Wei Lin Lee
Research interests
I am fascinated by the myriad of disease causing microorganisms in this world and how these exist in balance with their hosts. This fascination led me, through grad school and my postdoctoral career, to work on different agents of disease - Yersinia pestis which causes the plague, sexually transmitted Chlamydia and nosocomial Enterococci. In all, I am committed to doing research that can improve public health and reduce the social and economic impact of infectious diseases.
Current projects
As part of the Alm lab in Singapore, I work on wastewater-based methods for proactive early infectious disease outbreak detection. High population densities and international travel are catalysts for transmission of infectious diseases. While clinical data remains the gold standard for disease surveillance, disease transmission commonly go undetected when populations with symptoms below the testing threshold fail to be clinically detected and reported, as epitomized by COVID-19. This calls for alternative means for population wide tracking of diseases, in the form of wastewater-based surveillance. We hope to apply technological innovation to wastewater-based methods, to achieve effective and near real-time disease surveillance in a way that can significantly impact public health.
