Nationality: Singapore
Faculty & Year of Study: Faculty of Science, Year 3
Undergraduate: National University of Singapore, Singapore
"It is perfectly ok (and normal) to feel frustrated or demoralised at times, but it is through these setbacks that we learn the most."
Why Did You Choose To Pursue A PhD?
Delving into the unknown. Working on research that has never been done before is both exciting and satisfying.
Why Did You Choose To Pursue Your PhD At NUS?
NUS provides wide ranging opportunities and programs to enrich graduate life, beyond basic graduate research work. Be it opportunities for entrepreneurship, overseas conferences and competitions, postgraduate career guidance, library workshops etc. These opportunities were immensely useful in helping me develop life skills beyond basic research work.
Can you tell us briefly about your research topic?
My project involves imbuing coffee with live probiotics. The therapeutic benefits of live probiotics have been demonstrated in a wide range of health outcomes, especially related to diarrhoea and gastrointestinal disorders. Therefore, my project aimed to diversify and increase consumer accessibility to probiotic foods, beyond the conventional yogurt or cultured drink.
We first looked at coffee, which is very commonly consumed worldwide. However, culturing probiotics in coffee brews was no easy task, as several rounds of formulation had to be undertaken to ensure that coffee brews were a suitable medium to sustain probiotic growth and survival. The therapeutic benefits of dead probiotics are not as well established compared to live probiotics, so it was important that we sustained their viabilities in coffee.
Nevertheless, we were able to sustain probiotic viabilities for longer than 3 months, in addition, our probiotic fermented coffee beverage retained major coffee bioactive components (e.g. caffeine, chlorogenic acid) suggesting that intrinsic health benefits of coffee were not compromised.
Interestingly, probiotic fermentation also led to flavour changes, with hints of “yogurt”, “butter” or “wine”, depending on who you ask! Research is ongoing, and a provisional patent has been filed (10202000411V).
Why did you choose to do this research for your PhD?
I previously worked with probiotics during my Final Year Project in the same department (NUS Food Science and Technology). During my FYP, I saw the potential of probiotics as a therapeutic agent through food, and it got me even more intrigued with probiotics. This led me to continue my research in A/P Liu Shao Quan’s group as a PhD student.
How does PhD graduate education compare with your undergraduate experience?
The undergraduate experience is largely class-based lessons, or lab-based sessions, where lecturers and PhD seniors are there guide you. On the other hand, the PhD experience is very much independent learning. There are of course professors and PhD seniors who can give you advice (which I am immensely grateful for). But especially since doing a PhD research means doing something that has not been done before, it requires a lot of independent reading up, doing things by trial and error, and repeating until something works. It can be frustrating at times, but hey, that’s the purpose of PhD, which is to pursue the unknown.
What do you like most about graduate school?
To me, the day to day interactions with the FST community is the best graduate experience. Whether its chatting with fellow graduate students in the lab, being grateful for senior PhD students and research fellows for teaching me how to do something, or even learning together with my research students as we try to solve something together.
Any advice for someone who's considering a PhD in NUS?
An advice I have is that a PhD journey is not an easy one, nor is it smooth sailing. It is perfectly ok (and normal) to feel frustrated or demoralised at times, but it is through these setbacks that we learn the most.