Abstract:
NUS have been pioneering Bioinformatics since 1991.
This talk gives a broad overview of our directions since then and our initiatives in the following:
a) International (S* Alliance), regional (APBioNet) and institutional (NUS) educational programmes in bioinformatics;
b) Bioinformatics computational tools and database resources in the Asia Pacific - APBioGrid, BioMirrors,
Sunbiobox APBioBox;
c) Bioinformatics research projects in NUS - from peptide bioinformatics to integrated databases, from algorithms to nmr peak assignment, from introns and exons to bacterial genome analysis;
d) Bioinformatics Business: some thoughts on the state of our spinoff companies, GxC and KOOPrime;
e) Bioinformatics policy and futures - ASEAN Masterplan.

Speaker
Tan Tin Wee was educated in Cambridge (Biochemistry BA), London (UCL – Molecular Biology and Biotechnology) and Edinburgh (recombinant chlamydial vaccine) and is currently a Member of the Institute of Biology (CBiol). He is presently an Associate Professor with the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Master of Eusoff Hall of Residence at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he has been working for the past 14 years.
He was a past President of the Association for Informatics in Medicine Singapore, now known as Association for Medical and BioInformatics Singapore (AMBIS), and is currently serving as a committee member.
During his tour of duty in NUS, he has achieved international stature in two major fields: Internet Technologies and Bioinformatics, distinguishing himself as a technology pioneer and inventor, academic, scientist, scientific and technology leader and activist, technopreneur and community worker.
He headed the NUS Technet Unit prior to its commercialization as Pacific Internet (NASDAQ:PCTNF) (1994-1995), founded the Internet Research and Development Unit (IRDU) which pioneered many Internet technologies (1995) in this region, established the Centre for Internet Research (CIR), founded the Bioinformatics Centre as its Director from 1996, founded the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network SINGAREN as its first principal investigator in 1997, co-founded the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) in 1998 and held various posts there, was elected as chair of the Asia Pacific Networking Group (Asia Pacific’s oldest Internet association) from 1997 to 1999, served as advisor to the Director General of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (2000-2002), represented Asia in the Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networking (CCIRN), served as Chief Editor of the Singapore Biochemical Society (early 1990s), founded the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) in 1998 and is serving as Secretariat, co-founded the S* Life Sciences Informatics Alliance (2001), was elected Vice President and President of the Association for Informatics in Medicine Singapore, served as ExCo of the APRICOT conference, the International Conference for Bioinformatics (InCOB) and many other conferences, invented multilingual domain names and co-founded and served as CEO and elected Vice Chairman of the Multilingual Internet Names Consortium (MINC), co-founded Tamil Internet international conference in 1997 and is serving as ExCo of the International Forum for IT in Tamil (INFITT), co-founded the Enable2000 committee for Internet networking and computing for people with disabilities, served in National Council for Social Service (NCSS) committee for Computer Assisted Learning Project for Special Education Schools, and is currently the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Biotech, Committee for Science and Technology (COST) ASEAN, and a member of the Life Science Advisory Committee, Nanyang Polytechnic, among others.
For his work in these fields over the past two decades, he has consistently received national, regional and international recognition such as the Singapore Youth Award for excellence (1994), Vaccine Research Trust Annual Award (1989), Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI) Education award (1997), ASEAN Business Forum’s ASEAN Achievement Award (1997), Life Insurance Association (LIA) Award for community work, 7th Indian Cultural Festival Innovation Award (1998) for contributions to Tamil Internet, National University of Singapore Annual Staff Achievement Award (1998), World Congress for Medical Informatics MEDINFO’92 Gold Medal, and he is on the International Who’s Who of Professionals (1999) and a member of the exclusive World Technology Network (2001) as one of 450 top scientists, entrepreneurs financiers, journalists, academics and policy makers world wide.
He is also entrepreneurial, having spun off or been involved with several companies including Bioinformatrix Pte Ltd (1997), Kris Technology Inc Menlo Park (1998) now GeneticXchange Inc, i-DNS.net International Inc (1999), BTG Pte Ltd (2000), KOOPrime Pte Ltd (2001). He has served as consultant to a number of organizations, including the management of Singapore Network Services SNS, (now called Crimson Logic) and currently serves as a Board Director, Chairman of the Nominations Committee, member of Audit Committee, Remunerations Committee and Divestment/Investment Committee of Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation Ltd, a publicly listed Singapore government linked company.
Over the years he has raised and/or managed about S$60M of research grant or spinoff funds ($28M SINGAREN, $15M BIC, $9M for I-DNS.net and Kris, $5.5M for Technet and IRDU, etc). The spin-off companies coordinated through BTG Pte Ltd, have raised another more than $30M (I-DNS.net US$20M, GeneticXchange >US$2M, KOOPrime >S$600K).
He is happily married with a daughter and a son, and lives in Eusoff Hall managing the daily activities of some 500 students.