He is founding director of the Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research and Technology (BIGHEART) at the National University of Singapore.
He is a pioneer in bionanophotonics, plasmonic resonant energy transfer (PRET), rapid photonic PCR, optofluidics, microfluidics for quantitative life sciences, and integrated molecular diagnostics systems.
He was Associate President (International Research and Innovation) and Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor at the National University of Singapore from 2016 to 2017.
Prior to his academic career, he had over ten years of extensive R&D and industrial experience in integrated optoelectronics and superconducting electronics.
In the early 1990s, he worked on high-temperature SQUID magnetometers, Josephson junction devices, and biomagnetic sensors at Conductus Inc.