Chief Scientific Advisor (National Platforms), A*STAR
Advisor, DSO National Laboratories (DSO)
Professor Huan is A*STAR’s Chief Scientific Advisor (National Platforms) supporting A*STAR’s administration of the National Platforms in RIE2025. He concurrently serves as Advisor to the DSO National Laboratories.
He was most recently Assistant Chief Executive, Science and Engineering Research Council, A*STAR, where he set and drove the implementation of A*STAR’s strategic plans and initiatives in the Science and Engineering arena. Prior to that he was Executive Director (ED) of A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE).
Professor Huan’s earliest contribution to A*STAR was when he joined the incipient A*STAR IMRE as a joint appointee in 1998, functioning as Programme Manager of the Materials Characterisation Lab. He remained in this role until 2010. He was seconded to the A*STAR Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) in 2011. In 2012, he served as the ED of the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) until 2018. He was concurrently ED of the A*STAR Graduate Academy (A*GA) from 2013 to 2017. In 2017, he took on the ED IMRE role, and from 2019 to 2020, he was concurrently ED of the Urban and Green Technologies Office.
Prior to his career with A*STAR, Professor Huan had acquired considerable research and academic experience. He first took up a Lecturer position at the Department of Physics, National University of Singapore (NUS), in 1989 and was appointed as Deputy Head of Department in 2004. At NUS, he worked on surface science and epitaxial thin films, understanding surface and interfacial electronic structure of high-k oxides and semiconductors. In 2005, he left NUS to join a new school at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) – the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS). He began as the Head of the Division of Physics and Applied Physics, and later on, added the portfolio of Associate Chair for Outreach and Admissions. At NTU, his research focused on ultrafast charge and energy transfer in organics and II-VI semiconductor nanostructures, in particular the roles of defect states and the effect of dopants.
Professor Huan received his education at the University of Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics, working on acoustic interactions in low temperature paramagnetic insulators.