Tsuhan Chen

Professor Chen Tsuhan is Deputy President (Innovation and Enterprise), a position he has held since 1 April 2023. He was Deputy President (Research and Technology) from June 2018 to March 2023, and was appointed Distinguished Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on 1 June 2018. He is also Chief Scientist of AI Singapore, a national programme in artificial intelligence hosted at NUS.

A renowned expert in pattern recognition, computer vision and machine learning, Prof Chen has driven efforts at strategising NUS research, mentoring researchers, and increasing NUS’ competitive research funding, which has risen by about 30% over five years. He is a strong proponent of collaborative research, launching the Reimagine Research Initiative in 2021. The initiative, which provides seed funding for interdisciplinary project ideas, seeks to encourage researchers to work across diverse fields of expertise to find solutions to the most pressing problems of our time.

Prof Chen joined NUS from the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States, where he was the David E. Burr Professor of Engineering from 2009 to 2018. From 2015 to 2017, Prof Chen was the Cheng Tsang Man Chair Professor and Dean of the College of Engineering (CoE) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. From 2009 to 2013, he served as the Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell.

During his term as Director, Prof Chen promoted the School to top ranking positions, and launched several initiatives to encourage innovation and to promote research and teaching excellence. He also directed the Advanced Multimedia Processing Laboratory, which conducts research in areas including computer vision and pattern recognition; multimedia coding and retrieval; as well as biometric authentication. At NTU CoE, Prof Chen pioneered several support schemes to encourage collaborative inter-school multidisciplinary programmes aligned with the domain areas identified in RIE2020. These new initiatives included the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Centre, the Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices, and the Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Research Centre. Under his leadership, the NTU CoE also sealed partnerships to set up joint laboratories focusing on cyber-physical systems research with Taiwan’s Delta Electronics, and rail transport capabilities with Singapore’s SMRT Corporation.

From 1997 to 2008, Prof Chen was a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the US. He served as the Associate Department Head from 2007 to 2008. Prof Chen founded and served as Director of the “ITRI Lab @ CMU,” a collaborative research laboratory sponsored by Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). He was also the Director of the International Collaboration on Advanced Security Technology at CyLab CMU, sponsored by Taiwan’s National Science Council.

From 1993 to 1997, Prof Chen was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, New Jersey in the US. He received MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, in 1990 and 1993, respectively, and the Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1987.

Prof Chen founded the Technical Committee on Multimedia Signal Processing, and the Multimedia Signal Processing Workshop, both in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Signal Processing Society. His endeavour later evolved into the founding of the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, both joining the efforts of multiple IEEE societies. Prof Chen was appointed the Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Multimedia from 2002 to 2004, championing the growth of the journal in both frequency and volume.

He also served on the Editorial Board of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine and as Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Signal Processing, and IEEE Trans. on Multimedia. He co-edited a book titled Multimedia Systems, Standards, and Networks.

Prof Chen received the Charles Wilts Prize for outstanding independent research in Electrical Engineering leading to a PhD degree at the California Institute of Technology in 1993. He was a recipient of the US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, titled “Multimodal and Multimedia Signal Processing,” from 2000 to 2003. He received the Benjamin Richard Teare Teaching Award in 2006, the Eta Kappa Nu Award for Outstanding Faculty Teaching in 2007, both at the Carnegie Mellon University, and the Michael Tien Teaching Award in 2014 at the Cornell University.

Prof Chen has published more than 300 technical papers and holds 29 US patents. He was elected to the Board of Governors (2007–2009), and a Distinguished Lecturer (2007–2008), both with the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He served as Vice President from 2012 to 2013, and as President from 2013 to 2014, of the ECE Department Head Association and received the Robert M Janowiak Outstanding Leadership and Service Award in 2017. He is a member of the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers, Singapore.