Wen Shan YEW is an Associate Professor with the Department of Biochemistry at the National University of Singapore. He is also Deputy Director of the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI). He is the current President of the Singapore Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and a Council Member of the Singapore National Academy of Science. He trained as a mechanistic enzymologist with Professor John A. Gerlt from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His current and future research is centered on expanding the multi-faceted interface between enzymology, biological chemistry and synthetic biology, in an area he terms “synthetic enzymology”. In particular, his research is focused on the use of structural and mechanistic enzymological knowledge for protein engineering (exploring, defining and modulating substrate specificities), biocatalysis, biotransformation, therapeutic development (against metabolic diseases, infectious diseases, cancer and ageing) and bioremediation (towards urban sustainability).