Author: Muhammad Ferdyansyah Sechan
Alternate names: Ferdy Sechan; M F Sechan
Born: the eve of Friday, 13 October 1989
Bio: from page 139 of thesis 2024

Muhammad Ferdyansyah Sechan (pronounced sé-KHan) was born in Bandung, West Java,
Indonesia, on the eve of Friday, 13 October 1989. He always spelled his nickname, Ferdy, with an
“i” unHl he took a closer look at his birth cerHficate. Moving to a village called Sukabumi during
his kindergarten age, he grew up surrounded by mountains, fish ponds, and rice paddies. This
fostered his interests in life science and allowed him to compete in a naHonal biology compeHHon
during high school. Later on, he considered enrolling in a medical school in Bandung. Yet his uncle,
then a dean at a faculty in Bandung InsHtute of Technology, managed to persuade him to instead
pursue a BSc in Microbiology at Bandung InsHtute of Technology, Indonesia, between 2007-2011.
At the end of his BSc, he parHcipated—and becoming a finalist—in a naHonal beauty pageant.
This led to his first corporate job as a scienHfic support for markeHng and regulatory affairs at
Nutrifood Indonesia, Jakarta. He worked there for roughly five years (2011-2014 and 2016-2019),
during which he trained himself in nutriHon science, public speaking, and criHcally parsing
through scienHfic publicaHons. He wrote and published (under his department’s name) a book
compiling and debunking 101 health myths prevalent in Indonesian communiHes. It was also
during this Hme that he learned about studying abroad and scholarships, and he was moHvated
to pursue a master degree overseas. Thankfully, he was awarded an opportunity to pursue the
MSc program of Biotechnology at Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands,
between 2014-2016.
The MSc program exposed him to the exciHng field of virological research. He was fascinated at
how a simple biological structure such as viruses managed to hijack other, more complex,
organisms, and the associaHon between viruses and diseases reawakened his past desire to
pursue a (bio)medical educaHon. A book by David Quammen Htled Spillover that he read during
his internship at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, made him aware of zoonoHc jumps of
animal viruses into humans and how such events might result in deadly diseases. With that in
mind, he applied to HONOURs, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie AcHons InnovaHve Training Network
(MSCA-ITN), as the ESR 6. His PhD research, under the supervision of Dr. Lia van der Hoek at the
Amsterdam University Medical Center, LocaHon AMC, was focused on rapid idenHficaHon and
culturing of previously-uncharacterized respiratory viruses and, later on, sero-epidemiology of
endemic human coronaviruses. During his PhD, he gained an interest in data science and scienHfic
communicaHon, and he is currently looking for a career that allowed him to become a scienHfic
communicator, preferably communicaHng his own works.