Jacky

I hope to pursue both clinical medicine and research as a clinician-scientist. Amongst all graduate-entry medicine programmes, only Duke-NUS accepts international students with open arms. The student body come from diverse backgrounds, and the School offers generous financial support. Moreover, the strong research at NUS and SingHealth-DukeNUS Academic Medical Centre can support my development and career building in translational medicine.

Medicine is both a science and an art. The interaction with patients and the clinical team asks for empathy and efficient communication. Clinical reasoning and basic medical sciences help us to zoom in on a few differential diagnoses by taking a history from the patient in just under 10 minutes. All of these are indispensable for clinicians to function well in the wards – something that I could never learn as an undergraduate.

On the other hand, graduate school requires more critical and independent thinking. Research means setting new boundaries, defining new problems, and challenging dogmas and norms. The knowledge can no longer be learned from textbooks and question banks, because our work leads to new knowledge.

I am currently investigating the immune microenvironment of liver cancer related to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Specifically, NAFLD-driven liver cancer may be more resistant to immunotherapy, and I am looking into the contributions of different immune cells to this phenomenon.

To change the way we see the immune system in liver cancer, which will eventually lead to a shift in how we treat liver cancer patients with immunotherapy.

UTown has a really nice gym and plenty of self-study spaces with nice air-conditioning and food/beverage supply.