2023 is a magical year, it marks my accumulative 10th year in A*STAR. I started my career in ICES in 2012, fresh out of my B.Sc, and spent 3 years exploring heterogeneous catalytic conversion of lactic acid to acrylic acid. Afterwhich I took a year hiatus from work for my M.Sc, which I was exposed to flow chemistry. I joined back A*STAR under IMRE, in a IMRE-ICES collaborative project, testing the feasibility of converting rubber to CNTs. But like all projects, it comes to an end and with IMRE's change of research directions, I moved on. I jumped right into polymer synthesis, building databases for machine learning predictions. In the meantime, I also studied aviation greases and developed expertise in rheology and SEM. I moved on to skincare formulation, then encapsulation, then nanomaterials, then photocatalysis, then waste valorisation. I was blessed to be given the opportunity to "test" out different fields, intrigued by all of them. My work today are parts of everything I had gained in the past, revolving around the broad topic of sustainability. Fast forward to 2023, I was transferred back to the all familiar place, except now that it had undergone a face-lift and is now ISCE2. In a blink of an eye, 10 years had passed.
In 2023, I had also went through my oQE for my EngD and officially in my 2nd half of the candidature. I had also gotten my driving license after much considerations. The year had zoomed passed really fast this year.
In the past, I had received lots of guidance and opportunities. Now, I feel I'm able to contribute back. Here, I have some things that I have in mind:
1) Develop waste valorisation methods that can be translatable to the industry. (with my EngD topic as a starter)
2) Share my experience and insights I had gathered over the years, on how to navigate through the world of research (in a non-scientist track).
3) Showcasing and promote works/publications that were done primarily by a non-scientist track colleague/student.
Stay tune for the sharing... 😉
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