From the hot, humid air of Singapore to the chillier climes of Europe – I’ve just arrived back home as 2025 takes its final breaths. This year flew by scarily fast, so I feel compelled to capture some of the highlights below to experience some sense of accomplishment (for which, thankfully, there are quite a few):

– PDTx: the year started strongly with the Precision Digital Therapeutics (PDTx) Master Class organised by our group at the Singapore-ETH Center (a summary post and video available here). I had the privilege of taking part as a lecturer, and it was wonderful to meet such a diverse and motivated group of students. They made spectacular progress on their PDTx prototypes over the course of the week!

– LvL UP Trial, almost there: after years of intervention and trial development, we are now just a couple of months away from completing the final assessments for our LvL UP Trial. This large and complex study has consumed a significant portion of my time and energy over the past few years, so I couldn’t be more excited to see everything coming together. We aced the trial implementation, with excellent recruitment and retention rates, and I’m confident the results will bring valuable and novel insights to the field of digital health.

– Three grants: While I’ve been involved in grant writing to some extent in the past, 2025 has been the year I’ve truly invested myself in this endeavour. It’s impossible to overstate the enormous amount of time and energy that goes into producing (what I hope are) competitive grant applications. Coincidentally – or maybe not – the three grants I applied for this year saw record numbers of submissions, accompanied by record-low success rates. It’s clear that academia is becoming more competitive each year.

I already received the outcome of one of these grants a few months ago and was left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, reaching the interview stage (top 20% of applications) and receiving generally positive feedback was encouraging. On the other hand, getting so close to funding without securing it was tough. It hurts to invest this much time and effort and then stand empty-handed. Still, there were many lessons learned along the way, and I remain hopeful that my dream grant is just around the corner. I’ll keep trying!

– Some publications: with 2025 being something of a transition year – waiting for the rich LvL UP Trial dataset to come to life – and with so much time spent on grant writing, it hasn’t been easy to carve out time for papers. Even so, I managed to publish four articles (two accepted in the past week!) and two book chapters across a range of projects and topics so all in all I can feel proud.

– Conferences: I was fortunate to attend a record four conferences this year across three continents. A special mention goes to the Centre for Behaviour Change (CBC) Conference in beautiful Lisbon, where I had the chance to reconnect with colleagues from UCL and contribute as a member of the scientific committee. My recent conference trip to Newcastle (Australia), followed by holidays in Brisbane, also allowed me to catch up with my PhD supervisors and colleagues and to relive my PhD years.

Other highlights from 2025 include news I’ve already covered on the blog: taking part in a behavioural science podcast, joining an editorial board, or delivering an invited talk at Cochrane. I hope 2026 will be just as rich in opportunities for learning and growth. As my contract with the Singapore-ETH Centre comes to an end in Q4 2026, I’ll be on the lookout for what might be my next chapter in academia!