I started my phd in Medicine

The original post was published on 20th January 2026 on LinkedIn

At the end of last December, I concluded my tenure as a Research Engineer at the SMU School of Computing and Information Systems, where I worked for two years with Profs Archan Misra and Thivya Kandappu on neuromorphic sensing-based human-centred applications, specifically on the theme of pupillary dynamics modelling, which intermittently resulted in fine papers at top-tier venues including NeurIPS, IMWUT, CVPR, IJCAI, and WACV (if only numerical output matters!). Looking beyond the publications, I am grateful to both supervisors for their invaluable guidance and support throughout my stay at SMU, which undoubtedly and positively enhanced "the (independent) researcher" in me in every imaginable aspect, i.e. from research problem formulation to verbal and non-verbal communication to being an empathetic human, which I strongly believe to ripple throughout my somewhat unorthodox research and personal journey ahead. In addition, I am thankful to all the friends (and colleagues) I met at SMU who warmly(!) welcomed me to their fold and consequently nourished and balanced my social life in Singapore (which was something that mattered on the ground since I had not "known" a single living soul before I arrived in Singapore).

After my time at SMU, I began pursuing my PhD in Medicine at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, under the guidance of Prof. Yang Zhang, where my research is on de novo therapeutic antibody design. Hoping to "understand" antibody folding (wrt targeted epitopes and build some vaccines!) if that is ever possible to do.