The Department of Chemistry welcomes Assistant Professor Zhu Ru-Yi who has joined the Department under the NUS Presidential Young Professorship scheme today. Ru-Yi obtained his B.Sc. (Hons) in Chemistry from Peking University in 2013 and he completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2018 at the Scripps Research Institute. Ru-Yi decided to stay in California and joined Prof. Eric T. Kool’s lab at Stanford University as a postdoc to develop chemical tools to study DNA, RNA, and associated proteins for therapeutic applications. His research interests lie on developing state-of-the-art chemistry in the context of RNA biomedical applications and DNA biocatalysis such as next-generation RNA therapeutics, reprogram RNA with small-molecule, and enzyme-like DNA catalyst design. Ru-Yi loves traveling, hiking, kayaking, and exploring local foods and cultures.