 | 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.