Clinical-BioMedical Session

Clinical-Biomedical Session

SYNAPSE 2026 Conference, 4pm-6pm 4 June 2026
Shaw Foundation Alumni House (SFAH) Auditorium (Level 2)

Session Flyer

Co-Organised by:

Acknowledgment
This Session is partially funded by the NUS AI Institute (NAII) Seed Grant (2025) to the Yeo Boon Khim Mind Science Centre

Scientific Programme Committee:

Emeritus Professor KUA Ee Heok

Biodata
MBBS(UM), MD(NUS), FRCPsych(UK), PBM, BBM
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
Emeritus Consultant Psychiatrist, National University Hospital (NUH)
Mind Care Clinic, Farrer Park Medical Centre, Singapore
Medical graduate of University Malaya (1973), psychiatry training at Oxford (1978-80) and geriatric psychiatry at Harvard (1984). Research training at National Institute of Mental Health, USA (1992). Was a member of WHO dementia research team. Research publications on ageing, dementia, depression and alcoholism. Editor-in-Chief (with Norman Sartorius) of new 7-volume series on ‘Mental Health and Illness Worldwide’ published by Springer-Nature. Was Chief Editor of Asia-Pacific Psychiatry Journal. Former Head of Psychological Medicine Department, NUS/NUH; Vice-Dean, NUS Faculty of Medicine; CEO and Medical Director, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore; and past President, Pacific-Rim College of Psychiatrists. Chairman, Scientific Committee, World Ageing Conference, 2004. Invited lectures at UN Conference on ‘Depression in Asia’, New York, 1999; Harvard University on ‘Dementia in Asia’, 2004; Cambridge University, WHO Global Dementia Seminar, 2010; Royal College of Psychiatrists (UK); American Psychiatric Association; and World Psychiatric Association Congress.

Associate Professor Kenneth BAN
Deputy Head, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS
Co-Director, Masters Programme in Precision Health and Medicine x Artificial Intelligence
Education Lead, Mind Science Centre

Associate Professor TAN Tin Wee
Co-Director, Masters Programme in Precision Health and Medicine x Artificial Intelligence, Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS
Della Suantio Lee Professorship in Mental Health and Digital Science, Mind Science.Centre.

Moderator and Session Chair:

Clinical Associate Professor YEO Tseng Tsai
A/Prof Yeo is currently the Head of the Division of Neurosurgery, National University Hospital, Singapore. He is also the Medical Director of the Singapore Gamma Knife Centre. He underwent his undergraduate medical training in the National University of Singapore and obtained his MBBS in 1985. After completing his National Service in the army from 1986 to 1988, he underwent postgraduate neurosurgery training in Melbourne, Australia and obtained his exit neurosurgical qualifications (FRACS) in 1994. He then underwent further subspecialty training in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery in Toronto, Canada as well as in Seattle, USA and Grenoble, France.He has been the recipient of numerous research grants over the years and has published widely in the neurosurgical literature in the domains of stereotactic and functional neurosurgery, neuro-oncology, head injury and virtual reality neurosurgery. He received the Brain Tumour Society Singapore Champion of Hope Award recently.

SPEAKERS

Professor Wieslaw NOWINSKI

Human Cerebrovascular Neuroanatomy (Wieslaw NOWINSKI)

Prof. Wieslaw L. Nowinski, DSc, PhD is a scientist, innovator, entrepreneur, manager, and visionary whose work bridges science, medicine, and art, focusing on the human brain. He currently serves as Professor at the Sano Centre for Computational Personalised Medicine(Krakow, Poland) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Australia. Previously, he held academic and research leadership roles as Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle, USA), Adjunct Professor at the Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Doctoral Advisor and Visiting Professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology (China), and Principal Scientist and Director of the Biomedical Imaging Lab at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore.
Prof. Nowinski has authored over 610 scientific publications (h-index 54, i10-index 209, ranking among the world’s top 2% scientists), including a chapter on brain vasculature in Gray’s Anatomy, 43^rd ed. He holds 71 granted patents and 68 patent applications, and has received 45 awards and honors, including the Outstanding NUS Researcher Award and 30 awards from leading medical societies. Prof. Nowinski has pioneered several novel, patented innovations in medicine, including atlas-assisted processing of medical images, atlas-aided planning in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery, helical stereotaxy, operating room of the future, do-it-yourself neurosurgery, probabilistic functional atlas, probabilistic stroke, atlas-aided stroke image processing, atlas-enhanced interpretation of brain scans, and brain modeling and atlasing at the nanoscale. Together with his team, he has developed 35 brain atlas products, licensed to 67 companies (including Medtronic) and institutions, and distributed in about 100 countries. Prototypes of his medical simulators and computer-aided systems have been licensed to 24 institutions.
www.wieslawnowinski.com
www.nowinbrain.org

Abstract

The cerebral microvasculature is central to the onset, progression, and clinical manifestation of many brain disorders by governing oxygen and nutrient delivery, maintaining blood–brain barrier integrity, regulating immune trafficking, and facilitating waste clearance. Dysfunction of these microvessels destabilizes the entire neurovascular unit, leading to impaired perfusion, neuroinflammation, and ultimately neurodegeneration. Microvascular pathology is increasingly recognized as a common underlying mechanism in a broad spectrum of neurologic disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ischemic stroke, sepsis, and traumatic brain injury.

One of the ongoing projects within SYNAPSE focuses on the construction of high-resolution cerebrovascular models of non-human primates acquired at micro-level spatial resolution. The resulting dataset shall be segmented, parcellated, labeled, and modeled. Following segmentation, vessels shall be classified into arteries, veins, and dural sinuses, and each individual vessel shall be identified and named. The human cerebrovasculature may serve as a reference framework for this effort.

This talk will cover the anatomy of the human intracranial arterial system, intracranial venous system, extracranial arteries, and extracranial veins. The lecture will be illustrated with 3D images of the cerebrovasculature and videos from my book Neuroanatomy Made Easy (Thieme, New York, 2026) and my book chapter on Vasculature of the brain in Gray’s Anatomy, 43^rd edition (2026).

Brain stimulation: neuroanatomy of targets and associated disorders

This presentation covers the complexity of human brain anatomy and provides a short overview of neuroanatomy made easy. It then features both non-invasive and invasive methods of brain stimulation, highlighting their underlying principles and clinical applications. The neuroanatomy of key cortical and subcortical stimulation targets involved in motor control, cognition, affective regulation, and pain modulationwill be presented. The lecture will further examine neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders treated through stimulation of these targets, including depression, schizophrenia, migraine with aura, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, anxiety disorders and PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, chronic pain, and stroke rehabilitation. Three pilot projects for SYNAPSE 2.0 will be recommended for consideration. The lecture will be illustrated with 3D neuroimages and videosfrom my book Neuroanatomy Made Easy (Thieme, New York, 2026).

Asst Professor Cyrus HO Su-Hui
Dr Cyrus Ho is an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, and a Senior Consultant Psychiatrist at the National University Hospital. His clinical and academic work spans mood disorders, neuropsychiatry, the interface between medicine and psychiatry, and public mental health across the age continuum.
He has authored more than 390 peer-reviewed publications and six books. He was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Cross-Field research from 2021 to 2023 and in Neuroscience and Behaviour in 2024. He teaches at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and currently serves as Undergraduate Education Director for Psychiatry at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and as Assistant Dean (Student Life and Wellbeing) at the NUS Graduate School.

Functional Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and portable non-invasive rapid scan for depression and neurodisorders: Need for correlation with Brain maps and Brain Connectomics (Cyrus HO)

Abstract
Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers a portable, non-invasive, and rapid approach to assessing brain function in depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. This presentation will outline how fNIRS can capture prefrontal haemodynamic responses and neurovascular regulation, and how these signals may support diagnosis, illness stratification, and treatment prediction when combined with computational modelling and machine learning.
A key focus will be anchoring fNIRS findings within broader neurobiological frameworks by correlating them with brain maps, functional networks, and brain connectomics, and validating them against modalities such as fMRI. By linking accessible neuroimaging with mechanistic interpretation and real-world clinical application, this work aims to advance a scalable precision psychiatry framework for depression and neurodisorders.

Adj Assoc Professor ANG Kai Keng

AI on EEG/fNIRS on mood and neurorehabilitation (Kai Keng ANG)
Ang Kai Keng is currently the Deputy Head of Healthcare & Medtech (HM) Division, and a Senior Principal Scientist with the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. He is also an Adjunct Assoc. Prof. in the College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His current research interests include brain–computer interfaces, signal processing, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. For his research, he was part of the team that won the BCI Competition IV, received BCI Annual Research Award and IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award.

Abstract
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is the technology that allows direct communication between the brain and external device such as a computer. This talk gives an introduction on BCI, our findings from clinical trials conducted for stroke rehabilitation and discovery of electroencephalogram (EEG) biomarkers of accelerated intermittent theta burst stimulation treatment for depression. The talk also includes our recent research conducted to use readily available wearable EEG headbands and functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) for BCI research facilitated by machine learning and AI methods. Training the AI model requires labelled data, and certain complications arise, such as collecting EEG from subjects with fatigue since it only manifests after some time. As such, this requires novel AI methods such as iterative negative-unlabeled cross-subject learning algorithm. These applications of BCI AI models and fNIRS imaging suggest promising applications in mood and neurorehabilitation applications.

Professor SIM Kang

Decoding psychiatric conditions along Kraepelinian continuum—Combined insights from clinical and neural data (Kang SIM)
Biodata
Adjunct Professor Sim Kang is a Senior Consultant and the Assistant Chairman Medical Board (Education) at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), Singapore. He holds faculty appointments with the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, NTU.
His clinical practice centres on adult psychiatry conditions with special interest in psychotic spectrum conditions. His interests in medical education include learning environment, narrative medicine, teaching and pedagogy. Apart from his educational and clinical duties, he has a keen interest in clinical research focussing on psychopharmacology and the biological basis of major psychiatric illnesses.
He has over 360 peer reviewed publications and was a recipient of MOH/NHG Distinguished Senior Clinician Award (2022), Accreditation Council Graduate Medical Education (US) Physician Educator International Award (2023), Public Administration Medal (Bronze) National Day Award (2024), and NUS Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence for several years.

Abstract
Psychotic conditions such as schizophrenia are characterised by heterogeneous symptom clusters spanning positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive deficits, and affective disturbances. These conditions significantly impair functioning and quality of life. By linking clinical domains to neuroimaging findings, this approach enables better understanding of the neural basis and more precise stratification of patients, with implications for diagnosis, prediction of treatment response, and clinical outcomes. The synthesis of clinical and biological data offers a pathway toward a more mechanistic and translational framework for psychosis.