Gao Chang
2022
|
|
Why did you choose to do a PhD?
After working as a physician for several years, I hope to strengthen my research skills and discover something crucial for the transitional medicine field through PhD training. Pursuing my PhD will offer me a great opportunity to be a clinician-scientist for the future career. Moreover, I sincerely believe that a qualified doctor of this age could strike a good balance between clinical work and research.
Why did you choose to do graduate education at NUS? If you received offers from other universities, why did you pick NUS?
For me, to pursue an advanced degree in NUS is not so much a challenge as an opportunity. I was being very lucky to work on antiviral therapies for COVID-19 treatment at the very beginning of my PhD since my thesis advisor was being keen on developing novel antiviral RNA drugs. Additionally, the great academic environment and core facilities like the BSL-3 facility at NUS can offer me a fully support and valuable chance for my personal development and career building. All these made this research work a thrill for me especially after gaining some experience treating COVID patient during the outbreak.
Briefly share about your research or thesis (i.e. dissertation topic for Masters by Coursework students).
My PhD project mainly focuses on developing novel antiviral RNA drugs against SARS-CoV-2 by leveraging red blood cell extracellular vesicles (RBCEVs)-based platform. We are currently developing multiple applications of RBCEV-mediated therapy for COVID-19, and all these crucial findings could possibly be applied to therapies for new emerging infectious diseases and follow the demand of “bench to bed” transition in the near future.
What impact do you hope to have with your research?
I hope our findings on seeking novel antiviral RNA drugs for COVID-19 treatment could contribute to COVID patients and the public especially in the context of high mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2.In addition, I also hope all these findings will be applicable to therapies for the next unforeseeable pandemic.
Do you have any interesting personal stories to share? For example, about your journey to get into graduate school, personal hobbies/interests.
I used to be a person quite afraid of dogs. However, thanks to warm and kind friends I made at NUS, I started to not be frightened by dogs anymore since I got a healing from those doggy party they organised and found the cuteness of dogs. Now, it is enjoyable to attend the doggy parties and I can always release a lot of stress with the company of cute dogs.