Dr Duane Gubler, who joins the Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Graduate Medical School as director of the school's research programme in emerging infectious diseases, wants the programme to become the Asia-Pacific's centre for reference and research in the field.

Towards this end, his goal is to set up self-sustaining laboratories in selected Asian countries, each of which can undertake studies into the health and illness of their respective populations.

These centres will be part of a network doing research into organisms which carry disease and on how to detect disease.

Although Dr Gubler's appointment takes effect on Thursday, the 68-year-old American will arrive here only in January with his wife Bobbie, 69.

The couple have two sons, aged 44 and 42.

Dr Gubler will keep his academic position at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

The university's Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases, where Dr Gubler is director, will partner the Duke-NUS medical school in its infectious diseases programme here.

The programme is expected to complement work done at other institutes which are also working on infectious diseases, like Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Singapore General Hospital, DSO National Laboratories and the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases.

Said the Duke-NUS medical school's senior vice-dean for research, Professor Patrick Casey: 'The hope is to...rapidly identify and prevent the spread of future Sars-like epidemics that may impact the global economy.'

Dr Gubler's appointment brings the number of eminent scientists at Singapore's second medical school to four.

They are neuroscientist Professor Colin Blakemore from Britain; and physician Professor Ranga Krishnan and cancer and stem cell expert Professor David Virshup from the United States.