Tin Wee Tan
Tan Tin Wee is the founding director and current Chief Executive of the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, which manages Singapore’s first national petascale facility. NSCC’s supercomputing resources support the advanced research needs of both the public and private sectors in Singapore and are made accessible to all local institutions of higher learning, research institutes, polytechnics, government agencies and companies.
Tin Wee’s career path has often placed him at the leading edge of emerging technologies. He is recognized as a pioneer in the fields of high-performance computing, bioinformatics and the Internet in Singapore. He invented and founded multilingual internationalized domain names (IDN) in 1998 and headed the Technet Unit in 1995, Singapore’s first research ISP, which was later spun-off as Pacific Internet. He has been instrumental in advancing data-intensive research by connecting research platforms in Singapore and regionally as founder and co-founder of Singapore Research Network (SingAREN) and Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN), respectively. He is also the first and only Singaporean to be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.
He helped set up the first bioinformatics resource at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1990 and founded the NUS Bioinformatics Centre in 1996 and the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) in 1998. He served on the Board of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and was awarded a Gold Medal at the World Congress for Medical Informatics in 1992. As an Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, NUS, he is a pioneer in the field of molecular biology and biotechnology. He has published over 100 journal publications and trained more than 20 PhD and MSc graduates. He is currently a Senate member of the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS).
He couples his domain expertise in research with a prolific entrepreneurial spirit. Apart from heading Technet, he has been instrumental in several commercialization ventures and start-ups such as Bioinformatrix Pte Ltd, Knorex Pte Ltd, iGates Bioinnovation and iDNS.net International. He has served on the Board of Keppel Telecommunications and Transportation Ltd and is currently the Board Director of Keppel Data Centre REIT Management.
Tin Wee also represents Singapore’s interest at regional forums. He is a Subcommittee Focal Point of the ASEAN Committee on Science and Technology (COST) for which he received the ASEAN Science and Technology Meritorious Service Award in 2008. He is currently on the Board of Advisors to COSTI (BAC) of the ASEAN Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation (COSTI). He has also served on the Subcommittees on Biotechnology, and on Infrastructure and Research Development. His other accolades include the ASEAN Business Forum Achievement Award in 1998 and the Singapore Youth Award in 1994.