SINGAPORE 2016 17 - 22 JANUARY 2016 SPEAKERS AND YOUNG SCIENTISTS DIRECTORY ADVANCING SCIENCE, CREATING TECHNOLOGIES FOR A BETTER WORLD TABLE OF CONTENTS Speakers 3 Young Scientists Index 48 Young Scientists Directory 54 International Advisory Committee 145 SPEAKERS SPEAKERS SPEAKERS NOBEL PRIZE FIELDS MEDAL Prof Ada Yonath Prof Arieh Warshel Prof Cédric Villani Prof Stephen Smale Chemistry (2009) Chemistry (2013) Fields Medal (2010) Fields Medal (1966) Prof Ei-ichi Negishi Sir Anthony Leggett MILLENIUM TECHNOLOGY PRIZE Chemistry (2010) Physics (2003) Prof Michael Grätzel Prof Stuart Parkin Prof Carlo Rubbia Prof David Gross Millennium Technoly Prize (2010) Millennium Technology Award (2014) Physics (1984) Physics (2004) TURING AWARD Prof Gerard ’t Hooft Prof Jerome Friedman Physics (1999) Physics (1990) Prof Andrew Yao Dr Leslie Lamport Turing Award (2000) Turing Award (2013) Prof Serge Haroche Prof Harald zur Hausen Physics (2012) Physiology or Medicine (2008) Prof Leslie Valiant Prof Richard Karp Turing Award (2010) Turing Award (1985) Prof John Robin Warren Sir Richard Roberts Physiology or Medicine (2005) Physiology or Medicine (1993) Sir Tim Hunt Physiology or Medicine (2001) 4 5 SPEAKERS SPEAKERS When Professor Ada Yonath won the 2009 their ability to withstand high temperatures. At the time, others criticised Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of her decision to work with the little known bacteria, but the discovery the structure of ribosomes, she not only raised of heat-stable enzymes which revolutionised molecular biology soon public interest in science but also inspired a silenced them. By the early 1980s, Prof Yonath was able to create the first greater appreciation for a head of curly hair. ribosome crystals, taking advantage of the unusually stable ribosomes During her Nobel banquet speech, Prof Yonath of her organism of choice. explained that curly hair, like her own, is now called “rosh male ribosomin” in Israel, which Based on the understanding of ribosomal function she uncovered, translates to a head full of ribosomes. scientists can now explain how antibiotics act on bacteria, information that has been used in rational structure-based design for urgently ADA YONATH Ribosomes are cellular machines that are needed new classes of antibiotics. essential for protein synthesis, found in Nobel Prize in Chemistry organisms from bacteria to humans. Even Aside from the intense scepticism that her work faced in the early (2009) though scientists understood what ribosomes days, Prof Yonath had to overcome several difficulties in her early life, did, no one yet knew how they worked. Their particularly following the death of her father when she was 11 years old. large size, complexity and instability made it With her mother in poor health and not very well educated, she found very difficult get them in the orderly crystalline herself shouldering responsibilities beyond her years, including looking form required for X-ray crystallography to after her younger sister. Nevertheless, her mother was supportive of her reveal their structure. education and saw her through her Master’s degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although her initial attempts to crystallise ribosomes were fraught with technical Prof Yonath has received many international awards and honours, challenges, Prof Yonath persevered. Her including the Israel Prize in 2002, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2006, the conviction that what others said was Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 2008, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO impossible could be done was inspired in part Award for Women in Science in 2008. In 2015, she was awarded honorary by the fact that hibernating polar bears have degrees from the Medical University of Lodz, De La Salle University in the highly organised ribosomes, something she Philippines and the Joseph Fourier University in France. had read about by chance while recovering from a cycling accident. Going from one extreme environment to another, Prof Yonath decided to work with Dead Sea bacteria, which were known for 6 7 SPEAKERS SPEAKERS When the first 3D structure of a protein – he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of science degree myoglobin – was revealed in 1958, it was no in chemistry in 1996, he went on to earn a Master’s and Ph.D. degree more sophisticated than blobs of plasticine in chemical physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1976, he held up by sticks. Later on, as computer joined the faculty of the University of Southern Carolina, where he is modelling began to take off, scientists had now a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry. to choose between classical and quantum physics to build their models. Neither was a Prof Warshel has always credited his curiosity for his interest in perfect solution: classical physics could be computational structural biology, explaining that his research was used to model very big molecules, but could akin to “seeing a watch, wondering what was going on inside, and not simulate chemical reactions; whereas finding out”. In particular, Prof Warshel is known for developing the field ARIEH WARSHEL quantum physics could simulate chemical of computational enzymology, which paved the way for quantitative reactions, but could only be applied small theoretical studies of enzymatic reactions. Nobel Prize in Chemistry molecules because it required enormous (2013) computing power. His contributions to chemistry have been considered outstanding by many organisations, including the US National Academy of Sciences, of In hindsight, combining the two methods which he is a member, and the Royal Society of Chemistry, of which he might seem like an obvious strategy. However, is a fellow. Additionally, the Southern California Section of the American Professor Arieh Warshel – together with his co- Chemical Society, neighbours of his long-time home at the University awardees Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus of Southern California, awarded him the Tolman Medal in 2003. In 2013, – were the first to succeed, winning them the Prof Warshel was awarded the Israel Chemical Society Gold Medal. 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Despite the computational limitations of their time, where a single computer could take up an entire room, they were able to use computing technology to examine how proteins and other biological substances look and work. Prof Warshel had always been fascinated by science, desiring from a young age to understand how everything worked. He was born in Kibbutz Sde Nahum, in the Beit She’an Valley, now part of Israel. After attending the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, where 8 9 SPEAKERS SPEAKERS Look closer at the organic molecules that Called palladium-catalysed cross-coupling, the reaction is today a make life possible – proteins, carbohydrates, critical tool in any synthetic chemist’s toolbox and has been extensively nucleic acids – and you will find an underlying used by the pharmaceutical industry to discover and manufacture carbon skeleton. Strong and unusually stable, drugs such as vancomycin, an antibiotic used against drug-resistant the carbon-carbon (C-C) bond is the most bacteria. common chemical bond found in organic compounds. The ability to form long and After obtaining his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright- complex chains of C-C bonds underlies Smith-Mund Scholar in 1963, Prof Negishi joined Professor Herbert C. Nature’s dazzling diversity – and many of its Brown at Purdue University. In 1979, the year that Brown was awarded most useful compounds. his Nobel Prize, Prof Negishi was invited to join Purdue as faculty, where EI-ICHI NEGISHI he has been the H. C. Brown Distinguished Professor of Chemistry since But replicating C-C bonds in the lab has 1999. Prof Negishi now serves as the inaugural director of Purdue’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry proven to be challenging. Early attempts at Negishi-Brown Institute. (2010) forcing smaller carbon-containing molecules to form bonds with each other relied on Apart from the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Prof Negishi has received the using highly reactive compounds to coax the 1987 J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1996 Chemical Society of Japan usually stable carbon atoms into reactions. Award, the 1998 ACS Award in Organometallic Chemistry, the 2000 Sir Although they got the job done, these Edward Frankland Prize, the 2007 Yamada-Koga Prize, the 2010 ACS methods only worked under harsh conditions Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and the 2010 and caused the carbon atoms to form bonds Japanese Order of Culture. In 2011 and 2014, he was elected Fellow of in an unpredictable way, often resulting in the the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Foreign Associate of generation of more unwanted by-products National Academy of Sciences respectively. than intended molecules. Building on the work of fellow 2010 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Richard Heck, Professor Ei-ichi Negishi developed a more efficient way to link carbon-containing molecules using palladium as a catalyst. Palladium acts as an intermediary, binding the two carbon- containing molecules to itself and facilitating the formation of a new bond between them. 10 11 SPEAKERS SPEAKERS Place some liquid helium in an open cup and Sir Anthony Leggett’s career in physics took an unconventional route, watch. Right before your eyes, you will see it involving two undergraduate degrees at Oxford University: firstly in what creeping up the edges of the cup, working is colloquially known as the Greats (classical languages, literature, and against gravity, and then pooling at the base Greco-Roman history and philosophy) and secondly in physics. of the cup. You’ve just witnessed a superfluid in action. With his somewhat unorthodox academic background, he initially found it difficult to find a PhD supervisor willing to take him but was Superfluidity is a state in which matter behaves eventually accepted by Professor Dirk ter Haar, a theoretical physicist like a fluid with zero friction, most dramatically at Oxford University.