Management

Dr. Lim Keng Hui Executive Director

Dr. Lim Keng Hui is the Executive Director of IHPC and Artificial Intelligence Horizontal Technology Programme Office, A*STAR. He leads the research institute to advance scientific knowledge, and deliver impact to the industry and society through research in modelling and simulation, visualisation and AI.

Prior to his current role, Keng Hui was the Director of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)’s Digital Manufacturing & Design Centre (DManD), and also concurrently the Director of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC@SUTD). In these 2 research centres, he led the development of leading edge capabilities in digital manufacturing, 3D printing and computational design, as well as industry partnerships and outreach.

Before SUTD, Keng Hui had held several key appointments in A*STAR, including the Deputy Executive Director of the National Metrology Centre (NMC), and Director of the SERC Engineering Cluster, where he managed strategic initiatives in Future of Manufacturing, Marine & Offshore, Urban Systems and MedTech. Keng Hui was also formerly the Head of Product Development at a manufacturing company; CTO and co-founder of 2 medical image diagnostics and robotics startups in Boston and Singapore; research scientist at NUH.

Keng Hui is currently an adjunct professor in SUTD. He has served on national-level R&D committees in services and digital economy, advanced manufacturing, robotics and urban solutions, as well as standards committee in additive manufacturing. He was a recipient of the Innovator’s Award from the Prime Minister’s Office, and received his degrees from Imperial College, MIT and NUS.

Prof. Zhang Yong Wei Distinguished Institute Fellow

Prof. Zhang Yong Wei is the Distinguished Institute Fellow at IHPC. Other than being the Adjunct Professor at National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), he is also the “Guang-Biao” Visiting Chair Professor at Zhejiang University, China; and the Visiting Scientific Director at Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

He currently leads as the Principal Investigator for the following projects:

• SERC Strategy Project: Additive manufacturing digital twin
• AME Programmatic Project: Accelerated materials development for high entropy alloys
• A*STAR Pharos Project: Modelling the growth, structures and properties of 2D materials

Yong Wei received his Ph.D from the Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. Subsequently he has worked at the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China; Division of Engineering at Brown University, USA; Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, Singapore; and Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National University of Singapore.

His research interests focus on using theory, modelling and computation as tools to study the relationship between structures and properties of materials with applications in materials design, materials processing and manufacturing, property engineering, mechanical-thermal coupling, mechanical-electronic coupling, and mechanical properties of biomaterials et al. He has published over 450 refereed journal papers, and delivered over 80 invited/keynote/plenary talks and lectures. In addition to having supervised over 30 Master and Ph.D students and post-docs, he has also organised/co- organised numerous international conferences.

Yong Wei’s accreditations include the Best Young Scientist Award from Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, (1996); IBM Singapore High Performance Computing Quest Silver Award Winner (2002); IBM Singapore High Performance Computing Quest Gold Award Winner (2004); A*STAR Aerospace Programme Achievement Award, (2013). He is also a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher (2018) and an Editorial Member for Advanced Theory and Simulation and International Journal of Applied Mechanics.

Dr. Rick Goh Siow Mong Department Director (Computing & Intelligence)

Dr. Rick Goh is the Director of Computing & Intelligence (CI) Department at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

Rick leads a team of scientists and engineers in performing world-leading scientific research, developing technology to commercialisation, and engaging and collaborating with industry. Our 3 core capability areas are:

• Knowledge-Driven Artificial Intelligence (AI): physics-based machine learning | deep learning | reinforcement learning | federated learning | automated machine learning | multimodal AI | physics & data-driven digital twin | ModStore: domain-specific AI platform
• High Performance, Distributed & Efficient Computing: speed up algorithms on GPU & FPGA | compiler technologies | hardware-software co-design | large-scale data management & processing | neuromorphic computing | quantum-inspired computing | energy & communication-efficient computing | blockchain
• Complex Systems Modelling and Multi-scale Optimisation: physics-based empirical modelling | agent-based modelling and simulation | complex network analysis | operations research

We have coupled these areas to collectively solve many real world challenges in domains such as:

• Transport and Connectivity: working closely with Land Transport Authority, Maritime and Port Authority, SMRT, Jurong Port, PSA, Fujitsu, ST Engineering and ShipsFocus
• Healthcare/MedTech: contributing to the National Precision Medicine programme, and working closely with clinicians & partners from SERI, NHCS, NCCS, SGH, CGH, KTPH, NUHS, GE Healthcare, IHIS, etc.
• Smart Nation & Digital Economy: working closely with partners such as Certis Cisco, HDB, BCA, TÜV SÜD PSB, IMDA, etc.
• Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering: working with stakeholders in programmes such as Model Factory @ ARTC, Smart Manufacturing Joint Lab with Rolls Royce and SAESL, Industrial Internet-of-things Innovation (I3) Platform, and the Aerospace Programme

He contributes to various committees both internally and externally:

• Member of A*STAR’s ITSS Steering Committee
• Member of A*STAR Cloud Initiative Task Force
• A*STAR Rep for Coordinating Committee for Smart Nation
• A*STAR Rep for Singapore Data Science Consortium
• Member of IMDA's SDE Technology Roadmap for AI, Data, Blockchain

Rick received his PhD and Bachelor degrees in Electrical and Computing Engineering from the National University of Singapore. He received certificates in Technopreneurship, and Commercial Law and Technology Transfer. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 refereed publications, organised several international scientific conferences as general co-chair, and has several patents filed and granted. Also, with his leadership, and the excellent researchers under his care & mentorship, his department had won the following awards:

• Finalist for UITP (International Association of Public Transport) Awards, 2019: Quantifying Transit System Resilience using a Complex Network Approach
• NSCC Outstanding HPC Innovation Award 2017: ModStore
• 1st Prize – Champion of the inaugural National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Hackathon 2016
• Best Paper Award at BeyondLabeler - Human is More Than a Labeler: Simple and Efficient Learning Using Privileged Information, 2016
• 1st Prize – Champion of Personal Data Protection Challenge 2016.
• SG Mark Award 2016 – for the National Science Experiment (NSE), in collaboration with SUTD
• Innovation Award by SMRT, 2016
• Outstanding Paper Award at IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management 2015
• 1st Prize – Champion of Rakuten-Viki Global TV Recommender Challenge 2015
• 1st Prize – Champion of inaugural Singtel Accelerator Challenge 2014
• 1st Prize – Champion of Singtel-Samsung Mobile App Challenge 2014
• Best Workshop Paper. Simulating Congestion Dynamics of Train Rapid Transit using Smart Card Data. International Conference on Computational Science (ICCS), Jun 2014
• 2nd Prize – 15th Annual PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2014 on Robust Detection of Heart Beats in Multimodal Data
• 3rd place at Prudential Healthcare Challenge, 2014

Dr. Sridhar Narayanaswamy Department Director (Engineering Mechanics)

Dr. Sridhar is a Principal Scientist and Director of the Engineering Mechanics (EM) Department at IHPC, leading 45 researchers into advancing science and technology in the mechanics of materials and structures with computational models, methodologies and algorithm development since 2015. He is also the Programme Manager for the Defect Science Programme administered by A*STAR. In this role, Sridhar and the programme management team identified target research areas increasingly important for advanced semiconductor nodes and packaging technologies to Singapore and identified projects to build A*STAR capabilities in defect detection, characterisation, modelling and reduction. In an earlier role, he was the Deputy Department Director from 2011-2015 and helped lead EM in proposing, securing, directing and realising its industry engagement mission.

Prior relocation to Singapore, Sridhar has worked for fourteen years in a leading industrial research lab - Teledyne Imaging and Scientific (formerly known as Rockwell Science Center) in Southern California. He formulated theoretical and computational models for widely different materials phenomena - developing design maps that provide guidance for material design and potential payoff for actively cooled leading edges in hypersonic vehicles; in the analysis and design optimisation of infrared detector packages under cryogenic operational environments to meet qualified thermal, vibration and shock loads.

Sridhar holds a patent in Thin Deformable Mirror technology and was a member of the award winning teams at Teledyne for both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Fine Guidance Sensor in the James Webb Space Telescope. Sridhar received his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dr. Jason Png Ching Eng Department Director (Electronics & Photonics)

Dr. Jason Png is the Director for the Electronics and Photonics (EP) Department at IHPC. He has authored/co-authored 2 books and 4 book chapters, published more than 150 refereed publications and conference papers, organized several international scientific conferences as general co-chair, and has several patents filed/granted.

Jason’s research covers a wide plethora of topics including plasmonics, silicon and quantum photonics, flats optics, electromagnetics and wireless related research, both with academia and industry. A notable result was he produced the first published design of an optical modulator with a bandwidth exceeding 1 GHz, and was also part of a team that were the first to publish the design of a depletion mode optical modulator, which is now a technology standard device. Jason received his Ph.D. degree in Silicon Photonics from Surrey University in 2004, and the executive MBA degree from INSEAD and Tsinghua University in 2014. He also completed the Innovative Business Leadership Program at MIT Sloan School in 2013. Joined IHPC since 2005, Jason co-founded Optic2Connect Pte Ltd to commercialise silicon photonics developed at IHPC and were funded by Skolkovo Foundation and Spring Singapore.

Since helming the department from 2013, pioneering research results by colleagues were reported in various prestigious journals including Science, Nature Photonics, Nature Communications, Advanced Optical Materials (Invited review), ACS Catalysis, ACS Omega, Nanoscale, Materials Today (Invited review), Nanophotonics (invited review), and Scientific Reports.

Jason led a number of industry projects with major companies as Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI including the Flat Lens for Integrated Optoelectronics, Optical Spectra Modelling of Microparticles, Electromagnetic Interference Mitigation and Wireless Charging. Some of these industry projects are valued at >SGD1M, a first for the department. Additionally, the department is funded extensively by various grants including for example - the A*STAR-NTU-SUTD AI Partnership Grant, A*STAR Defect Science Programme, A*STAR Pharos Programme in Dielectric Nanoantennas, Joint NSFC-NRF Quantum Technologies Grant (only group awarded in A*STAR), A*STAR Quantum Technologies, and NRF CRP Quantum Enabled Technologies.

He is among a handful of selected A*STAR Career Development Mentor (CDM) mentoring junior scientists in their career planning and management. Additionally, Jason chairs the IHPC Early Career Research (ECR) Committee to develop, mentor, and coach IHPC’s early career researchers.

Jason contributes actively to the scientific community including serving on the Laser and Optics Joint Industry Sector Planning, as Symposia Chair for Diamond Photonics ICMAT (2019), Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Light & Laser (2018), Symposium Co-Chair CLEO Pacific Rim (2017), Jury Committee, All IEEE Young Engineers’ Humanitarian Challenge (AIYEHUM) Competition, IEEE Region 10 (Asia Pacific) (2015), United Nations International Year of Light Singapore National Committee (2014). He is the President and Founding Chair of the URSI Singapore Committee (2014) and was formerly adjunct assistant professor at National University of Singapore.

Jason and his team received a number of accolades for their work including the Top 100 Scientific Reports Physics papers (7(1), p.7246, (2017)), Spring TECS Proof-of-Value (2013), Skolkovo Award in 25th INSEAD Venture Competition (2012), National Junior College (NJC) Science Training and Research (STaR) Partners’ Award, NJC STaR Symposium (2012), IET Innovation Award 2011 - Software and Design Category (Highly Commended), and the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Prize at the Palace of Westminster, UK.

Dr. Lou Jing Deputy Executive Director, IHPC Director (Strategic Planning & Development)

Dr. Lou, is a Principal Scientist, Deputy Executive Director and  Director (Strategic Planning & Development) of IHPC.
 
Trained in physics and fluid dynamics, Lou Jing worked in various fields such as multiphase flow and mass/heat transfer modelling, fluid- structure interaction, bubble/droplet dynamics, microfluidics, and nonlinear hydrodynamics. Prior to A*STAR, he worked as a research fellow at Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht in Germany, and research scientist at NOAA/Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, USA. For his research works, Lou Jing has published over 150 journal and international conference papers.

Joined since 1999, he had worked in Fluid Dynamics Department as a scientist and department director. He received numerous awards, including Firefly Awards, Innovative Project/Policy Award (Gold) in 2022; Firefly Awards, Innovative Project/Policy Award (Silver), 2020; Minister’s R&D Merit Award 2019, Ministry of National Development (MND); IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award 2019, The Institute of Engineers, Singapore; ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award 2019, ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organisations; HPC Application Award, NSCC Singapore, 2017; SMI Best Research Project Award, 2016; Top Project, SMI Research Show Case 2016; HPC Quest Gold Award 2002.

Dr. Tan Teck Leong Department Director (Materials Science & Chemistry)

Dr. Tan Teck Leong is the Director of the Materials Science and Chemistry (MSC) Department at IHPC, where he leads a multidisciplinary team of computational materials scientists, chemists and physicists to accelerate materials discovery and development in a wide range of materials systems including alloys, catalysts, polymers and electronic materials. Concurrently, he is also the Director of Graduate Affairs at SERC and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Teck Leong joined IHPC in 2011 after obtaining his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a specialisation in Computer Science and Engineering. While working as a research scientist in IHPC, he took up the A*STAR sponsorship and completed a part-time MBA with NUS in 2018, cultivating an interest in organisational leadership and personal development. He subsequently took up leadership roles within MSC as a Group Leader in Alloys and Materials Design and later on, as a Deputy Department Director. He was also the Innovation Technology Area (ITA) Lead for Accelerated Materials and Chemicals Development in IHPC.

His research focus is in the area of alloy materials design with the aim of accelerating materials development in the areas of aerospace, nanoscale technology, catalysis, electronics, corrosion science and sustainability. He has developed algorithms and platforms to help integrate physics-based simulations at the atomistic level with machine-learned models to increase the throughput of material property predictions. He has led as PI in several competitive grants in these areas including the AME Young Investigator Research Grant (YIRG) in 2017, the Structural Metals and Alloys Programme and more recently as a Team PI on a NRF-CRP grant on interconnect fabrication. He is actively mentoring junior researchers and has supervised over 20 students across different levels from Ph.D., Masters to Bachelors.

Dr. Quek Boon Kiat Department Director (Social & Cognitive Computing)

Dr. Quek Boon Kiat is the Director of the Social & Cognitive Computing (SCC) Department at IHPC, leading a multidisciplinary team of computer scientists and AI researchers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, and engineers, to translate the understanding of human psychology and cognition into real-world solutions.

Boon Kiat joined IHPC in 2008 as one of two pioneering members of the Computational Social Cognition visiting investigatorship programme (VIP), led by Northwestern University’s Prof Andrew Ortony, a world-renowned researcher in computational social cognition and affective computing. The VIP eventually led to the formation of SCC department in 2014. Since then, Boon Kiat has been leading the department’s effort in the development of social technologies that translates the understanding of human cognition and psychology into real-world applications.

His pioneering work on the development and use of network models of socio-cognitive constructs to perform psychographic inference and reasoning has gained industry attention especially in the HR, Consumer, Healthcare, and Fintech application domains, where productisation and commercialisation efforts with A*ccelerate are currently underway. Such efforts also include the deployment of some of his research work towards internal use cases where A*STAR as a lead user, such as the trial deployment of a career self-discovery portal for that could generate inferences about users’ innate psychological traits, vocational interests, and career inclinations.

Boon Kiat was also a recipient of the prestigious A*STAR Graduate Scholarship in 2003, and the A*STAR Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2010. As a form of giving-back, Boon Kiat has been actively involved in A*GA’s scholarship outreach activities, including speaking to prospective scholarship applicants and science teachers from secondary schools and junior colleges, mentorship of junior A*GA scholars, serving on scholarship interview panels and judging various science competitions (A*STAR Talent Search, Singapore Science & Engineering Fair, A*STAR Research Attachment Symposium).

Ms. Sharon Ee Director (Corporate Services)

Ms. Sharon Ee joined IHPC in 2000 as the Human Resource Manager (HRM), leading a team of Human Resource Professionals in the areas of Recruitment, Performance Management, Training and Payroll.

With her current role as the Director of Corporate Services in IHPC, Sharon partners closely with the functionalised groups in the areas of Human Resources, Finance, Facilities, Corporate Communications and Information Systems to ensure smooth operations.

Acting as the Data Protection Officer, Sharon also chairs the following committees in IHPC:

• Business Crisis Management (BCM) committee
• Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) committee
• Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) committee

On the lighter side, she advises the Social Committee and Corporate Wellness Committees in IHPC.

Sharon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and obtained a Graduate Diploma in Personnel Management (top 10%) from the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM). She participated in the Firefly Programme.

Mr. Lim Sien Koon Director (Industry Development)

Mr. Lim Sien Koon has more than 15 years of experience in business development and operational management. He has worked in the private sector handling key customer accounts and leading a team of 30 people to manage daily operational activities. Sien Koon has also worked in the public sector to implement G2B initiatives and streamline regulatory framework to create a conducive business environment, as well as carry out enterprise development work helping companies upgrade capabilities and grow business.

Sien Koon joined IHPC in 2013 and has been working closely with researchers to promote IHPC’s capabilities and build successful industry partnerships. Currently he leads the Industry Development Department to drive industry engagement activities in both private sectors and public agencies.

Sien Koon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Economics from University of Exeter.

Dr. Su Yi Executive Director

Dr Su Yi is the Executive Director of the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR. He leads the research institute to advance scientific knowledge and deliver impact to the industry and society through research in modelling and simulation, and Artificial Intelligence.

Prior to his current role, Dr Su served as the Deputy Executive Director and the Director of Strategic Planning & Development at IHPC. He was responsible for driving organisational excellence in terms of people, structure and processes. Under his leadership, Dr. Su overhauled the research planning and roadmapping processes and oversaw its implementation across all research departments at IHPC. In addition, he was instrumental in driving digitalisation where he established strong data foundation, instilled digital stewardship and setup business intelligence framework/tools to transform IHPC towards a digital-first organisation. Concurrently, Dr. Su also serves as the Co-Executive Director-In Charge of the A*STAR Health & Medical Technology, Horizontal Technology Coordinating Office where he spearheads and coordinates MedTech R&D between A*STAR and the national healthcare ecosystem.

Prior to these appointments, Dr Su served as the Director of the Data Analytics Department at SMRT Corporation. He was responsible for strengthening SMRT’s operational capability and created unique competitive edge through the build-up and exploitation of data analytics and artificial intelligence expertise. He was also in-charge of technology management and supports business units on technology prospecting and road mapping, as well as management of intellectual property, collaboration relationship and governance. Dr. Su Yi also headed the A*STAR-SMRT Urban Mobility Innovation Centre (UMIC), where he was responsible for the formation, execution and governance of research projects. 

Over the past 20 years, Dr Su carried out research and development in the areas of Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), Aerospace Engineering, Geospatial Modelling, Biomedical Engineering and Botanical Modelling. He was the founding leader of the Geometrical Modelling Group and he played a key role in driving the Computationally-driven Biomedical Research Programme at IHPC, where he led the development of technologies in Computer-aided Cardiac Diagnosis, Image Analysis in Digital Pathology and Virtual Surgical Simulation. 

Dr Su had won multiple competitive research grants from various grant bodies, such as the A*STAR, National Medical Research Council (NMRC), SingHealth Foundation and National Research Foundation (NRF). Based on the novelty and commercial relevance of his work, he grew a portfolio of patents and had been awarded The Second Prize in the International 2014 PhysioNet/Computing in Cardiology Challenge and the “Best Innovation in Biomedical & Pharmaceutical Applications” in the National Instruments ASEAN Graphical System Design Achievement Awards 2011.

Dr. Qin Zheng Department Director (Systems Science)

Dr. Qin Zheng is the Director of the Systems Science Department at the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC). The department has strong capabilities in three areas: Complex Systems, Multi-Scale Optimisation, and Energy Systems. The department works closely with key stakeholders such as Land Transport Authority (LTA), Maritime and Port Authority (MPA), Science & Technology Policy & Plans Office (S&TPPO), Ministry of Transport (MOT), Energy Market Authority (EMA), and Singapore Maritime Institute (SMI). As PI, he has received over S$20 million of research funding from industry and the public sector.

The project “Singapore Integrated Transport & Energy Model (SITEM)” on vehicle electrification received the Ministry of Trade & Industry (MTI) Firefly Borderless (Silver) Award 2022. SITEM's simulation and modelling insights were critical to the "National Effort to Electrify Singapore’s Vehicle Population" by MOT, LTA, A*STAR and agency partners, which won the One Public Service Award 2023. The department also leads the Maritime AI Research Programme which co-develops AI and other digital technologies with industry partners for a safer, more efficient and more sustainable maritime industry.

Qin Zheng has research interests in urban mobility, maritime, modelling and simulation, and systems engineering. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National University of Singapore (NUS). He serves on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) and was the Program Committee Chair of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS) 2018. He received the 2021 IEEE TPDS Awards for Editorial Excellence. For the work on the Covid-19 screening regime with Ministry of Health (MOH) and NUS School of Public Health, he received the A*STAR COVID Award in 2021.

Prof. Ivor Tsang Director Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR)

Prof Ivor W Tsang is the Director of A*STAR Centre for Frontier AI Research (CFAR) since Jan 2022. Previously, he was a Professor of Artificial Intelligence, at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and Research Director of the Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute (AAII), the largest AI institute in Australia, which is the key player to drive the University of Technology Sydney to rank 10th globally and 1st in Australia for AI research, in the latest AI Research Index. Prof Tsang is working at the forefront of big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence. His research focuses on transfer learning, deep generative models, learning with weakly supervision, big data analytics for data with extremely high dimensions in features, samples and labels. His work is recognised internationally for its outstanding contributions to those fields.

In 2013, Prof Tsang received his ARC Future Fellowship for his outstanding research on big data analytics and large-scale machine learning. In 2019, his Journal of Machine Learning Research paper titled "Towards ultrahigh dimensional feature selection for big data" received the International Consortium of Chinese Mathematicians Best Paper Award. In 2020, he was recognized as the AI 2000 AAAI/IJCAI Most Influential Scholar in Australia for his outstanding contributions to the field, between 2009 and 2019. His research on transfer learning was awarded the Best Student Paper Award at CVPR 2010 and the 2014 IEEE TMM Prize Paper Award. In addition, he received the IEEE TNN Outstanding 2004 Paper Award in 2007 for his innovative work on solving the inverse problem of non-linear representations. Recently, Prof Tsang was conferred the IEEE Fellow for his outstanding contributions to large-scale machine learning and transfer learning.

Besides these, Prof Tsang serves as the Editorial Board for the Journal of Machine Learning Research, Machine Learning, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Big Data, and IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence. He serves as a Senior Area Chair/Area Chair for NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI and IJCAI, and the steering committee of ACML.

Visit CFAR website.

Dr. Kang Chang Wei Department Director (Fluid Dynamics)

Dr. Kang Chang Wei is the Director of the Fluid Dynamics (FD) Department at IHPC, where he works closely with a multidisciplinary group of scientists and engineers to develop cutting edge modelling and simulation technology for fluid flow, thermal/mass transfer and fluid related multi-physics applications. The research focuses on the insight of fluid physics, advanced flow solutions, acceleration of fluid flow simulations and support industry innovations through simulation and design optimisation. Concurrently, he is also the Lead for Environmental Transmission & Mitigation Co-Operative, PREPARE (the Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness And Response) and Visiting Advisor to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID). 

Prior to his current role, Chang Wei served as the Deputy Director of Fluid Dynamics Department for 10 years. He worked closely with Department Director to steer the FD department in a strategic way, plan and manage resource (manpower, hardware and software), position and manage industry engagements and focus on talent development. He was also the Innovation Lead for Green Technologies for Marine, Offshore, Oil & Gas Engineering. Among many others, he and the team have formulated long-term collaboration with Sembcorp Marine in the areas of Green Shipping, Gas Solutions and Renewables. One of the highlights was award winning and internationally certified UV based Ballast Water Treatment System.

Over the past 16 years, Chang Wei conducted research, development and deployment in the areas of green shipping (e.g. hull form optimisation, emission control, ballast water treatment), manufacturing process (e.g. thermal spray, cold spray, shot peening) and sustainability (e.g. data centre, alternative fuels, renewables). Specially in year 2020 and 2021, he led a team of computational scientists with fluid dynamics expertise to develop advanced computational modelling of airflow and droplets dispersion. For his research works, Chang Wei published over 80 journal and international conference papers. 

Chang Wei received numerous awards including 2012 IHPC Best Teamwork Project, 2015 MTI Borderless Silver Award, 2016 Top Project of SMI Research Showcase Award & 2016 SMI Best Research Project Award, 2019 IHPC Best Paper (Fluid Dynamics Department), 2019 Singapore’s Institute Engineers (IES) Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award, 2019 President’s Technology Award (PTA), 2020 MTI Firefly Innovative Project/Policy Silver Award, 2021 MTI Firefly Borderless Silver Award, 2021 A*STAR Certification of Appreciation for COVID Work, 2022 MTI Firefly Innovative Project/Policy Gold Award.