AMONG the four scientists who won the 2024 Shaw Prize is a Malaysian haematologist and alumna of Universiti of Malaya (UM). Dr Swee Lay Thien of the National Institutes of Health, United States and Dr Stuart Orkin from the Harvard Medical School were awarded the prize in equal shares for the Life Science and Medicine category.
Both Swee and Orkin won the award for their discovery of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying the foetal-to-adult haemoglobin switch that facilitated treatment for devastating blood diseases affecting millions of people worldwide.
The Kuala Lumpur-born Swee studied medicine in both Malaysia and the United Kingdom. She graduated from UM in 1976 before specialising in haematology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and the Royal Free Hospital. She then moved to Oxford where she served at the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Molecular Haematology Unit in the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine and the John Radcliffe Hospital.
