James
Phipps-Tan

About me

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I grew up in suburban Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. I liked many subjects at school but biology 'was my thing' - reading dinosaur books, going down taxonomy rabbitholes on Wikipedia, admiring all the critters in my family garden were things I liked doing without needing anyone to tell me to. So, I decided to study Biology, being lucky enough to do so at Imperial College London and then the Université de Lausanne. I focused on genetics and genomics, seeing that genes seemed like guiding principles underlying how the living things I love admiring work and diversify. Now, I am doing a PhD in Tübingen, Germany, where I use perhaps the most harmless animals in the world - fruit flies - to better characterise the environmental genetic factors governing gene expression variability. Check out the Scientific Research page to find out what I mean by this. ;)

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I am also fond of writing! I get a real kick out of laying out the myriad thoughts in my head and transforming them into a stream of punchy, concise and meaningful written works. As this is my site, I get to write whatever I like - that means not just about science, but about history, cultures, my longtime hobbies, and more. I hope they are as enjoyable writes for me as enjoyable reads for you! ​