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As Singapore’s leading public sector agency for research and development (R&D), A*STAR’s key mission continues to be the translation of science into real world impact. The 2024 winners of the President’s Science and Technology Awards (PSTA) embody the agency’s spirit of innovation in pursuit of this goal, as they have earned the nation’s highest honours for their exceptional contributions to their respective fields of science and technology.

A*STAR’s 2024 cohort of PSTA awardees include A*STAR Special Adviser Ric Parker, recipient of the President’s Science and Technology Medal (PSTM); as well as A*STAR Skin Research Labs (A*STAR SRL) Distinguished Principal Scientist Malini Olivo and Principal Scientist Renzhe Bi, joint recipients of the President's Technology Award (PTA) with Gurpreet Singh and Augustine Tee.

The PSTA also celebrates highly innovative young researchers and engineers in Singapore through the Young Scientist Award, the recipients of which include Jonathan Göke, Senior Principal Scientist at the A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS).

In this online exclusive, A*STAR Research profiles the careers and work of A*STAR’s 2024 PSTA awardees, which include building partnerships between Singapore’s R&D ecosystem and industry in advanced manufacturing, transportation and other sectors; creating non-invasive monitoring devices for chronic respiratory diseases; and developing genomic computational tools to enhance medical diagnostics and treatments.

President’s Science and Technology Medal 2024

• Richard Parker, A*STAR Special Adviser and
  Chairman, Singapore Aerospace Programme

“For his outstanding contributions in stimulating the establishment of corporate R&D capabilities in Singapore, leadership in bringing companies and research institutions together for the benefit of Singapore, and for promoting international collaboration in research and technology.”

Throughout a decades-long journey across physics labs, aircraft factory floors and corporate boardrooms, Richard ‘Ric’ Parker has remained passionate about the possibilities that industrial-academic partnerships create.

“It’s been said that there’s no such thing as pure research; only applied research and the yet-to-be applied,” said Parker. “Such partnerships help ensure research finds the most efficient ways into industrial application and wealth creation. Industry partners bring real-world problems for researchers to solve, while research institutions and universities bring deep pools of talent and knowledge that are constantly being refreshed and updated.”

Having worked for the Rolls-Royce Group since 1978—first as a researcher in jet engines and power systems, then an engineer and manager—Parker came to Singapore in 2001 as the company’s Director of Research and Technology (CTO), at which point he began his long-standing relationship with A*STAR.

Parker was instrumental in establishing the first joint labs in advanced computing between Rolls-Royce and the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing (A*STAR IHPC), and in advanced manufacturing between Rolls-Royce and the A*STAR Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (A*STAR ARTC). Parker was also a founding member of the Singapore Aerospace Programme (SAP): an A*STAR-hosted initiative launched in 2008 to tackle diverse challenges in the aerospace industry.

In 2016, Parker joined A*STAR as a part-time consultant, supporting the Science and Engineering Council (SERC) in areas ranging from advanced manufacturing to maritime research. In a full circle moment, Parker took over as Chairman of SAP to oversee its revamp into SAP 2.0, which today supports Singapore’s Aerospace Industry Transformation Map 2025 through research in Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) and manufacturing in increasingly important areas such as sustainability.

Beyond his roots in the aerospace industry, Parker played a part in creating the Technology Centre for Offshore and Maritime Singapore (TCOMS): a world-class maritime research facility with an ocean tidal basin fully supported by digital twinning. More recently, Parker now leads the Technical Committee for the Low-Carbon Energy Research (LCER) Initiative being implemented by A*STAR, with a budget of over S$185 million to date.

“It was good to be in at the start of this exciting new programme; LCER is doing essential work to prepare Singapore for the journey to zero carbon by 2050,” said Parker.

Looking ahead, Parker emphasised that Singapore must continue to be a magnet for world-class R&D talent through its facilities and programmes, and ensure its universities and institutes maintain a strong international reputation for quality research and real-world applications.

“Singapore has a structured process to define its research priorities and invests at world-class levels in its R&D programmes. Its priority areas in the next five years would include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum, low-carbon technologies and electrification,” said Parker.

President’s Technology Award 2024

• Malini Olivo, Distinguished Principal Scientist, A*STAR Skin Research Labs

• Renzhe Bi, Principal Scientist, A*STAR Skin Research Labs

• Gurpreet Singh, formerly Senior Research Scientist, A*STAR Skin Research Labs; now Chief Executive Officer, Respiree Pte Ltd

• Augustine Tee, Chairman, Division of Medicine and Senior Consultant, Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Changi General Hospital

“For their innovative integration of biophotonics, machine learning and clinical data to create Respiree, a healthcare solution which has demonstrated the potential to transform cardio-respiratory disease management in real-world settings.”

To human eyes, white light appears uniform, but in fact consists of a blend of colours. Likewise, a medical innovation often results from a blend of sound science, clinical insights and translational drive. The story of Respiree’s development is no different, having united the expertise of Malini Olivo in medical physics and biophotonics; Gurpreet Singh in electric and electronic engineering, Renzhe Bi in biomedical engineering; and Augustine Tee in respiratory medicine.

“Respiree’s success really came from the synergy of a multidisciplinary team with different skills, perspectives and strengths, united by a deep understanding of optical technologies and a shared drive to solve real clinical problems,” said Olivo.

Since 1985, Olivo has been pioneering light-based technologies to address real-world clinical challenges such as non-invasive cancer diagnosis. At A*STAR, Olivo realised that to truly advance the field, her team needed to go beyond applying existing technologies; they needed to build their own, which meant inventing new biophotonics methods and tailoring innovations to specific clinical applications.

With this new mindset, Olivo formed a new translational biophotonics team which soon included Bi and Singh. Together, they set out to harness the power of light for more than traditional pulse monitoring.

“We asked ourselves: could we push optical sensing further to extract other meaningful physiological parameters besides heart rates?” said Bi. “Through many rounds of testing and innovation, we found that light could not only be used to measure human respiratory rates, but to capture continuous breathing patterns, revealing deep insights on lung function.”

In 2017, this discovery led to the team’s breakthrough innovation: a first-of-its-kind miniaturised, wearable device that could non-invasively track both respiratory and cardiac-related functions in real time. However, while the device was a significant step forward, its most impactful clinical application was not immediately clear.

Olivo, Bi and Singh reached out to clinicians across different specialties to identify real unmet needs, eventually connecting with Tee. Tee’s clinical insights helped them focus and refine their technology for chronic respiratory diseases like Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and asthma, where the ability to continuously monitor a patient’s breathing could make a real difference.

When COVID-19 emerged in late-2019, the pressing need for real-time respiratory monitoring—not just in hospitals, but home and quarantine settings—spurred the further development of the team’s innovation into Respiree, a scalable solution now available to healthcare providers.

To commercialise Respiree, Singh founded the A*STAR spin-off Respiree Pte Ltd. “Commercialisation isn’t just about business—it’s about accessibility. It ensures that the innovations we work so hard on don’t remain locked away as promising ideas but instead reach the hands of healthcare professionals and patients who can benefit from them,” said Malini.

Building on their success, the team is currently working on a new class of lightweight optical wearables that can continuously, non-invasively monitor blood flow across the body in ways that traditionally require ultrasound devices.

“This could detect early warning signs of cardiovascular disease, allowing for prompt intervention to prevent a serious clinical event,” said Bi. “With Singapore’s ageing population, such a preventive approach to cardiovascular health is increasingly critical.”

Young Scientist Award 2024

• Jonathan Göke, Senior Principal Scientist,
  A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore

“For his pioneering work in developing computational methods for long read RNA sequencing data that have enabled the profiling of RNA transcription and modifications at unprecedented resolution and accuracy.”

Thanks to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, many of us are no stranger to the concept of RNA: strands of nucleic acids which instruct and assist our cells in producing life-sustaining proteins from our genetic code. However, RNA is a complicated molecule; the same gene can generate different RNA copies with varying lengths and sequences, while small chemical changes (RNA modifications) can further change an RNA strand’s function. With larger RNA molecules being up to thousands of base pairs long, RNA researchers often have a mountain of data to sift through for insights.

Jonathan Göke finds these complications fascinating, as well as a ripe field for computational biologists such as himself to engage in. “There’s important medical insights to be derived from how changes in RNA can lead to diseases; how the presence of different RNAs can help diagnose patients; and how RNA therapeutics could tackle difficult diseases,” said Göke.

Göke noted that long-read RNA sequencing (lrRNA-seq) technology was a big breakthrough in the field of RNA, enabling scientists to piece together the sum of RNA present in a sample more easily—akin to solving a jigsaw puzzle with fewer pieces. “However, lrRNA-seq gives us a lot of data, and we need computational methods that process that data, allowing us to accurately interpret the results and ask the right scientific questions,” added Göke.

Leveraging his strong expertise in computational biology, Göke tackled this challenge by developing novel computational tools to profile RNA transcription and modifications from lrRNA-seq data with exceptional resolution and accuracy.

Other researchers have since used Göke’s computational methods to analyse RNA sequencing data for a myriad of applications, including studying RNAs found in Alzheimer’s disease and identifying RNA variants associated with cancer. Göke’s tools have even been used in a study on how space flight impacts RNA modifications.

Looking into the future, Göke aims to develop computational tools that keep up with cutting-edge sequencing technologies. These include single-cell spatial profiling, which allows scientists to individually sequence different cell populations—such as tumour or immune cells—while maintaining information on their locations in the human body.

By teaming up with clinical collaborators, Göke also hopes to apply his tools to population-scale data to understand how genetic variation affects RNA expression. "Integrating genomics and transcriptomics provides a huge opportunity to understand how individual differences in the genome impact human diseases. These new RNA technologies provide higher resolution, making them powerful tools for studying population health and supporting precision medicine,” said Göke.