Xin Xiang Lim

My decision to pursue a PhD stemmed from my passion and interest in science and the limitless possibilities for creating novel solutions for complex world problems. I have always been fascinated by new discoveries and novel innovations and what really captured my was the thinking process that led to these discoveries and innovations. When I decided to pursue my PhD education, I was really setting out to improve my thinking and analytical skills as well as problem solving skills because I believe that these skills are extremely important and applicable to all wards of life, transcending beyond science.

I specifically selected NUS for my graduate studies because of its scientific excellence and the conducive environment for research. I wanted to train myself in a world renowned university like NUS, because that would mean training under world leading scientists and tackling research problems that are at the frontiers of science. Furthermore, being a Singaporean myself and having completed my undergraduate education in NUS, I feel deeply rooted and connected to the university.

I would say my experience for graduate school education is very different from undergraduate education. The most prominent difference for me was the change in focus. During undergraduate education, we were mostly trained in finding answers to a problem, such as taking exams. But in graduate school, I had to find the question even before seeking out answers or potential solutions to the question. In this way, it is very much more representative of the working world in the sense that problems faced are not that straight forward and definitely a lot more complex.

My PhD research is on investigating the role and impacts of the biophysical properties of viruses and their implications on antiviral therapeutics. To put my PhD research across simply, we can imagine a virus as a target board and the regions that are recognized by antibodies are the targets. My PhD research illuminated that viruses are actually moving dart boards and their surface motions direct impacts antibody’s recognition and consequences after binding.

I hope that insights from my PhD research will be of relevance for the design of antiviral therapeutics and vaccines

I have won the Best Graduate Researcher award in 2017 and subsequently graduated as the valedictorian of my PhD graduating class in 2018. I am very thankful for the department’s and school’s recognition of my scientific rigor and excellence. In my opinion, to achieve scientific excellence, we first have to believe what we are doing and most importantly enjoy what we are doing. In addition to these, hard work and creativity are two other important ingredients that were essential too. In essence, if you love what you are doing, you will do it well and coupling that with exercising your creativity whenever possible, will definitely help in driving scientific excellence in your work.