Francis Seow-Choen Singapore

Francis Seow-Choen studied at St Andrew’s School, starting in 1964 in Primary 1 and leaving the school after his GCE A in 1975. He graduated MBBS from NUS in 1981, and obtained his higher surgical degree in 1987. He became head of the head of the Department of Colorectal Surgery in Singapore General Hospital in 1994. During his time in SGH, he became the head of Surgical Oncology at the Singapore National Cancer Centre, amongst many other appointments. For his services to Singapore in Colorectal Surgery, Francis was awarded the Excellence for Singapore Award in 2000. He moved to private practice in Singapore in 2003, where he is still busy managing, operating and helping people with all sorts of intestinal and anal problems. Francis is still in demand internationally as a teacher and mentor in colorectal surgery. Francis travels often to many countries all around the world to teach and demonstrate the fine art of colorectal surgery. He had been honored as an honorary fellow of several national and international colorectal societies in China, India, Philippines, Chile, Israel, Great Britain and Ireland, Australia and New Zealand and the USA. Francis Seow-Choen has been interested in nature since his youth. In his school days at St Andrew’s he would often visit the Kallang River, as well as the farms in Potong Pasir to look for fishes, turtles and snakes. He also kept many pets including stick insects in his youth, Francis published his first book “A Guide to The Stick & Leaf Insects of Singapore” in 1997. Since then, he has continued to research stick and leaf insects and has published exhaustive accounts of these creatures, not just from Singapore, but also from Borneo, Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra and Java. So far, Francis had published 11 books on the taxonomy of stick insects. During this process he has described many new genera as well as more than 250 new species of stick insects. Francis was one of four authors who received the JO Westwood Medal for Excellence in Insect Taxonomy, given by the Royal Entomology Society and European Congress of Entomology in 2018. Francis has recently published; in Dec 2024; the full-coloured “A Guide to Land Snakes of Singapore, with interesting related species”. Francis intends to continue to research both stick insects and snakes, as well as to help others appreciate and understand them more.