Jackie Ying

A leader in the global scientific community in the area of nanotechnology, professor Jackie Ying was founding executive director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and NanoBio Lab at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research from 2003 to 2023. She recently moved to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia to take on the role as chair of the Department of Bioengineering and Nanomedicine at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre.

Recognised for the interdisciplinary nature of her research, which focuses on the synthesis of nanostructured materials for applications in nanomedicine, antimicrobial agents, cell and tissue engineering, biosensors and diagnostics, and green chemistry and energy, Ying was awarded the King Faisal Prize in 2023. She also became the first scientist to be elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2021.

The Taiwan-born Ying attended Raffles Girls’ School in Singapore, before moving to New York to pursue chemical engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She returned to Singapore in 2003 and founded the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology. She was the youngest full professor, at age 35, in the chemical engineering faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001.

Ying is also the founder of a number of companies, the latest one is the Singapore-based Cellbae, which develops and commercialises novel diagnostic assays and reagents.