THE Unesco-L’Oreal For Women in Science International Fellowship has its first Singaporean recipient, cancer researcher Marissa Teo.

The international fellowship comes with a grant of US$20,000 (S$27,930) awarded to young women scientists across the world to pursue research outside of their home country.

An international panel of scientists, headed by 1999 Nobel Prize winner for medicine Dr Gunter Blobel, picked this year’s winners. This is the 12th time the award has been given out.

Every year, three women scientists are selected from each of the five continents. The other two recipients from Asia are Dr Tan Yifen from Malaysia and Dr Antima Gupta from India.

Dr Teo, 33, who received her award last month, studied pharmacy at the National University of Singapore and obtained her doctorate at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

She is a research fellow at the National Cancer Centre Singapore’s (NCCS) department of medical oncology, where she is involved in a clinical trial which aims to find novel strategies to tackle nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a type of nose cancer.

The award will fund her research at the renowned Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Cell and Gene Therapy in the United States, where she will further her studies on the cancer.

The disease is prevalent in southern China and South-east Asia but is rare in the West. It has a higher incidence in males and Dr Teo estimates that about 20 in 100,000 Singaporean men are affected as compared to eight in 100,000 women.

What Dr Teo relishes about cancer research is the challenge. “Cancer research is still a relatively unexplored area with a lot of unknowns,” she said. “While it may be frustrating when experiments yield no results for months on end, I enjoy the process and the gratification that  comes when I solve a problem.”

Not everyone can do Dr Teo’s job, claims Dr Toh Han Chong, head and senior consultant of NCCS’ department of medical oncology.

“The trial being carried out by Dr Teo and her team is arguably the only one of its kind in the world. It requires a unique and specialised skill set and expertise,” he explained.

Research to Dr Teo is a creative process. An avid painter when she was younger, the former Victoria Junior College student likens her research to art.

“We design our own experiments and think about how to get a solution. It is very much like being an artist – you don’t know what colours to use when you start, or how the picture will turn out, but you do it diligently anyway.”

Professor Leo Tan, chairman of the science sub-commission of the Singapore National Commission for Unesco, is proud of Dr Teo’s achievement.

He said: “This award affirms, in a way, Singapore’s efforts at providing the best possible environment for the cultivation of scientists and for good scientific research to flourish here.”