About myself
How Medium allowed me to pen down my thoughts on work and hobby, all in one place
I am Kuan Rong, currently a principal research scientist in Duke-NUS medical school. My lab webpage is found here. My scientific career begun in 2008 , interrogating how antibodies can influence outcome of dengue virus infection. In my Ph.D. with Prof. Ooi Eng Eong, we identified the molecular mechanisms involved in dengue virus neutralisation and enhancement (Chan et al., PNAS, 2011; Chan et al., PNAS, 2014). After graduation, I had the unique opportunity to work with Prof. Ooi Eng Eong and Dr. Jenny Low to investigate if antibodies can impact the outcome of the live-attenuated Yellow Fever virus infection. Since then, I became very interested in data science. By integrating various omics platforms (e.g. genomics, proteomics and metabolomics), we were able to understand how human variations and host responses affect immunogenicity and adverse events to the Yellow Fever vaccine (Chan et al., Nature Microbiology, 2016; Chan et al., Nature Medicine, 2019).
Like most research scientists, we analysed most datasets with Excel but realised the limitations in analysing big datasets. This year (2021), I decided to learn Python so that we can analyse big data faster and more efficiently. The motivation for setting up the blog is thus to share my knowledge on Python and how we can use Python for omics analysis. I first started blogging with Wordpress at omicsdiary.com, but as I was learning more about Python, I realised that many of the well-written data science articles were published in Medium. That was where I explored Medium to see if my contribution will be useful for like-minded individuals. The response turned out good, and I was invited by publications to showcase my work to a greater audience. This inspired me to create my own publication, named Omics Diary.
Besides work, my favourite hobby is Japanese Mahjong, where I ranked 6th in one of the Riichi tournament hosted by Mahjong Soul. I thought the game was highly strategic (and fun for me), but there are very few English articles describing about advanced strategies. This inspired me and my brother to set up a publication, named Mahjong Academy, specifically dealing with this topic.
Hope you enjoy reading my articles. Excited to share my knowledge with the world :) If you want to understand more about what we do, please feel free to visit kuanrongchan.com
