Professor Chew Sing Yian is a distinguished academic at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, holding professorial appointments across three schools: the School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CCEB), the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, and the School of Materials Science & Engineering (as a courtesy appointment). She leads the Chew Lab, which focuses on biologically-inspired materials for regenerative medicine, with a particular emphasis on neural tissue engineering and drug/gene delivery systems. Professor Chew's research interests center on designing biomimetic scaffolds to understand and control cell fate. Her work specifically focuses on scaffold-mediated delivery of gene-silencing and biomimicking physical signals for neural tissue regeneration and remyelination. She engineers bio-functional platforms for long-term delivery of biologics, with applications in understanding and directing neural tissue regeneration after traumatic injuries, stem cell fate determination, and host-implant integration. Her lab employs combinatorial approaches involving substrate topography/compliance and biochemical cues from drugs, genes and cells to mediate tissue regeneration. Professor Chew's extensive publication record demonstrates consistent leadership in neural tissue engineering, with a focus on microRNA delivery for spinal cord injury treatment, bioprinted scaffolds for neuronal differentiation, and biomimetic materials for drug delivery. Her work spans fundamental science to translational research, with particular emphasis on scaffold-mediated gene-silencing approaches to understand and direct neural tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, and host-implant integration. Professor Chew has received notable recognition including: Fellow of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (FTERM) Professor Chew actively mentors students and researchers, with evidence of her students achieving recognition such as the 'Young Scientist Travel Fellowship Prize' awarded to Jiah Shin. Her lab, the Chew Lab, has secured significant funding including the ScaNCellS project, which represents a Singapore/France collaboration with Laurent David from IMP. The lab is currently recruiting highly motivated PhD students for ongoing research in neural tissue engineering. The Chew Lab is at the forefront of developing bio-functional micro- and nano-structured scaffolds for regenerative medicine applications. Current research focuses on three main areas: cell-substrate interactions to understand how biomimicking nanofiber structures alter cell fate; controlled delivery scaffolds for sustained drug and gene delivery; and translational studies on tissue regeneration and host-implant integration for traumatic nerve injuries in both peripheral and central nervous systems.
