Malaysia has been heralded by the United Nations for encouraging women to participate in the workforce with the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) seeing an encouraging show of intelligent, successful Malaysian women. The Peak sits down with some of our STEM stars to talk to them about their achievements, challenges and what more needs to be done to further champion women in Science.
Dr. Lim Way Foong,
Lecturer and Researcher, Institute of Nano Optoelectronics Research and Technology, Universiti Sains Malaysia
Tell us a bit about your relationship with L’Oreal, especially after picking up the L’Oréal-Unesco Fellowship for Women in Science last year.
Many people do not realise this but besides cosmetics, science is part of the DNA of the L’Oreal brand. I suppose this is only natural as in this day and age. Science needs more women and more women need to be a part of Science. L’Oreal also does a lot of biological research to improve the quality of their products and this has led to the formation of the L’Oréal-Unesco Fellowship program. The primary goal of this organisation is to get more women into Science. The brand wants to position women as those who are capable of being anything that they put their minds too – a model, an entrepreneur, a scientist… anything, really! And this is definitely a grand notion that I agree with wholeheartedly!
You seem to have a preoccupation with the study of light. Why is that?
Issues related to eyesight are something that I hold close to my heart. About 16 years ago, my father lost the ability to use his right eye due to parasitic infection. Doctors couldn’t do anything to stop the infection so in the end; my father’s eyeball had to be removed. This fateful incident made me realise why it is so important to protect ones’ eyes. This also served as an inspiration for me to devote myself to research on something that could benefit society. I chose to focus on LED as many people spend hours in front of their tech devices.
How would you describe your line of work?
Actually, I am a material scientist by training; I graduated with a degree in material engineering. After graduation, I joined University Sains Malaysia as a researcher and lecturer in this specialised field called Optoelectronics. This is essentially the study of electronics that deal with light. The big star in the world of lighting now is the lightemitting diode (LED). This sort of lighting doesn’t produce heat and consumes less power. But light produced by LEDs also emits harmful blue light, and overexposure to this light is a health hazard. The blue light will eventually condition our brain to regulate such things as our hormones and even interfere with someone’s biological clock; this is why some people have trouble sleeping these days! But now, even streetlights everywhere are being converted to LEDs as an energy and cost-saving means. So, it’s definitely a time for people to adopt LEDs not for just indoor lighting, but also outdoors. Hence, part of my research is to find a suitable material that will emit a purplish light, instead of the harmful blue light. While creating lighting without the blue light radiation is possible, by using violet light, the method still requires plenty of testing and study to determine the wavelengths that are suitable for the human eyes. Part of the work that I have been privileged to do at the university is to research various types of materials that have the potential of being used to produce a safer light. Yes, the race is one to find the next miracle material to improve the LED.
So how is the research coming along then?
Right now, my research aims to produce violet LEDs (dubbed VioLEDs) by varying the composition of light emissive layers. I want to tune the wavelength and subsequently create optimum VioLEDs that are safe for the eyes. VioLED is also a semiconductor that emited violet light, which is at the highest end of the visible light range, just before the ultraviolet spectrum. The difference between violet and blue light is the wavelength. Violet LED light has shorter wavelength that spans from 380 to 420 nanometres, while blue LED light is beyond 420 nanometres and terminates at approximately 500 nanometres. A retinal cell called IPRGCs, which stands for Intrinsically-Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells, is highly sensitive to blue light, particularly in the 450 to 480 nanometre wavelength. The ipRGCs transmit signals to the brain that control the body’s circadian rhythm, affecting melatonin production, which is a hormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. During the day, blue light does not bring much impact on humans because it keeps us alert. However, exposure in the evening and night time will disrupt a person’s biological clock and activate the circadian cycle’s ‘wake-state’. This is because our brain will interpret the environment as day time when a high amount of blue light is received by the eyes. This makes it difficult to fall asleep even though we may be physically tired.
What was it like growing up for you?
My father was a locksmith and I happen to be his only daughter. My family is originally from Tampin in Negeri Sembilan. As a child, I am always at my father’s shop looking at him work, and always asking him questions about what he was doing. I remember asking him stuff like ‘where do humans come from’ and he always smiles and tells me the same thing: “One day, you will learn everything that you want to know about.†So yes, I have always been that girl who wanted to know more. When I finally got to Form Four, we were finally allowed to do such interesting things at school in the labs. That was when I discovered that I truly enjoyed the fascinating riddle of chemical sciences. Chemistry also combined science and mathematics – perhaps my two favourite subjects! Biology just involved too much memorising of important facts and physics had way too many philosophies to keep track of.
