Beyond the Microscope: Professor Dr Chan Yoke-Fun’s Journey of Science and Strength

UM Research
Oct 9
6 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

Professor Dr Chan Yoke Fun

Department of Medical Microbiology,

Faculty of Medicine

Area of Expertise:

Biomedical > Molecular Virology > Enterovirus, hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD)

A Scientist’s Quiet Battle

The hush, a scene that looks ordinary until you realise what’s at stake. For Professor Dr Chan Yoke-Fun, every plate, every pipette, every sequence might hold a clue to stopping a virus before it steals a childhood. She has built her career on understanding the pathogens that worry parents most, especially enterovirus A71 (EV-A71), the agent behind a condition that’s often mild but, in severe cases, invades the brain and sets off meningitis, encephalitis, or acute flaccid myelitis.

The Spark of Discovery

Her obsession with finding answers began at the Universiti Malaya, where she completed both her Bachelor of Science and PhD in Medical Microbiology before joining her alma mater as a research scientist. She still laughs about the spark that started it all: as an undergraduate developing a diagnostic test for thalassemia, she kept tweaking the reagents and watching the assay improve until the joy of discovery became addictive. That project grew into her thesis: “The use of the amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS) in the detection of rare beta-thalassemia mutations in the Malays and Chinese in Malaysia”, she admits, partly because the supervisor was wonderfully kind, but ultimately because the work felt meaningful.

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) among children is often a mild condition, but it may cause meningitis, encephalitis, or acute flaccid myelitis in severe cases.

Decoding Dangerous Viruses

Today, Professor Dr Chan leads a virology lab that investigates the genomics, epidemiology and pathogenesis of emerging viruses, not just EV-A71, but chikungunya and a spectrum of respiratory viruses. Her team asks who gets infected, how viruses enter and damage cells, and how to stop them, drawing on virology, molecular biology, histology, biostatistics, and bioinformatics to see the whole chessboard rather than one piece at a time.

Key Scientific Breakthroughs

She is especially proud of demonstrating that heparan sulphate is one of EV-A71’s attachment receptors and of identifying an antiviral peptide from a viral capsid protein that targets a heparan–sulphate–specific glycosaminoglycan binding domain. This work suggests that blocking the receptor may also block the virus itself and points toward future therapeutic options. Asked to compress her life’s work into a tweet, she once put it this way: "My research focuses on how EV-A71 causes HFMD and brain infection in children."

“My research focuses on how EV-A71 causes HFMD and brain infection in children.”- Professor Dr Chan Yoke Fun (one of the three Malaysians selected for the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Fellowship)

Accolades and Recognition

Recognition followed early. In 2014, Professor Dr Chan was one of three Malaysians selected for the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science National Fellowship. In 2015, she was one of the 15 International Rising Talents, a global recognition that confirmed what colleagues already knew: this is a scientist who doesn’t blink at complex problems.

The momentum carried into 2020, when her Dean urged her to enter the Underwriters Laboratories–ASEAN-U.S. Science Prize for Women. At the time, Professor Dr Chan was an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology, driving a vaccine-oriented programme

against EV-A71 and testing the idea that blocking heparan-sulphate–mediated attachment could blunt infection. The theme of that year’s prize was preventive healthcare, which perfectly fit her work. Out of 250 applications from all ten ASEAN countries, her proposal emerged as the winner. The timing mattered. Malaysia was in lockdown, the world was frightened, and the win felt like oxygen. She shared most of the cash award (funded by Underwriters Laboratories) with her family and lab colleagues, then channelled the rest into under-supported ideas, including a project on zoonotic virus transmission from animals to humans. The ripple effects were immediate: a congratulatory letter from the Prime Minister, features across national media, and a nod from the Sultan of Malaysia, who named her among 30 Malaysians making essential contributions.

By 2021, UM promoted her to tenured Professor, and later, the L’Oréal-UNESCO Foundation again highlighted her among its International Rising Talents on the world stage.

Science in Service of Society

Even as those honours accumulated, Professor Dr Chan widened her lens from clinical and molecular virology to population-level early warning. As Malaysia’s Lead for the Wastewater Surveillance for Pathogens with Pandemic Potential (WASPP) initiative, funded by Imperial College London, she and an international consortium are analysing viral genetic material in wastewater to detect circulating pathogens, chart viral diversity, and flag threats before clinical systems spot them, bridging a blind spot that traditional, symptom-driven testing often misses. The project's value exceeds USD 1 million over three years. She leads the Malaysian arm and works closely with the National Public Health Laboratory (Ministry of Health) to ensure findings are translated swiftly from bench to policy.

It’s the same logic that has guided her HFMD public education videos, which turn rigorous science into accessible tools, enabling parents, teachers, and clinics to act sooner.

HFMD Video — Links to HFMD Educational Video by Professor Dr Chan: https://youtu.be/GavN5lWOdqI?si=oAtx4VO8GTeQF220

Beneath the publications, grants, and press, her engine is human and simple: the 3Ps—Passion, Perseverance, and Positive Thinking. “Passion, perseverance and positive thinking help us to achieve greater heights,” she says, a line that has become both mantra and method.

That mindset steadies her through the particular headwinds of doing high-stakes science in a developing country, where technology may be available but deep expertise can be scarce, long-term funding is thin, and knowledge-sharing isn’t always a given. She has faced the softer trials too: watching talented students choose other paths, absorbing the grind of grant rejection letters, and navigating the assumption that women “scale back” after marriage and motherhood. Her answer is grace under load. She calls the job “many hats” - scientist, teacher, manager at work, wife, and mother at home - and insists that most working mothers don’t do less; they simply stretch. When setbacks arise, she tells her students what she tells herself: keep trying, re-search, and failure is falling forward.

That forward motion is visible beyond academia. Professor Dr Chan is a familiar presence at STEM seminars for secondary students, where she candidly discusses leadership, fear, and resilience, and actively encourages Malaysian women scientists to apply for the same ASEAN prize that changed her trajectory, passing along the encouragement her Dean once gave her. When she imagines a do-over, she doesn’t wish away difficulty; she dreams of a stint in a Nobel laureate’s lab, not for prestige but to watch the mechanics of discovery up close. Her intellectual heroes are hard-won too: Marie Curie, who balanced scarce funding, limited facilities, and childcare while changing the world; and her mother, who never told her to aim lower. Curie’s reminder, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood”, sits on her shoulder when experiments misfire and resources run thin.

The person behind the lab coat is as grounded as her science. Outside work, she tries to exercise three times a week, watches movies with her family, and plans trips built around Malaysia’s famous food trails. She jokes that in another life she might have been a full-time housewife, happily soaking up her children’s milestones; in this life, she still measures success by presence and example. At the university, she even confesses that her favourite part of the job is planning research activities and budgets, as well as mapmaking before the journey. The least enjoyable part is the crush of administrative meetings, which she also recognises as essential to make the whole machine run.

Threaded through it all is a restless ambition that’s never merely personal. Professor Dr Chan wants Malaysia on the scientific map, not just as a user of tools but a maker of them. And she wants younger scientists to write their own standards, not borrow someone else’s trophy case. Her advice lands like a steadying hand on a shoulder: take the first step and finish well; set your bar, meet it, then raise it; work with people cleverer than you; stay hungry, stay foolish. If she had to compress her charge for life into one line, it would be the one she repeats to girls in school halls and to postgrads staring down their first failed experiment: “Find something that is daunting, that you’re scared of, face it, and that will make you better. Don’t let anything back you off.”

“Find something that is daunting, that you’re scared of, face it, and that will make you better. Don’t let anything back you off” - Professor Dr Chan Yoke Fun.

Full Circle: Science and Hope

And because every story deserves a full circle, return to that quiet lab: the clink of glass, the cursor blinking beside a sequence that might yet save a child. The viruses are invisible; so is hope. Professor Dr Chan Yoke-Fun chooses to amplify the latter, believing stubbornly, scientifically, that with passion, perseverance and positive thinking, it can win.