Turned down by NUS and NTU, this self-described ‘late bloomer’ now has a Harvard PhD

“My mum was so happy, she was yelling for like five minutes,” he recalled with a wide smile.

It was, however, a bittersweet occasion. Dr Tan’s father, then 82, had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and had already begun to lose some memory function. 

“But I remember him still being really, really happy for me,” he said.  

“It was almost a way of me repaying all (my parents’) sacrifice and all the amazing things that they’ve done for me. I could tell them: ‘I finally made it to Harvard’.”

Now, while he celebrates his newly minted title of “doctor”, he is already chasing the next pinnacle: pursuing post-doctoral research in the area of neurodegenerative diseases. 

According to Dr Tan, his father is now a shell of his former self, having lost a lot of his ability to retain short‑term memories. Having spent the last five years watching his father fight the losing battle against Alzheimer’s, he is set on contributing to the birth of a potential therapy.

He dreams of eventually returning to Canada to start his own research lab at the University of Toronto – the same place where he got his start in academia. 

“I know that any of the research that I do now probably won’t be helping my father directly, but I still want to be able to contribute towards something that is able to cure this disease, hopefully in the future.”