Case Studies

Andy Tay: Singaporean science outreach pioneer

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In 2017 biomedical engineer Assistant Professor Andy Tay had a life-changing conversation with his mum.

He had taken her into his lab where he was doing his PhD to show her how breast cancer cells behave under a microscope. Four of his maternal family members have a history of breast, brain and throat cancer and Tay wanted to explain to his mother how cancer cells grow.

“It gave her a really good sense of why breast cancer is so scary and so deadly. And in that moment, I realised that there are many people who aren’t familiar with science and I wanted to find a way to bring science to people in a digestible manner,” Tay told The Brilliant.

That day a science communicator was born, and he is committed to transforming Singapore’s science communication landscape.

A researcher at heart

Growing up, Tay thought being a doctor seemed like a cool job. “I initially wanted to be a doctor because many Asian parents want their children to become doctors,” says Tay with a broad smile. But on his first attempt he didn’t get into medicine.

It was an unexpected blow.

Friends told him that gaining research experience would improve his medical school application, so through the help of his high school teacher, Tay got into a lab to do clinical research. The lure of research was so attractive that Tay eventually decided to study biomedical engineering at the National University of Singapore, supported with a scholarship from the Agency of Science, Technology and Research.

After his undergraduate degree, Tay considered applying to a MD program, so he signed up for a program to shadow doctors for two months. He quit after two days.

“It was unlike me to quit like that, but I realised I was more interested in the questions behind medicine, such as how can we develop personalised medicine? What is the mechanism of this disease? Rather than about trying to take care of the pain points of patients at that moment. At that point, I was like, ‘Okay, I know I’m a researcher at heart. I’m a very curious person.’ And so I applied for my PhD and went on to become a researcher,” says Tay.

He now runs a lab where he develops technology and materials to engineer immune cells, tissues and systems with the aim of preventing and treating cancer.

Immune cells are like soldiers. They are patrolling our body looking for invasive pathogens, but also mutated cancer cells. My role is to see how we can more efficiently engineer them to become super soldiers so that they can better recognise and kill the cancer cells,” explains Tay.

Write what you know

After that conversation in the lab with his mum, Tay began to write. “I love writing. I write to encourage people to do science outreach and communication,” he says.

It started with the Naturejobs blog. “I just wrote about my experiences. For example after I attended a conference, I would write how I felt about it.”

The blog attracted attention, and editors began contacting him with assignments. Today, Tay writes for some of the world’s biggest science publications, covering a broad range of topics from career development, science during COVID-19, to technical content around his own research.

His writing has had an unexpected benefit: “My writing has allowed me to connect to my colleagues and learn from them,” says Tay. “It has expanded my professional network and enhanced the competitiveness of my scientific research.”

The experience has also made him reflect on the power of communication; he now believes that part of being a good scientist is being able to communicate the science.

The scientist population is so small compared to the entire society,” he says. “So if you want your work to be known and be useful, you need to know how to tell how it will benefit society.”

Tay also (informally) teaches communication to PhD students. “Recently, we had about 10 PhD students from NUS doing these lightning talks. They present their research in under five minutes to high school students from my alma mater. One to two months before they present, we work with them to craft a story around their presentation. This is one way my lab is trying to support aspiring science communicators in communicating their science in an accessible manner,” says Tay.

Despite the fact that Singapore’s education system regularly ranks as the number one in the world for maths and science, Tay believes it can further improve its investments in science outreach.

“For example, opportunity for high school students to visit a lab and undergo research internship depends heavily on the resources of the high schools such as the connections of their teachers,” he says.

There are some signs that things are changing: “We now have a science publication, Asian Scientist,” but he would like to see a funded national program to promote science outreach and communications for all high school students.

Tay also believes that research institutions in Singapore stand to benefit by incentivising researchers to engage in STEM outreach and inspire the next generation of scientists. “These are the people who are going to drive the STEM outreach and we want a reward system that not only motivates them to publish papers, but also to mentor and communicate,” he says.

Connecting across generations and languages

Tay says that the pandemic has also brought home the challenge of communicating across age and language. “While the vaccination rate is high in Singapore, there are still people who are a bit hesitant about taking the vaccine. And I think I can understand because I’ve a grandmother who is close to 90 years old,” he says.

Tay points to the distinct cultural make-up and history of Singapore and the unique communication challenges arising from them. The population today is more than 75% Chinese, about 15% Malay and 8% Indian (mostly Tamil). In 1987, Singapore became one of the first countries in the world to adopt English as the language of instruction for most school subjects, including maths, science, and history. Around half the population now speaks English frequently at home, which is one of four official languages, the others being Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. This means that English proficiency is skewed to the younger generations, which makes communicating science between the generations more complicated.

It’s something Tay has experienced firsthand.

My parents didn’t grow up speaking English,” he explains. “But the thing is, all the science that I learned as a child is in English. So there are some terms that I can never communicate to them. My mum has knee pain and, from my studies, I know that it could be due to degradation of a tissue material called glycoaminoglycan, but I do not know what’s the term in Mandarin or how to even explain the science behind knee pain besides English.”

Access to science and technology, including critical public health information, is even more restricted for Singaporeans of his grandparents’ age, who may speak dialects rather than one of the official languages.

“I think we need to train more young people in dialects and their mother tongues so that they can communicate to population in the Singapore society who face challenges trying to understand science and technology in English,” Tay says. He has already decided to take this challenge on – assembling a team of researchers to do science outreach through Mandarin in a pilot scheme in collaboration with the National Library Board of Singapore. He is confident that the project will be successful, and can hopefully be extended to other languages including Malay and Tamil.

It’s a lot for someone who runs his own lab but, for Tay, the human connection, and knowing that his effort can help make a difference, makes the hard work worth it.

Article by Kylie Ahern
Photo Supplied

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