions, and popular science writings.