Adjunct Researchers


Ben Smith

E [email protected]
P +65 6904 1108

Adjunct Associate Professor in the area of Healthy Ageing, Dr Ben Smith is the Director of The Future Ready Food Safety Hub (FRESH), a tripartite initiative between the Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), Singapore Food Agency (SFA) and Nanyang Technological University.  As a risk assessor and toxicologist who has worked across industry, academia and government, he is a strong proponent of collaborative research and the importance of embedding safety across the entire food and consumer product development chain. He is particularly interested in the development of risk-benefit frameworks and the integration of human relevant and socially responsible safety methodologies into the regulatory approval processes for new ingredients and novel foods. His team is currently focused on the development of gastrointestinal models to assess the toxicity, allergenicity, bioaccessibility and bioavailability of orally ingested materials, as well as understanding consumption and exposure patterns for novel foods and consumer products.


Grace Loo

E [email protected]
P +65 6697 1988

Adjunct Associate Professor Grace Loo’s academic and research expertise cover plant and animal genetics, animal health and nutrition, as well as antioxidants and their role in shelf-life extension in fish flesh. She has been involved in academic and research activities ranging from food biotechnology, fish genetics, species barcoding and identification, fish health and nutrition, aquaculture farm operations, and seafood post-harvest technologies.
Her current research involves looking into improving the productivity and developing genetic resources for local food fish such as the Red Snapper, as well as investigating the effects of various biomaterials and feed additives on shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) growth and health.


Shubha Vij

E [email protected]
P +65 9383 3493

Adjunct Associate Professor Shubha Vij is a geneticist with over 20 years’ experience in genomics, evolution, developmental biology, barcoding, transgenics and functional characterization of gene expression. She has worked on organisms across the kingdom of life such as humans, fungi (Aspergillus fumigatus), fishes (Asian seabass, carps, zebrafish, Red Snapper) and plants (Arabidopsis, tobacco, rice). Some of her key achievements in the field of genomics includes involvement in sequencing and assembling the gold standard version of the rice genome. In addition, she played a key role in assembling and publishing one of the first, chromosomal-level assembly of a fish genome, Asian seabass.
Her current research interest is on improving productivity of Singaporean food fish species such as the Asian seabass and Red Snapper for key aquaculture traits such as growth and disease resistance.
If you would like to learn more about Adjunct Associate Professor Vij’s work please visit her Google Scholar , ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or reach out to her via email.