I graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Biomedical Science Major) from the University of Queensland, Australia. I continued for an additional year of honours at QIMR Berghofer in Andreas Surhbier’s lab. I have deep interest in arboviruses and characterized a novel arbovirus, Liao ning virus. The objective was to determine whether or not it would be a public health threat to Australia.

Based on this project, there was a minor section that required phylogenetic analyses. Coming off this project, I felt that there was advanced and more things I could learn in phylogenetics. Therefore, I joined the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS to learn more about viral evolution and the application of this useful technique. Specifically, I will work on a project to survey respiratory viruses from children in Singapore.