Soh Ong

I am currently with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the NUS Graduate School. I currently serve as a member of the Nanyang Polytechnic Engineering Advisory Board. I am a Fellow of CIRP, The International Academy for Production Engineering, where I was the first from the Asia region and the 4th female fellow in the world to be elected in 2012.

I am a pioneer in the research and development of augmented reality technologies application in product design and manufacturing. As a firm believer that research outcomes should benefit the general population, I lead the Augmented Reality+Digital Twins in Advanced Manufacturing laboratory to apply digital twins and augmented reality technologies that have been developed for advanced manufacturing in the assistive technology area. I have published 6 books and over 300 international refereed journal and conference papers, with a google citation of more than 11,881, and a H-index of 60.

I have received international and national accolades, notably

• The 2004 M. Eugene Merchant Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, where I was the 1st ASEAN female to have received this award since the award was 1st established;
• The 2004 Singapore Youth Award for the Science & Technology Category;
• The 2006 Outstanding Young Person of Singapore Award for the Science & Technology Category;
• The 2009 Emerging Leaders Award in Academia by the US Society for Women Engineers, where I was the first Singaporean to have received this award since the award was established;
• The 2013 Singapore Youth Award Medal of Commendation for attaining significantly higher levels of achievements and contributions to the society.

I have served as a member of the NUS University Senate Delegacy from April 2005 to June 2006, 1 July to 30 June 2011, 1 July 2011 to 30 Jun 2013, July 2014 to June 2016, and June 2016 to June 2018 . I am currently serving as a member of the NUS Senate Delegacy from June 2019 to June 2021. I have served on the NUS Board of Disciplinary from 1 July 2011 – 30 Jun 2013, July 2015 – 30 June 2017, and June 2016 to June 2018. I have been appointed by NUS President to serve on the NUS Board of Disciplinary from June 2019 to June 2021.

I was appointed by Singapore President SR Nathan to serve as a Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament for a term of 2 ½ years from 2nd January 2005. I served as NMP from 2nd January 2005 to 19th April 2006. I was the only NMP during my term to have raised an adjournment motion in the Parliament. The topic of my motion was Singapore’s National Research and Development Strategic Thrusts. I was a Resource Panel Member of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports, Resource Panel for advising Women’s Workgroups on Women and Leadership, Work, Life Skills and Socio-Community Development, and a member of the Assistive Technology Workgroup, Singapore Society for Physically Disabled.

I am an Asia Society Asia 21 Young Leader. In 2006, I was elected to join a new generation of leaders representing a broad range of disciplines and 23 countries from across the Asia-Pacific region and the U.S.

I am passionate about gender diversity and leadership in STEM in particular Women in Engineering. I am currently an ambassador for Girls2Pioneers STEM programme for United Women Singapore. I served as an ambassador for STEM programme for the UN Women Singapore Women Committee, from January 2014 to October 2019.

I am a pioneer Pathfinder for the Singapore Ministry of Education’s Programme on Community of Pathfinders in Action (COMPACT), from September 2015.

Honours and Awards

• National University of Singapore Postgraduate Scholarship, 1992
• Teaching Commendation Award for Excellence in Teaching, NUS, 1999/2000
• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, 2000
• Best Paper Award, September 2002: A Distributed Feature-based Environment for Collaborative Design, W.D. Li, Y.Q. Lu, H. Zhou, S.K. Ong, A.Y.C. Nee, J.Y.H. Fuh and Y.S. Wong, 2002, Proceedings of the 6th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics, SCI2002, 14-18 July 2002, Orlando, USA, 69 – 74.
• IJPR Norman Dudley Award, September 2003: Hybrid Genetic Algorithm and Simulated Annealing Approach for the Optimisation of Process Plans for Prismatic Parts, W.D. Li, S.K. Ong, A.Y.C. Nee, 2002, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 40, No. 8, 1899 — 1922. First team recipient in the Asia-Pacific region. (Certificate)
• 2004 M. Eugene Merchant SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, November 2003. First ASEAN female recipient of this award since the award was first established. (more information; a few photographs of the ceremony; citation read by Professor Marvin DeVries; Singapore LianHeZaoBao newsclip on 25th December 2003; newsclip on Global Network for Chinese Professionals, www.networkchinese.com)
• 2004 Singapore Youth Award, Science & Technology Category, Singapore National Youth Council. First female faculty in the Faculty of Engineering at NUS to have received this award. (more information; a few photographs of the ceremony; citation). Only female technology recipient since the award was initiated.
• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, 2004
• IES Publication Awards (Student Category), December 2004, C.C. Ng, S.K. Ong and A.Y.C. Nee, Development and Performance Verification of a Stewart Platform, IES Journal, The Institution of Engineers, Singapore.
• 10th Natural Science Outstanding Paper Award, December 2004, An Internet-Enabled Image- and Model-Based Virtual Machining System, Y.B. Luo, S.K. Ong, D.F. Chen and A.Y.C. Nee, 2002, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 40, No. 10, 2269 — 2288. This paper won the top honour (best 5 out of 7000) after a complex and rigorous process of review and defence in the Hubei Province Excellent Paper Competition. (Certificate)
• Samsung DigitAll HOPE Award, November 2005, A team led by Associate Professor Ong Soh Khim and Professor Andrew Nee has won the Samsung DigitAll Hope 2005 for their project Augmented Reality Assistive Keyboard. They share the prize, a grant of US$500,000 with 11 others from Southeast Asia and Australia. The team has invented a device which marries Assistive and Augmented Realitytechnologies, to help the elderly and disabled use full computer functions in composing and sending emails, control household appliances, such as television sets and lights. (newsclips)
• The Outstanding Young Person of Singapore Award 2006 (Science and Technology Category), Junior Chamber of Commerce, Singapore. The award was presented by MCYS Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan on 29th March 2006. (newsclip)
• 2009 Emerging Leaders Award in Academia, Society for Women Engineers, US. The award was presented by SWE President on 16 October 2009, Long Beach CA. First Singaporean recipient of this award since the award was first established. (more information from SWE, citation, official press release, pictures)
• Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Welfare Foundation (MSIWF) Research Award 2010 Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Welfare Foundation. There are only 4 awards in Singapore in 2010. The team is awarded this award for their research project on an ‘Augmented Reality-Enhanced Navigation Assistance System’.
• Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Fellowship, 2011.
• Teaching Commendation Award for Excellence in Teaching, NUS, 2000/2011.
• Best Paper Award, June 2012, A Framework for Feature-based Product Modeling in a Collaborative Environment, S.K. Ong, L. Yang and A.Y.C. Nee, June 2012, ICFDM2012 10th International Conference on Frontiers of Design and Manufacturing Sciences (ICFDM), ChongQing, China, June 10-12, 2012 (Certificate).
• 2013 Singapore Youth Award, Medal of Commendation, Singapore National Youth Council. First female faculty in the Faculty of Engineering at NUS to have received this award. Only female MOC recipient since the award was initiated. (citation, NYC Media Release, youtube)
• 2015 Great Women of Our Time Award, Winner of Science & Technology, Singapore Women’s Weekly, SPH (press release, pictures)
• Best Paper Award, March 2016, The 9th International Digital Enterprise Technology Conference, DET2016, 29-31 March 2016, Nanjing, China, for the paper on “Optimal pass planning for robotic welding of large-dimension joints with deep grooves” (Certificate)
• Champion, March 2018, HILTI IT Competition, Theme: Augmented Reality and Internet of Things.
• Second Highest Cited Paper in 2017, among the papers published in Advances in Manufacturing during 2015-2016, paper entitled “A comprehensive survey of augmented reality assembly research” published in Advances in Manufacturing (2016) 4:1-22, based on Web of Science citation count.
• 12th among World Top 15 Augmented Reality Researchers (Link)
• Best Presentation Award, Improving Maintenance Efficiency with an Adaptive AR-assisted Maintenance System, C.Y. Siew, A.Y.C. Nee, and S.K. Ong, ACM–2019 The 4th International Conference on Robotics, Control and Automation (ICRCA 2019), 26th to 28th July 2019, Guangzhou, China.
• Long Service Medal, Singapore National Day Award 2021

Publications & Citation Details

• Authors of 2 high-level monographs, co-editor of 4 books and 2 conference proceedings, 164 published/accepted international journal publications, 20 published/accepted book chapters, 118 international conference publications
• International Journal Papers
• Book Chapters
• International Conference Papers
• Research Monographs & Proceedings
• ORCID 0000-0002-9569-3350
• Scopus Citations > 7,363, H-index: 47 (May 2023)
• Google Scholar Link Citations >11,881, H-index: 60 (May 2023)
• ResearchGate Link Citations > 9,207, H-index: 52 (May 2023)
• Web Of Science Citations > 5,195, H-index: 41 (May 2023)

Research Interests

• Virtual and Augmented Reality Applications in Advanced Manufacturing
• Augmented Reality Applications in Assistive Technology and Rehabilitation Engineering
• Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing, Life Cycle Engineering/Assessment
• Distributed and Collaborative Manufacturing
• Augmented Learning in Industry 4.0 and Development of Computer-Based Teaching Tools