Asst Prof Rena Dharmawan

Dr Rena Dharmawan is a Consultant Surgeon at Department of Head & Neck Surgery in National Cancer Centre Singapore and Singapore General Hospital. Dr Rena also holds a joint appointment as Assistant Dean and Assistant Professor of Innovation Education & Ecosystem Development (IE2D) at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Rena is also Co-Director of the College of Healthcare En-gineering in Singhealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Center (AMC). Clinically, she specialises in managing benign and malignant thyroid, parathyroid and parotid conditions.

Over the past decade, she co-founded 3 Singapore-based medtech startups (Privi Medical, Jaga-Me and CATALYST) and is currently Programme Director for the Duke-NUS Healthcare Innovation Programme (D-HIP) to train & develop the next generation of Clinician-Innovators.

Prior to medicine, Rena graduated summa cum laude with a BSc in Biomedical Engineering in 2007. She then joined the inaugural batch and completed her medical degree at Duke-NUS Medical School (Singapore) in 2011 and completed her EMBA in January 2023 at INSEAD's Global Executive MBA programme, where she was named the "Best & Brightest EMBA in 2022" by Poets & Quants.

• Executive MBA, INSEAD, 2023 
• MMed (Surgery), NUS, 2015 
• MD, Duke-NUS Medical School, 2011 
• BSc (Biomedical Engineering), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, 2007

• Duke NUS Medical School, Innovation Education & Ecosystem Development, Assistant Dean 
• Duke NUS Medical School, Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Assistant Professor 
• College of Healthcare Engineering, Co-Director 
• Surgical Technology & Innovation, Surgery ACP, Director 
• NCCS Tissue Review Committee, Chairperson 
• SGH Patient Safety Officer 
• NCCS Grant Monitoring Panel Member 
• SingHealth Duke NUS-Academic Medical Centre (AMC) A*STAR Healthcare Translation Partnership (HTP) - Project Evaluation Committee Member 
• SingHealth Innovation Council/Committee Member 
• SingHealth General Surgery Residency Programme, Clinical Physician Faculty Member

• Distinguished Young Leader Award - Singhealth Excellence Award 2024
• NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award 2023 
• GenT Tatler Asia Leaders of Tomorrow Awardee 2022 
• Best & Brightest EMBA 2022 
• Faculty Appreciation Award, Duke NUS Medical School 2020, 2018

• Medtech & Health Innovation 
• Access & Business Model Innovation

• Linn YL, Khoo MSQ, Sultana R, Iyer NG, Dharmawan R Comparison of the use of allogenic acellular dermal matrix on rates of Frey syndrome post pa-rotidectomy: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Radiol. 2022 Jul;134(1):49-56, JIF:2.589 
• Dharmawan AR, Henry Ho, Ng HHM, Gopal Iyer, Tan HK, Tan NC Implementing the Biodesign Process for Medical Device Innovation in Head and Neck Surgery. Surgical Innovation 2020. Vol. 0(0) 1-6, JIF: 1.42 
• Huang HL, Dharmawan AR, Tan CJ, Thang SP. A rare case of thymoma first detected on gallium-68 PSMA PET/CT. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. Nov 2017. 44(12):2148-2149, JIF: 7.277 
• Tan WJ, Chew MH, Dharmawan AR, Singh M, Acharyya S, Loi CT, Tang CL. Critical appraisal of laparoscopic vs open rectal cancer surgery World J Gastrointest Surg. June 2016; 8(6): 452-460, JIF: 2.813 
• Yang Y, Kulangara K, Lam RT, Dharmawan R, Leong KW Effects of topographical and mechanical property alterations induced by oxygen plasma modifica-tion on stem cell behaviour. ACS Nano. Oct 2012; 6(10):8591-8, JIF: 13.94