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interviewed by Dr. Wong Kah Keng
to Malaysian academic and research arena, specialising
paediatric haematology and oncology and molecular appointments including the project leader for The
on cancer research and the space science programme, as
Q1. What influenced you to specialise in paediatric oncology and subsequently PhD studies in molecular biology? When I was a medical officer, I had my first exposure to children diagnosed with cancer. I immediately saw that this was a very challenging disease to treat. I decided to take up paediatrics as my specialisation and the field of haematology and oncology became my choice of subspecialty. With the desire to understand and be trained in cancer research, I decided to pursue a doctorate degree in 1992. I knew that the best environment to be a clinician scientist would be in the academia hence I applied to join UKM and was offered a scholarship to do my PhD. I was lucky as my PhD project involved looking at gene arrangements and mutations of the RB1 and CDKN2A genes in acute myeloid leukaemia. The PhD exposed me to various molecular biology and cell biology techniques. Q2. You were the Chief Scientist for the Space Science Programme for the National Angkasawan Programme (MOSTI) in 2006-2007. Could you share with us your experiences of the programme? I must first thank Datuk Dr. Mazlan Othman, the S C I E N T I F I C M A L AY S I A N
then Director General of National Space Agency (ANGKASA) who invited me to join the Space Science programme back in 2006. I was deeply involved in the contract negotiations with Russian authorities for the science experiments which we planned to send to the International Space Station (ISS) with our astronaut. The contract for the science experiments was an important component of the overall contract for the training of our two candidate astronauts. The procedures that our scientific team had to go to get approval from the Russian authorities were highly technical and challenging. There were 10 sets of documents which had to be submitted and approved. As we all know one of the main aims for sending our astronaut to space was for him to conduct scientific experiments in the ISS. As this was the first time Malaysia had an astronaut in the ISS, he became an overnight celebrity and unfortunately the space science component had lesser coverage. Nevertheless all the scientists involved performed well and all the 5 experiments led by researchers from UKM (Cancer Cells in Space and Microbes in Space), UPM (Protein Crystalisation in
