Personal profile
Biography
Dr. HONG Yan is a plant biologist and plant biotechnologist. He moved from US to Singapore in 1993 and conducted independent R&D projects since 1995 in the Institute of Molecular Agrobiology (IMA) and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL). He worked on horticulture, herbal medicine, plant metabolites, sustainable food, wood and bioenergy, with funding from NIH, various Singapore government agencies and commercial companies. He has >50 peer reviewed research papers, several book chapters and 10 patents to his name. Technologies developed in his group contributed to the setting up of two biotechnology companies that he also helped manage. Before joining SBS as a full-time faculty, he served as the founding manager and later the Chief Scientific Officer of JOil (S) Pte Ltd, the global leading player on developing Jatropha curcas as a tropical oil crop for sustainable bioenergy. On top of his rich experience in setting up and management of biotechnology companies, he has been teaching and supervising PhD, MSc and FYP students in NTU since 2004.