TECH EXPERTS

Dr Jose Domingos is currently the Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow of Aquaculture at James Cook University, Singapore. His research focuses on the development of efficient breeding programs for tropical aquaculture species. This involves the understanding and manipulation of endogenous and environmental factors affecting gonadal development and broodstock conditioning within appropriate maturation systems for reliable spawnings. Jose is passionate about marine finfish propagation (reproduction, genomics, selective breeding) and its integration with nutrition and fish health for the development of fast growing and disease resistant strains. Fingerlings of high quality and better genetics will improve farm productivity and allow aquaculture business in the tropics to achieve profitability and sustainability to feed our growing population. Dr Domingos has a long involvement with commercial shrimp and marine finfish operations. Prior to joining the James Cook University (Australia) Aquaculture Genetics research team in 2008, Jose worked as a production manager for several shrimp farms in the South and Northeast of Brazil, where he supervised over 700 hectares of shrimp farming. Trained in Brazil (Oceanography, FURG; MSc. Aquaculture, UFSC) and Australia (PhD Aquaculture Genetics, JCU), Jose has 20 years of combined industry, government and academic background. Jose is excited about collaborating with industry partners in the development of sustainable aquaculture practices, and in the training of students through hands-on experiences and discoveries that make a difference for life in the tropics.

Dr Chew Fook Tim is the vice dean at the Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore (NUS), and principal investigator of the Molecular Breeding and Allergy & Immunology Laboratories at the Department of Biological Sciences, NUS. Dr Chew teaches graduate and undergraduate level molecular & population genetics, immunology, human physiology, engineering design in biotechnology, urban agriculture and crop biotechnology, food- & agri-science. His laboratories work in the field of epidemiology, genetics & immunology of Aalergic, respiratory & skin diseases, skin ageing & beauty, allergen characterization, and in food- & agri-science, and molecular breeding and crop biotechnology. Dr Chew was the chairman of Academic Advisory Board, School of Life Sciences, Management Development Institute of Singapore.He also served as the Chair of the Governing Board, Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study & Research in Agriculture (SEARCA) Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization, Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Tropical Biology (BIOTROP). Dr Chew has conducted various scientific projects with Eu Yan Sang, Stallergene, US Food & Drug Administration (FDA)–Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research, Singapore Food Agency (SFA), multiple Allergenicity Assessments ; Danone-Nutricia Research, Nestle-Galderma, Procter & Gamble, Syngenta, Hyphens Pharma, etc.  

Dr. Hermann Klein-Hessling, Founder and CEO of Singapore-based Agri-Business and Consultancy Pte. Ltd,  has international work experience of more than 25 years in total. A practitioning agronomist by training, he has extensive insights and experiences in grains, animal nutrition, feed milling, feed and livestock. He also has R&D experiences in feed additive development, animal breeding as well as large scale multi-species livestock production; especially strong in vertically integrated poultry companies.  Throughout his career, he has travelled to over 65 countries across all 5 continents and is very well acquainted with the global agricultural (feed, food & meat) industry and approaches sector challenges from a holistic, integrative, cross-disciplinary approach. Since its beginnings in 2019, he has been active in business and project development in the Agri industry with the core activity being improving business operations and efficiency. He has keen interest in supporting the Agri-Tech and insect start-up community here in Singapore as well as being part of the “hands on” implementation and deployment strategy for insect breeding and scaling up these new ventures.  Dr Hermann holds a BS Degree in Agronomy from Germany, a Master Degree in Poultry Sciences from North Carolina State University, USA, a Ph.D in Animal and Poultry Sciences from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, an MBA from Singapore Management University and an Executive Diploma in Corporate Board Directorship from Singapore Institute of Directors.  

Dr Li Huan is a lecturer in the Centre of Innovation for Complementary Health Product (COI-CHP) at Temasek Polytechnic. She is proficient in analytical assay development using various analytical instruments for product quality control and herbal product development. She also has experience in 3D human skin tissue and hepatocyte culture for toxicity and efficacy studies. As a principal investigator, Dr Li has secured a MOE Translational R&D and Innovation Fund (TIF) to develop a proprietary herbal product to treat contact allergic dermatitis. She has led several industry projects to help local SMEs to improve or develop innovative complementary health products. She has completed virucidal activity testing for surface disinfectants and bacteria filtration efficiency test for masks. Dr Li completed a Bachelor's degree in Pharmaceutical Engineering before receiving her PhD in Chinese Medicine from Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine. In addition, she has also obtained her Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Science from Aston University with First Class Honors.  Prior to joining Temasek Polytechnic, she worked on 3D hepatocyte culture for drug toxicity screening in Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, A*STAR.

Dr. Shi Lei is a senior scientist at the Centre of Innovation for Complementary Health Products in the School of Applied Science, Temasek Polytechnic.  He has more than 20 years of research and teaching experience, focusing on R&D of functional products from natural plants and traditional medicines, analysis and determination of bioactive macromolecules (e.g. polysaccharide), and food chemistry.  He is well accomplished in his field of expertise, with over 40 papers published in the peer-reviewed academic journals and numerous pleasant collaborations with the industry.   Dr. Shi Lei successfully developed a health supplement to help prevent type 2 diabetes and the technology has since been licensed to a company in Singapore. In addition, he has successfully isolated and purified more than ten polysaccharides from natural products and elucidated their primary structures for the first time, which enriches the database of polysaccharides. His review paper on “Bioactivities, isolation and purification methods of polysaccharides from natural products: A review” (published in 2016) is a highly cited literature, which is well recognized by the community of polysaccharide research.

Christopher was a former senior level executive in DHL AP with extensive international experience in various aspects of logistics and technology solution implementation with ability to deliver results on important strategic assignments in multi-cultural environments. He has over 15 years’ experience as a team leader, overseeing both direct and virtual teams of managers; managing end to end logistic, freight, express service solution design, delivery & innovation, both at regional and global levels. He has also over 10 years’ experience in information technology management, overseeing corporate wide technological infrastructure, applications and B2B/B2C EDI implementation. With over 10 years’ experience as change leader, overseeing business process & system management in the logistic industry, his consultation approach has always been leveraging on industrial and practical experiences.

Dr. Daniel Chen Yunzhong is a senior scientist at the Clean Energy Research Centre (CERC) in Temasek Polytechnic.  He is devoted to developing novel technologies in energy areas including fuel cell, flow battery, lithium battery, direct methanol fuel cell, portable power, and hydrogen generation/storage.  His research interests cover system design, devices development, key components fabrication, as well as catalyst synthesis. As a Principle Investigator, Dr. Chen has been awarded numerous R&D funds by the Ministry of Education, Tote Board and other grant agencies. In addition, Dr. Chen is also an expert and is active in the field of intellectual property protection.  He is the inventor of numerous patents (mostly PCT patents) in the areas of fuel cell, flow battery, gas generation and industrial equipment.  Most of the patents have been licensed out to companies for commercialisation. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Nanyang Technological University in 2003.  Prior to joining Temasek Polytechnic, he worked as a research scientist at an industrial R&D company and a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University.

Jane Shen specializes in AI, deep learning, face, person and image recognition, autonomous driving with more than 20 years of experience. She has known-how and domain knowledge across different applications from camera products, surveillance, smart city to autonomous driving. She is currently a chief scientist and managing director at Pensees Singapore. She is working on cutting edge technology development by embracing AI and deep learning advancement with strength in computer vision. Before joining Pensees, Jane was an assistant director at Panasonic R&D Center Singapore and general manager at Panasonic Singapore Lab, from 2012 to 2019. During this time, she led a team in autonomous development with AI deep learning technology.  Under her leadership, the team developed several face recognition products that won in several competitions, including World No.1 position in NIST IJB-A and MS-Cele-1M Face Challenge in 2017 and 2018, and ICCV 2019 Face recognition challenge, achieving world top position for Person reID, car reID, fighting and AI City Challenge. She has wide range of experience in audio/video compression and coding, digital rights management, camera and sensor processing, computer vision, which are applied in many domains, such as AV products, securities and surveillance, DTV/DVD, automotive, sensor device, content authoring, delivering and receding, etc. In addition, she has filed more than 300 patents. She is proficient in system and architecture design, especially in system solution.

Dr Jia Junbo is a lead scientist in Clean Energy Research Centre (CERC), Temasek Polytechnic.  He joined Temasek Polytechnic in 2001 as a lecturer and in 2010, he became a senior lecturer.  His research fields include power electronics, Li-ion battery system modelling and control, as well as energy management system for underwater device, forklift, electric vehicle and micro-grid.  He was the project leader for High Performance Lithium-Ion Battery Power System for Long Endurance Deep Water Operation project (SMI Grant Call, 2013-2016), The Development of Smart Power System for Mission Critical Applications project (MOE INNOVATION Grant Call, 2016-2018), and The Development of Smart Battery Power System for Underwater Inspection System project (2017 -2019).  He is currently the consultant for the project on Development of Next Generation Lithium-Ion Energy Storage System (ESS) Solution & Smart Distributed ESS Management Application for Fire Hazard Mitigation under Hot-Humid Climatic Condition (2020-2022). As an accomplished scientist, Dr Jia Junbo published more than 50 papers.  He is also a member of IEEE.  His noteworthy education background include receiving his B.Eng. degree in 1988, the M.Eng. degree in 1996, both from electrical engineering in South West Jiaotong University, China, and Ph.D. degree in 2011 from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His past working experience involved the development of the testing system based on database technology for electric railway substation testing coaches for Chengdu and Kunming, China Electric Railway Bureau.  In 1996, he was a lecturer, and in 1998, he became an Associate Professor in Southwest Jiaotong University, China.