This Malaysian Scientist Became The First Person From A Developing Country To Receive This Award

Professor Dr Ng Kwan Hoong from Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Medicine has just received the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Award, one that honours scientists and their contribution to educating and training medical physicists, students and health personnel, and developing the profession, as reported by The Star.

In fact, he is the first scientist from a developing country to receive the prestigious award by the UK-based International Organisation for Medical Physics (IOMP).

Professor Ng was responsible for setting up UM's medical physics masters programme 20 years ago, making it the only post-graduate medical physics academic programme outside the UK and Ireland that is recognised by the UK Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine.

Currently, his research focuses on breast cancer screening and improving early detection. He is also working with researchers from Singapore to incorporate artificial intelligence during diagnosis.

Besides his latest milestone, Professor Ng actually has a long list of achievements under his belt.

He was one of the pioneers of radiation medicine when he first started teaching. He was among the consultants for the International Atomic Energy Agency in the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster report.

In 2013, he was named IOMP's top 50 medical physicists. He was also one of the first non-physicians to be admitted into the Academy of Medicine Malaysia. In the following year, he helped establish the ASEAN College of Medical Physics.

Not only that, Professor Ng is also the founding president and president emeritus of the Southeast Asian Federation of Organisations of Medical Physicists, and co-founder and former President of the Asia-Oceania Federation of Organisations of Medical Physicists.

Going through his list of accomplishments clearly proves that people from developing countries like ours can contribute to the medical and sciences field.

We hope Professor Ng's work will inspire more researchers and scientists of the generation to rise up in their respective fields.