About Us

Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed Permanent Secretary of National Research and Development, Permanent Secretary (Public Sector Science and Technology Policy and Plans Office), Prime Minister’s Office, and Chairman of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) on 1 Oct 2023.

Prof Tan served as the inaugural Chief Health Scientist and Executive Director of the new Office for Healthcare Transformation in Singapore’s Ministry of Health from 1 January 2018 to 30 September 2023. He was President of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2008 to 2017. He held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President from 2004 to 2008. He was former Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine and served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, in which capacity he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. He was also the Chairman of the Board of the National University Health System from 2011-2018.

Prof Tan is a key leader in Singapore’s Biomedical Sciences Initiative since its inception in 2000, for which he was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal in 2008. He has also received the Public Service Star in 2003; the Public Administration Gold Medal in 2004; the Meritorious Service Medal in 2015; the Distinguished Service Order in 2022 and Public Service Star (COVID-19) in 2023. Prof Tan is the recipient of several international awards and is the first Singaporean to be elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Medicine.

A renal physician, he obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.

Mr Philip Ong graduated from the University of Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern History. In 2006 he received a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Mr Ong has served in the Public Service Division in the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Manpower, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, the National Research Foundation, and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.

He is currently the Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Health.

Mr Colin Lim is currently the Chief Information Officer and Group Director (InfoComm, Technology and Data) at Singapore’s Ministry of Health.

His previous role was the Chief Executive Officer of mobilityX, a mobility as a service startup, that was backed by SMRT and Toyota Tsusho. Prior to that, Mr Lim was at SMRT where he was Managing Director SMRT Services and Vice President, Strategic Relations Office. He earlier worked at IBM UK, where his last role was Geography Leader, Intelligent Transport Systems, then a new IBM business initiative for which he identified and developed new markets and opportunities for IBM globally.

Mr Lim also served in the Singapore Administrative Service where his last appointment was Senior Director of the Planning and Organisation Division in the Ministry of Home Affairs. Prior to that, he was the Registrar of Vehicles and Group Director for Vehicle and Transit Licensing at the Land Transport Authority. He has also worked at the Ministries of Manpower and Transport.

Mr Lim has been a director of the Singapore Medical Association (SMA) Charity Fund since 2013. His other voluntary work includes Deputy Chairman, School Advisory Committee of Henry Park Primary School and member of the Employability and Employment Committee, Yellow Ribbon Singapore.

Mr. Lim holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor of Science (Economics) (Honours) from the London School of Economics on a Public Service Commission scholarship.

Mr Sim Feng-Ji is the Deputy Secretary (Smart Nation and Digital Government) in the Prime Minister’s Office. He oversees efforts to transform Singapore into a digital-first Singapore where a Digital Government, Digital Economy and Digital Society harness technology to effect transformation in health, transport, urban living, government services and businesses.

Prior to this, Mr Sim was the Divisional Director of the Income Security Policy Division at the Ministry of Manpower, where he oversaw policies related to CPF, income security and financial planning.

Mr Sim has been involved in the review of Singapore’s economic and social policies in various capacities, including the Committee on the Future Economy, the Economic Strategies Committee and the Inter-ministerial Committee on Low Wage Workers. He has held positions in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Finance.

Mr Sim graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Master’s of Arts in Economics. He obtained a Master’s of Business Administration and a Master’s of Science in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr Tay Choon Hong is the Chief Executive of the Health Promotion Board (HPB), which is part of the Ministry of Health in Singapore. HPB’s role is to empower individuals to take ownership of their health, towards its vision of a nation of healthy people. To achieve this, HPB works with a wide spectrum of 3P partners and stakeholders to build a supportive ecosystem that enables Singaporeans to engage in healthy lifestyle activities, and lead healthier lives.

Prior to this, Mr Tay was the Senior Director (Youth) in the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth, and concurrently Deputy Chief Executive of the National Youth Council. He led the review of policies and programmes aimed at developing youths to be future-ready and committed to the nation. Mr Tay also served in the Public Service Division, where he oversaw the Public Sector Transformation change movement aimed at strengthening capabilities in innovation, collaboration, service delivery, employee engagement and citizen engagement.

Mr Tay previously served in the National Population and Talent Division, the Ministry of Manpower, and the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Mr Tay graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with dual Bachelor’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Economics. He also holds a Master of Science in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Sau Sheong is the Deputy Chief Executive (Products) and Chief Technology Officer at GovTech.

Prior to GovTech he was an Operating Partner, Digital for Temasek, a global investment company headquartered in Singapore and part of the AI Strategy and Solutions team.

Before that, he ran SP Digital, the digital business unit of SP Group. He also headed IT, OT and digital transformation for the whole of SP Group for more than 6 years. Sau Sheong was instrumental in changing SP Group from a traditional utility company to a regional energy player.

In his 28 years of industry experience, he has built and led product engineering teams at PayPal, Yahoo and HP building various software products for enterprise businesses and consumers globally.

He was previously a co-founder of a software company and was involved in startups for more than 10 years. He is active and contributes to many technology communities in Singapore and Southeast Asia and has written five programming books.

Sau Sheong holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, a Master’s in Commercial Law and a Postgraduate Certificate in International Arbitration.

Ms Cindy Koh is the Executive Vice President of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) and a member of EDB’s Executive Committee. Cindy oversees EDB’s Advanced Manufacturing Group that works closely with international companies from diverse industries including Semiconductor, Healthcare, Mobility, Aerospace and Industrial Solutions, to facilitate their investments into Singapore, transform their operations here and help them succeed in Asia via Singapore.

Prior to her current appointment, she was the Executive Vice President responsible for EDB’s International operations in 20 locations outside of Singapore from 2021-2023. Between 2018 and 2021, Cindy was Senior Vice President (Consumer) and held a concurrent appointment as Senior Vice President and the Head of Region for Americas, where she led EDB’s operations in North and South America.

Cindy previously held positions as Director for Chemicals from 2015-2018 and Director, Resource Development Division (Planning & Policy) from 2013-2015. She was also the Centre Director of EDB’s Washington DC Centre from 2005 to 2009. She joined EDB in 2002.

She received a Bachelor of Business Administration from the National University of Singapore in 1999.

Mr Philip Ong graduated from the University of Oxford with a Bachelor of Arts in Modern History. In 2006 he received a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.

Mr Ong has served in the Public Service Division in the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Manpower, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, the National Research Foundation, and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.

He is currently the Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of Health.

Lim Yi Ding is the Director of the Trusted Centre for Individual and Business Data at the Singapore Department of Statistics (DOS).  The Trusted Centre at DOS facilitates access by government agencies to government data, which is obtained and shared under the Public Sector (Governance) Act. Yi Ding had been involved in the establishment of the Trusted Centre at DOS as its Deputy Director, and currently oversees its development and daily operations as its Director.

She was previously Head of the Data Management & Analysis Team (Contact Tracing & Epidemiology Centre) at the Singapore Ministry of Health, where she was in charge of statistics, data management and analysis relating to COVID-19 cases, to support reporting, contact tracing, policymaking and operations on COVID-19.

She had also been involved in various areas of statistics and analytics, including the Gross Domestic Product, International Trade in Services, and Business Data Analytics and Analytical Studies in DOS; and manufacturing statistics at the Singapore Economic Development Board.

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Dr. Yeo graduated in 1997 from the National University of Singapore where he obtained his Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery. He subsequently trained in the United States of America and obtained his American Board of Internal Medicine Certifications in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine and Interventional cardiology. Currently, Dr Yeo is Deputy Medical Director (Data Science and Innovation) at the National Heart Centre Singapore. He is a senior consultant cardiologist and interventional cardiologist in the department of cardiology and leads the MitraClip program. He is also the Scientific Lead for the Data, Digital and AI Core at the National Heart Research Institute Singapore. Dr Yeo previously served as the Program Director of the SingHealth Cardiology Senior Residency Program, and also as the Academic Vice Chair (Training and Education) for the SingHealth Duke-NUS Cardiovascular Academic Clinical Program (Apr 2016 to Mar 2021). He is also the SingHealth Group Deputy Chief Medical Informatics Officer (Research).

Dr. Yeo is a Council member of the Singapore Cardiac Society. He is also a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), American College of Cardiology (FACC), the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology (FAPSC), the Asian Pacific Society of Interventional Cardiology, and the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (FSCAI). He is the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology. He has published widely in international peer-reviewed journals and is a peer-reviewer for Circulation, the American Journal of Cardiology, Heart, Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Intervention, Korean Circulation Journal, Structural Heart, AsiaIntervention, ASEAN Heart Journal, Annals of the Academy of Medicine and Singapore Medical Journal. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Korea Circulation Journal and AsiaIntervention. He has been appointed by the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology to be its Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the APSC. He is the Past-Chair of the Chapter of Cardiologists, Academy of Medicine Singapore, and the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology. He is also a Council member of the Singapore Cardiac Society.

Dr Yeo is particularly interested in the use of percutaneous or catheter-based techniques to treat the mitral valve and the tricuspid valve. He has presented multiple talks in regional and international conferences on the Asian experience with the MitraClip device and has established the MARS registry (MitraClip Asia-Pacific Registry). In his other major research interest, Dr Yeo is interested in long-term cardiovascular outcomes in Health Services Research and the use of data science to develop insights into the diagnosis and management of heart disease. He has published multiple papers comparing outcomes in large studies including those from large registries in the USA. He is the PI of the SingCLOUD registry, which is a national registry of all patients with coronary artery disease and heart failure. The SingCLOUD registry will include all restructured hospitals and polyclinics; it will follow clinical, cost and quality-of-care outcomes in these patients for 1-3 years in Singapore. Dr Yeo is also the PI for SingHEART which is a prospective observational study or normal volunteers in Singapore. SingHEART combines whole genome sequencing with deep phenotyping (cardiac MRI, CT calcium score, ambulatory BP and ECG, fitness tracker, and blood tests) and long-term clinical follow-up for 20 years.

As Group Chief Technology Officer of the National University Health System (NUHS), Dr. Kee Yuan Ngiam oversees technology deployment in Singapore’s western healthcare cluster. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University and Deputy Chief Medical Informatics Officer at National University Hospital where he promotes interdisciplinary collaboration on various healthcare applications. His focus is on artificial intelligence research and implementation in healthcare, as well as endocrine and metabolic surgery. He has certification training from the American Medical Informatics Association and has published in computing and medical journals on topics related to healthcare AI applications and technology.

Wee Joo is Director of the National University Cancer Institute, Singapore and Group Director of Research, at the National University Health System. He is a Provost’s Chair Professor and Vice-Dean of Research of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Senior Principal Investigator of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, at the National University of Singapore.

He is a member of many international professional committees, such as the International Myeloma Working Group and the Asian Myeloma Network. He is also involved in a number of Grant Review Committees, Conference Organising Committee, Advisory Boards and Steering Committees of Global Clinical Trials. He has authored more than 300 publications in many reputed journals, and actively participates in clinical trials and has delivered talks in many national and international conferences. He has won multiple awards for his outstanding achievements in translational research both locally and internationally including the NUHS Research Excellence Award, the International Myeloma Foundation’s Brian GM Durie Outstanding Achievement Award, the National Medical Excellence Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award, the National Medical Research Council Senior Translational Research (STaR) Award, the National University of Singapore Young Researcher Award, and the Celgene Future Leaders in Haematology Award.

A/Prof Liu Nan is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Quantitative Medicine (CQM) and Programme in Health Services and Systems Research (HSSR), Duke-NUS Medical School. He leads the Duke-NUS AI Medical Sciences Initiative (DAISI). He is also a faculty member at NUS Institute of Data Science, and a graduate faculty member at Duke University, USA. Clinically, Dr Liu is affiliated with SingHealth.

A/Prof Liu is actively working on AI, machine learning, and data science with their applications in various clinical domains. He is also interested in technology translation and commercialization. He co-founded TIIM Healthcare Pte Ltd and serves as its Scientific Advisor. His research has been funded by the National Medical Research Council (NMRC), National Research Foundation (NRF), National Health Innovation Centre (NHIC), Ministry of Education (MOE), AI Singapore, Duke-NUS Medical School, and SingHealth Foundation, as well as industrial partners such as Continental AG.

A/Prof Liu has served as an Editor for more than 10 prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including npj Digital Medicine, PLOS Medicine, BMC Medicine, and IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. Additionally, he is a regular reviewer for many international journals such as The Lancet, JAMA and Nature Medicine. He also serves on the Program Committees of a number of premium AI and data science conferences such as AAAI, NeurIPS, and AMIA.

Sebastian Maurer-Stroh studied theoretical biochemistry at the University of Vienna and wrote his master and PhD thesis at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP). After FEBS and Marie Curie fellowships at the VIB-SWITCH lab in Brussels, he has been leading a group of experts in protein sequence analysis as a senior principal investigator in the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (BII) since 2007. He is Executive Director of BII since January 2021. His sequence function analysis skills are supporting efforts at the public-private interface and through computational analysis and modelling his team is critically contributing to national and global viral pathogen surveillance playing a critical role in the GISAID data science initiative. He transformed BII to add value to biomedical data by connecting data across the ecosystem securely with BII’s critical mass of data hub, curation and analysis experts.

Prof John Chambers (PhD, FRCP, MBBS, Honours – 1st Class) is Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Chief Scientific Officer for the National Precision Medicine program. He is Director of Population and Global Health at LKC Medicine, and retains an adjunct appointment with Imperial College London. His research focuses on identifying new strategies for prediction and prevention of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, with a specific focus on South Asian and South-East Asian populations. He leads large-scale prospective population studies in Singapore (the SG100K study), South Asia, and the UK. His research had led to the discovery of novel genetic and epigenetic pathways associated with coronary heart disease, T2D, obesity, and related metabolic disturbances implicating new molecular pathways underlying these diseases.

Simon Chesterman is Vice Provost (Educational Innovation) and Provost’s Chair Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore. He is also Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and Co-President of the Law Schools Global League.

Educated in Melbourne, Beijing, Amsterdam, and Oxford, Professor Chesterman’s teaching experience includes periods at the Universities of Melbourne, Oxford, Southampton, Columbia, and Sciences Po. From 2006-2011, he was Global Professor and Director of the New York University School of Law Singapore Programme. Prior to joining NYU, he was a Senior Associate at the International Peace Academy and Director of UN Relations at the International Crisis Group in New York. He has previously worked for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yugoslavia and interned at the International Criminal Tribunal or Rwanda.

Professor Chesterman is the author or editor of twenty-one books, including We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law (CUP, 2021); Law and Practice of the United Nations (with Ian Johnstone and David M. Malone, OUP, 2016); One Nation Under Surveillance (OUP, 2011); You, the People (OUP, 2004); and Just War or Just Peace? (OUP, 2001). He is a recognized authority on international law, whose work has opened up new areas of research on conceptions of public authority – including the rules and institutions of global governance, state-building and post-conflict reconstruction, the changing role of intelligence agencies, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence and big data. He also writes on legal education and higher education more generally, and is the author of four young adult fiction novels including the Raising Arcadia trilogy.

Professor Julian Savulescu is the Chen Su Lan Professor in Medical Ethics at the National University of Singapore, where he directs the Centre for Biomedial Ethics. An award-winning ethicist and moral philosopher, he trained in neuroscience, medicine, and philosophy, going on to hold the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics (2002) at the University of Oxford, where he founded the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics in 2003, before moving to NUS in 2022.

He co-directs the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is Distinguished Visiting Professorial Fellow at Murdoch Children’s Research institute and Melbourne Law School, where he directs the Biomedical Ethics Research Group.

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest.