Jointly reported by:
Victoria Hwang JR1S(6)
Wong Kay Rou Sr2ScF
Tan Qing Lin Sr3ScA
As part of Career Week, on Tuesday, 3rd of August 2021, Kuen Cheng Counselling Department invited Dr Ng Fong Lee as the guest speaker for a talk on her experience in algae research. Dr. Ng is a biologist specializing in algae research based in the Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences (IOES) of University of Malaya. The talk was open to Junior Middle 3 and Senior Middle students.
After completing her STPM in Form 6, Dr Ng was highly interested in biology and completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours degree in University Malaysia Terengganu (UMT). Later on, she pursued her PhD in University of Malaya (UM). She was lucky and got accepted as a student by a distinguished professor which played a huge role during the 4 years of her PhD studies.
Throughout Dr Ng ’s career, she has been a part of various research projects. She was a part of the Algal Biophotovoltaic Research Group at University of Malaya, one of her most notable research projects. The Algae Research Laboratory has over 30 years of experience in algal research and has published more than 16 books and 280 high impact journal publications.
Dr Ng told students in attendance that biophotovoltaic (BPV) platforms based on photosynthesis are an emerging technology. The award of the Newton-Ungku Omar Fund in 2015 and the Newton Prize 2017 led to successful integration of this algae BPV technology with palm oil mill effluent (POME) remediation, resulting in simultaneous generation of bioelectricity.
Dr Ng ’s final year project during her degree was called “Effect of Nitrate and Dark Stress on Oil Content and Fatty Acids Profile of Nannochloropsis sp”. During her postgraduate life, she took part in a research attachment programme at University of Cambridge, UK. This research project has allowed her to travel the world while meeting many fields of scholars.
Even though she was given a lot of research opportunities that she is really grateful for, she found herself really stressed during that time because her research program involved a lot of knowledge which was not in her domain of expertise. This forced her to work harder than other people in order to catch up with her projects.
In Dr Ng’s working life, she has had different experiences in different events. Not only has she organized and participated in a lot of science conferences. In 2017 she also held a science fair in Petaling Jaya aimed towards school students to educate them on climate change, renewable energy, photobioreactors, etc.
“During your working life, you’ll need much more than the knowledge you’ve learnt in school. Other skills will be important for doing things like organizing a conference,” said Dr Ng as she was sharing her experience of being in the Finance Committee and Organizing Committee of the Asian Pacific Phycological Forum and South China Sea Conference respectively. “It’s really hard if you are very good at something but unable to communicate with other people,” she continued as a reminder for the attendees about the importance of working with other people as a team and learning from each other.
Some demands in Malaysian jobs today were also introduced by Dr. Ng and over 50 percent of popular jobs require scientific knowledge.
The talk ended with a Q&A session and students left with deeper understanding about what a scientific researcher actually does.
