Celebrating 2025, welcoming 2026

The start of a new year is a good moment to reflect and look ahead!

As we enter the final year of my National Research Foundation Fellowship, I’m grateful to the whole team for helping turn the last few years of research into practical outputs, from tools and catalogues to evidence that can support real projects on the ground. Stay tuned for these milestones in 2026.

A few highlights for 2025, among a very long list of events to celebrate:

🎓 Two PhD journeys came to a successful close: Congrats to Fairul Edros Shaikh and Ning Ding! Completing a doctorate is never easy, so add a pandemic along the way and two major life events for their advisor, and you'll get a sense of the challenges they brilliantly took on

🎉 Congrats Emma Ramsay for securing the prestigious Nanyang Technological University Singapore Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellowship while leading our work on Cooling Singapore2.0

🤝 We deepened collaborations across the region, including work in Bangkok with Thammasat University in Melaka with Resilient Cities Network, Majlis Bandaraya Melaka Bersejarah (MBMB), and launched new partnerships such as our work with AIPH on the 2026 World Green City Awards

📖 The NATURA Network Global Roadmap Project wrapped up: Thank you Erich Wolff for leading this effort and for a great launch at the APRU Multi-Hazards Symposium and Conference

On a personal note, 2025 also brought new areas of growth:

💡 I stepped into entrepreneurship through the NTUsg GRIP, and the development of Pulse with the support of NTUitive and Entropia Capital. More to come in 2026!

📖 I was selected as a Coordinating Lead Author for IPBES's 2nd global assessment: A daunting amount of work on the horizon, but very glad for the opportunity to learn from this brilliant team and to deepen my international engagement

I look forward to building on this momentum in 2026!