Gladys Poon has recently joined School of Biomedical Sciences as a research assistant professor in November 2024. She completed both her undergraduate degree in Physics and her postgraduate studies, earning a PhD in Oncology, at the University of Cambridge. During her time as an undergraduate in physics, she discovered her passion for applying a physicist's perspective to address biological questions in the era of big data. New quantitative measurement techniques offer innovative ways to examine complex biological systems, enabling researchers to move beyond traditional hypothesis testing in the biological sciences. Currently, she is part of the SMA lab at HKU, where she focuses on cellular plasticity in hepatocellular carcinoma. Her work involves lineage tracing experiments in mice and modelling to better understand the role of cellular plasticity during tumour evolution.