Dr Annie Wai Yeeng Chai

Dr Annie Wai Yeeng Chai is a cancer biologist specializing in translational cancer research, with a particular focus on head and neck cancers, including oral cancers and nasopharyngeal cancers. She leads the Translational Cancer Biology Unit at Cancer Research Malaysia, where her work integrates multi-omics approaches and functional genomics to identify novel therapeutic strategies. After completing her PhD at The University of Hong Kong, she joined Cancer Research Malaysia and led one of the first oral cancer genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 essential screens. Her team is now investigating a few promising therapeutic targets from the screen to identify novel treatment strategies using unique panel of Asian derived cancer models.

Dr Chai has won several grants and awards including the Dr Ranjeet Bhagwan Singh Research Grant, the ASEAN-Republic of Korea Next Innovator Award 2022, and more recently the TeD1 grant from MOSTI. Dr Chai was the recipient of the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) Global Scholar-in-Training Award (GSITA) in 2021 and Scholar-in-Training Award (SITA) in 2023. She is the inaugural chairperson for the AACR Global Scholar-in-Training Alumni Committee (GSAC), supporting the AACR’s mission to promoting the professional development of early- and mid-career scholars from around the globe. She is also the member of the Young Scientist Network, Academy of Sciences Malaysia (YSN-ASM).