Freddy Boey: Poverty's extra edge

Raised near a dump, NTU Provost Freddy Boey worked his way through school - from driving a cab to delivering chickens- and wants to hold the door open for those who don't succeed at first 

by Teo Xuanwei, TODAY, 11 Aug 2012

When he was in primary school, Professor Freddy Boey once ran away from home just "for the fun of it".

He thought he would get an earful when he returned home the following night - only nobody even noticed that he had been "missing" for two days.

Chuckling bashfully at the story, Prof Boey concedes it was "no surprise lah", as Mom and Pop were both slaving away to feed their 11 children.

"If you don't count, you won't even know one was gone," he quips, in telling one of the many colourful stories with which he punctuates this interview at The St Regis Singapore.

His lot, growing up, was dismal: Home was in a rough kampung he describes as "the rubbish dump of Singapore"; his family was "a little bit more poor than poor".

Yet, he remarks of his harsh circumstances: "Poverty has its advantages."

The portly and amiable 55-year-old Deputy President and Provost of Nanyang Technology University (NTU) says: "It really helps you to be resourceful, to fend for yourself. You don't have the mentality that 'it's my birthright to have this and that', because you assume you have nothing and, from nothing, you have to come up with something."

His credentials speak for him: Top student in junior college and university despite holding down jobs concurrently, a storied list of biomaterials inventions for medical devices, 25 patents to his name, of which most have been licensed, and five spin-off companies so far.

HEAD CHOPPED OFF

Prof Boey grew up in Kolam Ayer, a kampung swarming with hooligans in the 1960s. There, his grandmother, parents and 10 siblings crammed into a zinc-roofed row house one-eighth the size of a basketball court.

One hundred metres away was the former Geylang Bahru rubbish dump where he plied his first trade, at age seven, as a scrap copper collector.

Prof Boey excitedly "boasts" that the "chao ti lang" (rag-and-bone man in Hokkien) he dealt with appeared on the front page of the newspapers one day after his head was "chopped off" in a gang fight.

"I was so frightened they would kill me too, because he was my hero," he recalls, laughing heartily.

Prof Boey also worked with his mother in an "underground factory" making paper bags - for S$2 a day, which was, of course, "confiscated" - and ran errands, such as buying coffee, for his mechanic father.

Even playtime was a money-making venture: He would catch fish in ponds and sell them to aquariums.

NEARLY DROPPED OUT

As a child, studies never figured in his plans simply because he had no interest and his parents cared little about how he fared. Prof Boey's grades were "absolutely terrible" at the now-defunct Sennett Estate Primary School. In all likelihood, he would have gone on to ITE - what used to be viewed as "It's The End", in his words.

It was only after his father nearly made him drop out at age 13 did he start to "value studies". He began spending whole days at the old National Library on Stamford Road, devouring books like the Doctor Dolittle series and Jean-Paul Sartre's The Wall.

"I would borrow books and read and read. Nobody taught me, it was just the desire to absorb and learn," says Prof Boey. "My parents didn't know I was going to the library, my older siblings probably didn't even know where I was."

For his mid-year exam that year, he came in first in class - and got a right rollicking by his father. "He said, 'You don't do well, never mind, why you cheat!' ... He thought that I fiddled with the results. He absolutely didn't believe I was capable of it until I did well again for the year-end exams."

From then on, studying became a breeze: "I would study one time, two times, that's it, I can remember and understand."

SCHOLARSHIP WITHDRAWN

After he topped St Andrew's Junior College, Prof Boey thought his ticket to study abroad - a Public Service Commission scholarship - had arrived. But it was not to be: Because of his congenital kidney illness, the interviewers considered him a "liability" and withdrew the scholarship.

"I remember going back and checking what is 'liability'," Prof Boey says. "I was very angry, I felt short-changed at that time. But who to blame? My parents? They are just uneducated, born with a kid they didn't even know was in big trouble the day he was born."

He was left to find his own "route B". As a "full-time sportsman" during his army days - in swimming, water polo and football - he had free time after training sessions, which he spent giving tuition.

"Back to back, four or five students. I cycled from one place to another, I did what I could with the time I had."

He managed to save up AU$1,500 from this and, on his 21st birthday, arrived in Australia to study Chemical Engineering at Monash University.

Just two lessons into his course, however, he found the subject "too boring". Then he sneaked into another classroom at random and was blown away after hearing the lecturer talk about how the wings of aeroplanes can bend in mid-air.

"I loved it to death and that was it, I just switched to Materials Engineering."

GARDENER, CLEANER, CABBIE

Prof Boey's tales of how he "struggled like mad" to earn money to pay the rent in Australia are incredible.

"I only had enough money to last three months," he recalls. "I was living from hand to mouth. It was not easy."

His first gig was gardening. On his first day, he broke his first customer's lawnmower.

He moved on to wait tables at a Chinese restaurant in the evenings and cleaning pubs before dawn. The long hours never bothered him since he slept only five hours a day - a habit he keeps till today.

What did irk him, however, was the "filth".

"Cleaning pubs was the absolute worst," he grimaces. "Even today, when I think about it, ugh."

On the recommendation of a friend, Prof Boey tried his hand at driving cabs. Business was so good that he would drive from 4.30am on Saturday to 4.30am on Sunday, "because Saturday night, all the Australians get drunk".

"The small problem was that, sometimes, when I bring them home, the wives would scold me because they had to pay, not the husbands."

HIS LAST CHICKEN DELIVERY

Prof Boey later became Monash's resident egg-grocer. But first, he needed a delivery vehicle. He got a beat-up Volkswagen beetle with a "burnt-up" engine from a friend, bought an old engine from a scrapyard for AU$250 and "that's it, I had a car".

"In those days, the supermarket is quite far away, so if you deliver to (a customer's) doorstep, they like it," he explains.

But he soon found the work too tedious for the paltry earnings. "Then I decided, why not sell chickens? That was better value." His pitch to his schoolmates: "I guarantee you, same day the chicken dies, that afternoon, you'll get your chicken."

It was to be his last job.

He describes animatedly how, at Monash, the students' exam results would be posted in the university hall.

"I delivered my last chicken, I ran there, I saw that I was first and said to my friends, 'My last day I will ever deliver chickens! Now, officially I'm an engineer'!"

SAVING LIVES, AS AN ENGINEER

Prof Boey's list of inventions runs long after 25 years of being at NTU: A filament winding machine that produces giant composite pipes for sewage treatment; the entry barrier device at train stations; and a carbon fibre aircraft component for Singapore's fighter jets, among others.

After his sister, Angela, died of lung cancer in London on Christmas in 2001, he began his foray into inventions for the medical field.

Doctors had told him her cancer couldn't be operated upon because it was too close to her artery, which made him ask why there wasn't a device that could anchor itself in lungs, emit radiation and kill the cancer cells.

"Once I started talking to doctors, I realised that, as an engineer, I can solve many problems for them," he says.

The first challenge he tackled was heart stents. "The metallic stents we have, you put it into your body, it solves the problem of the blockage. But, after that, you can't take it out and it becomes a liability until the day you die."

Together with a colleague, Prof Subbu Venkatraman, Prof Boey invented a fully biodegradable cardiovascular stent that a Silicon Valley venture capitalist has since pumped S$30 million into.

SECOND CHANCES

Having made good against the odds, Prof Boey admits he has a "special place in my heart for those not born with a silver spoon".

"Because if I can do it, other people also deserve a chance to do it," he says. "I fear in Singapore, sometimes the door shuts too early ... it can be a bit unforgiving."

He believes that inspiring students to want to learn more, either through ground-breaking research or effective teaching, is one way to get the best out of them.

"Sometimes, students might not know what a professor is talking about but when they get so excited, they go and learn more by themselves," he says. "Just by talking, can inspire you, make your hair stand."

He also wants to review the appraisal process in NTU to give people "a second chance" - for instance, by not penalising a student who takes an extra year to graduate.

"If you bombed at one exam for some reason, it cannot be that your whole lifetime, one day decides it. Very strange," he says.

"I remember some of my students - really rascals, I tell you, can't stand them - but when they grow up, they're really different. Others look very clever but, after some years, just around there lah, you know."

The bottom line, Prof Boey says, is that the person who one day winds up as CEO might not be the one with first-class honours. But, "if the door is shut, there's no way".

PROF BOEY'S BIO

Married to Celina, 51; four children, aged 16 to 26

First Class Honours in Materials Engineering from Monash University in 1980; recently named Distinguished Alumni of the Year

Won a S$10-million grant (National Research Foundation's Competitive Research Programme) to develop fully biodegradable cardiovascular implants for hole-in-the-heart conditions

In 2003, developed a peizoelectric heart pump that was the world's smallest

Invented a disposable surgical tissue retractor that keeps wounds open during surgery; sold in the US, India, Japan and Europe

Appointed Deputy President and Provost of Nanyang Technology University in July last year

* NTU provost honoured for contributions
By Amelia Teng, The Straits Times, 15 Feb 2013

NANYANG Technological University (NTU) provost Freddy Boey is joining the ranks of top scientists in Britain.

He was awarded the prestigious Faculty of Medicine Fellowship by Imperial College London on Tuesday for his contributions to medicine.

Professor Boey, 56, has 25 global patents to his name and is passionate about research and education.

"I'm a scientist first," the Singaporean says, "and scientists are excited about ideas."

Over the last three years, he has won more than $36 million in research grants.

This includes $10 million from the National Research Foundation's Competitive Research Programme to develop fully biodegradable cardiovascular implants for hole-in-the-heart conditions.

He has invented breakthrough biomedical devices such as the world's smallest piezoelectric heart pump, which was unveiled in 2003, a disposable surgical tissue retractor that keeps wounds open during surgery and several types of stents that release different drugs for heart patients.

Among his most recent creations is a hernia mesh, a new surgical mesh that repairs tears in abdominal walls and makes them stronger. It is the first of its kind to be approved for sale by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

He joins a list of fellows such as Britain's first female professor of surgery, Professor Averil Mansfield, and Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer of England.

Imperial College's Faculty of Medicine fellows are elected annually and the title is awarded to those who have shown outstanding achievements in their fields.