Associate Professor Yusuke Toyama appointed as the Dean’s Chair

MBI SCI COMS | AUGUST 2018

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MBI Principal Investigator Associate Professor Yusuke Toyama has been appointed the Dean’s Chair in the Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore. The appointment is in recognition of the high impact research program led by Dr Toyama at NUS, which has greatly contributed to the understanding of how mechanical factors couple with programmed cell death, or apoptosis.

After training as a nuclear physicist during his years as a graduate researcher at Osaka University, Japan, Dr Toyama shifted his focus towards studying biophysics and mechanobiology during his postdoctoral training at Duke University, USA. He joined the Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore as an Assistant Professor in 2010 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018. Dr Toyama has also been a Principal Investigator at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI), National University of Singapore since 2010.

The Toyama Lab at MBI uses an interdisciplinary approach to study tissue dynamics in fruit fly development as well as in mammalian tissue. More specifically, the research group aims to uncover the fundamental mechanical principles underlying the process of cell death in a tissue: How tissue-level global mechanics cause cell death, and how the apoptotic process mechanically influences the neighboring non-dying tissue. Furthermore, the team has been interested in understanding how two-dimensional tissue dynamics emerge from the three-dimensional shape changes of individual cells. With their findings published in prestigious journals including Nature, Nature Cell Biology, and Development, the group, under the capable guidance of Dr. Toyama, is making significant strides in this field of study.

The MBI community proudly congratulates Associate Professor Yusuke Toyama on his appointment as the Dean’s Chair.