Tan eng chye

Professor Tan Eng Chye graduated from National University of Singapore with his BSc (1st Class Honours) in 1985 and completed his MSc and PhD at Yale University in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Professor Tan joined NUS’ Department of Mathematics as a Senior Tutor in 1985, eventually becoming the Department’s Deputy Head in 1999.

Professor Tan’s passion for teaching showed in the numerous teaching awards he won not just at the Faculty level but at the University level as well. In 1998, he was awarded the Innovative Teaching Award by the Faculty of Science and the Teaching Excellence Award for Innovative Teaching by the University. He was also awarded the Faculty as well as University Teaching Excellence Awards for the academic year 2004/2005.

In June 2003, Professor Tan was appointed Dean of Science, a post he held til March 2007. Today, he is NUS’ Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost. His responsibilities are wide ranging, from overseeing NUS Deans and their faculties/schools to being responsible for the appointment, promotion and tenure process of academic staff.

Professor Tan’s research interests are Representation Theory of Lie Groups and Lie Algebras and Invariant Theory and Algebraic Combinatorics. He has been invited to speak at several overseas conferences and has published articles in top internationally refereed journals. He has also been active in promoting mathematics, having established the Singapore Mathematical Society Enrichment Programmes in 1994, revamped the Singapore Mathematical Olympiad in 1995 to allow more participation from students, and initiated a series of project teaching workshops for teachers in 1998. He served as President of the Singapore Mathematical Society from 2001 to 2005 and President of the South East Asian Mathematical Society from 2004 to 2005.

Apart from being the Chairman of the Risk Management Institute’s Management Board; Professor Tan is a Management Board member of Defence Science National Laboratories, MINDEF and the Singapore-MIT Alliance. He is also a Council member of the National Institute of Education.