Editor Interview: David Tai Leong

David Leong was trained as a chemical engineer in his Bachelors who later took the off-tangent path as a Biology PhD, both degrees from National University of Singapore. He spent his postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellow before returning to his alma mater department as an Assistant Professor and he is now a tenured Associate Professor since. He is currently serving in the editorial board of Bioactive Materials and Nanoscale Horizons and other materials journals. He has been elected into the fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry due to his contributions to Bionanosciences.

Here's the interview we did with him:

Q: Could you briefly introduce your current research field?

A: My current research field is working at the interface between nanotechnology and biology. I usually encourage my team to focus on making discoveries and we tried our best to figure out the underlying mechanisms that drive those discoveries. We were lucky to have observed that certain nanomaterials on their own se induced leakiness which we coined as NanoEL effect. We figured out the biological and physico-chemico mechanisms, covered the nanotoxic effects and the therapeutic applications of NanoEL. We also have other non-biomedical work where we have extended our expertises to, for example into food related work.

Q: What obstacles or difficulties have you encountered in your research work? How did you overcome these difficulties?

A: So far, I feel blessed that I do not face much obstacles and difficulties. If I were to force myself hard to come out with a difficulty, it would be that I take too long to write up our important papers as I tend to be overly pensive. My patient and highly motivated students help me push over my self-imposed high activation energy.

Q: As an associate editor, what type of articles or which direction of research are you interested in?

A: I am interested in stories where biomaterials with either intrinsic functions or engineered functions are being studied or applied in strange ways that surprises me. I like to read submissions that invoke a feeling of “why didn’t I think of that?”. As an associate editor, I am not particularly inclined to any given branch of research. I always keep an open mind to the topics presented in the submissions.

Q: What are your expectations for the future development of Bioactive Materials and its promotion of related fields?

A: Since the inception of BAM, the focus has and continue to be in biomedical applications. I do not expect much deviations from this. But what I hope to see for the future are more mechanism motivated work, work that is hypothesis driven and questions guided. Topics wise, I would be excited to see how our collective expertise in the field of bioactive materials being applied to more non-biomedical applications like food, sustainability, environmental applications.

Q: What is your greatest hobby outside of scientific work?

A: spending time with my family and swimming.

Q: How do you balance scientific research work and personal life?

A: Have to ask the BAM Editors to assign fewer submissions to me. 😜

Q: What do you think is the most important quality for researchers?

A: Curiosity

Q: What advice do you have for young scholars who are determined to engage in scientific research?

A: Focus on starting a subfield and not on following others.