Governing Board
The Governing Board (GB) of the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials (I- FIM) serves to oversee the effective management, and provide strategic research and governing oversight for the Institute.
Mr. Peter Ho
Chair, I-FIM Governing Board
Peter Ho is the Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures and a Senior Fellow in the Civil Service College.
Peter Ho is Chairman of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (URA), Chairman of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), Chairman of the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) Governing Council, Chairman of the Office for Space Technology & Industry (OSTIn) Board, Chairman of PRECIsion Health Research, SingaporE (PRECISE) Board Oversight Committee, Chairman of the National Gallery Singapore (NGS), and Chairman of the Institute for Intelligent Functional Materials (I-FIM) Governing Board. He is a board member of the National Research Foundation (NRF), and a member of the Board of Governors of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), and of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP).
When he retired from the Singapore Administrative Service in 2010 after a career in the Public Service stretching more than 34 years, he was Head, Civil Service, concurrent with his other appointments of Permanent Secretary (Foreign Affairs), Permanent Secretary (National Security & Intelligence Coordination), and Permanent Secretary (Special Duties) in the Prime Minister’s Office. Before that, he was Permanent Secretary (Defence). He was also the inaugural Chairman of the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
Prof. Aaron Thean
Deputy Chair, I-FIM Governing Board
Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost, National University of Singapore
Aaron Thean is the Deputy President (Academic Affairs) and Provost of the National University of Singapore (NUS). He was previously the Founding Dean of NUS College of Design and Engineering, and the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, where he is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition, he holds several technical leadership responsibilities at the University; including the Director of Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation μ-Electronics Centre, Director of Hybrid Integrated Flexible Electronic Systems research program, and Co-Director for A*Star SIMTech-NUS Joint Lab on Hybrid Flexible Electronics. From 2016 to 2018, he had also served under the Deputy President of Research and Technology of NUS as the Director of Industry Engagement & Partnerships. In 2018, he was the Director of Applied Materials-NUS Corporate Laboratory for Advanced Materials. Prior to NUS, Aaron Thean was the Vice President of Logic Technologies at IMEC. Working with Semiconductor Industry leaders like Intel, TSMC, Samsung, Global foundries, Apple, and Sony, he directed the research and development of next generation semiconductor technologies and emerging nano-device architectures. Prior to joining IMEC in 2011, he was with Qualcomm’s CDMA technologies in San Diego, California where he led the Strategic Silicon Technologies Group. From 2007 to 2009, Aaron was the Device Manager at IBM, where he led an eight-company process technology team to develop the 28-nm and 32-nm low power bulk CMOS technology at IBM East Fishkill, New York, from research to risk production. Before IBM, Aaron was a senior scientist at Freescale Semiconductor (and Motorola) where he performed research on many novel devices.
Aaron graduated from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, USA, where he received his B.Sc. (Highest Honors), M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering (Edmund J. James Scholar). He has published over 400 technical papers and holds more than 50 US patents. Among his notable recognitions, he and his IMEC team received the 2014 Compound Semiconductor Industry Innovation award for their III-V Nanodevice work. He was also recognized for his research contribution to Samsung with the 2013 Samsung Collaboration Award from the Samsung LSI EVP. Aaron was also given the 2010 Young Alumni Achievement Award from his Alma Mater, the University of Illinois, for his contribution to advanced transistor R&D. More recently, Aaron was recognized as Singapore’s National Research Foundation’s Returning Singapore Scientist. Active in local and international advanced electronics communities, Aaron is an Editor of the IEEE Electron Device Letters and he serves on several Scientific Advisory Boards that include Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMART-LEES), A*Star Institute of Microelectronics (IME), and he is Consulting Fellow to IMEC CEO.
Prof. Allan Hugh Macdonald
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Physics
Professor, Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin
Allan H. MacDonald is a theoretical condensed matter physicist and the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair Professor of Physics at The University of Texas at Austin. He was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, and attended local schools completing a B.S. at St. Francis Xavier University in 1973. He completed his Ph.D.in physics at The University of Toronto in 1978, working with S.H. Vosko on relativistic generalizations of density functional theory, and on the application of density functional theory to magnetism in metals.
Prior to joining the University of Texas, he worked at the Ottawa laboratory of the National Research Council of Canada (1978-1987) and at Indiana University (1987-2000). He has held visiting positions at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the Max Plank Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart.
MacDonald's research has focused on new or unexplained phenomena related to the quantum physics of interacting electrons in materials. He has contributed to theories of the integer and fractional Quantum Hall effects, spintronics in metals and semiconductors, topological Bloch bands and momentum-space Berry curvature phenomena, correlated electron-hole fluids and exciton and polariton condensates, and two-dimensional materials.
In 2011 MacDonald and Rafi Bistritzer, a former postdoctoral researcher in MacDonald's lab, predicted that it would be possible to realize strong correlation physics in graphene bilayers twisted to a magic relative orientation angle, foreshadowing the field of twistronics. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, an experimentalist at MIT, found that the magic angle resulted in the unusual electrical properties the UT Austin scientists had predicted. At 1.1 degrees rotation at sufficiently low temperatures, electrons move from one layer to the other, creating a lattice and the phenomenon of superconductivity. The magic angle allows electrical current to pass unimpeded, apparently without energy loss. This could lead to more efficient electrical power transmission or new materials for quantum applications.
His recent work is focused on anticipating new physics in moire superlattices, and on achieving a full understanding of magic-angle bilayer graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenide moire superlattice systems.
MacDonald received the Canadian Association of Physicists's Herzberg Medal in 1987, the Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society in 2007, the Ernst Mach Honorary Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 2012, and the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2020. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005 and the National Academy of the Sciences in 2012.
Professor Mark E. Smith
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Southampton
Professor Mark E. Smith is the President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton. Prior to this role on 1 October 2019, Professor Smith was Vice-Chancellor at Lancaster University from January 2012 until September 2019. He was previously Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick.
Throughout his academic career, he has published more than 380 papers about advanced magnetic resonance techniques, helping to understand a range of problems in the field of materials physics. He is currently a member of the executive group overseeing the National High Field Solid-State NMR Facility at the University of Warwick.
In addition to his role as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, he holds a number of external appointments including Senior Independent Member of UKRI EPSRC’s Council; and board member of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, chairing their Research Wales Committee. He also chairs UKRI’s Financial Sustainability of Research Group and was the former Chair of the University and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA) 2016-2022. He has also served on the Boards of Jisc, HESA and HESCU.
He was awarded a CBE for Services to Research and Higher Education in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Mr. Ren Yan Yoong
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Branch Head, Academic Research Division, Higher Education Group, Ministry of Education, Singapore
Mr Yoong Ren Yan is the Branch Head of the Academic Research Division, Higher Education Group, in the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
The Academic Research Division (ARD) oversees the research strategies, policies and funding of the Autonomous Universities (AUs), Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) in Singapore. The ARD also supports the Academic Research Council and Social Science Research Council in developing the research eco-system in Singapore.
Prior to his appointment at the Ministry of Education, Ren Yan worked at the Ministry of Transport and the Strategy Group in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Ms. Ng Chai Pheng
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Director, Manufacturing, Trade and Connectivity,
National Research Foundation, Singapore
Ms. Ng Chai Pheng is currently with the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore and oversees the Manufacturing, Trade and Connectivity (MTC) directorate, which is involved in strategising and management of R&D programmes for the MTC domain. Prior to her role with the MTC directorate, she was supporting NRF’s international relations portfolio and worked closely with stakeholders in the Research, Innovation and Enterprise community on the plans for Singapore’s international partnership engagements.
She had also been in roles involving management of acquisition and platform development projects, R&D programme management, strategy and planning, as well as industry development during her work in defence and public research institutions. Chai Pheng graduated with First Class Honours in Mechanical and Production Engineering from Nanyang Technological University under a scholarship from the then Defence Materiel Organisation of Singapore. She received her Master of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the National University of Singapore.
Prof. Kie Leong TEO
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Acting Dean, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore
Kie Leong TEO is currently the Acting Dean of the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) and Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering (1997) from NUS. He was a visiting scholar (1995-1996) and a post-doctoral fellow (1997-1998) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Department of Physics, UC Berkeley.
A leading expert in spintronics, his research group works on the development of low-power non-volatile memory. He was the Vice-Dean, Research & Technology (1999-2019) at the former Faculty of Engineering at NUS and Deputy Dean (2020-2022) at CDE. At the national level, he has served in the National Research Foundation and A*STAR research review committees. He has also served on many research/technical review panels, and conference organisation committees. Prof. Teo is also a member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is the recipient of the Public Administration Medal (Bronze), National Day Award, 2019.
Prof. Sun Yeneng
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Dean, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore
Professor Sun Yeneng is Goh Keng Swee Professor and Professor of Mathematics and Economics at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Upon receiving his PhD in Mathematics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, he joined NUS as a lecturer at the Department of Mathematics. He was promoted to professor in 2002, and was also Raffles Professor of Social Sciences from 2009 to 2015. Professor Sun headed the Department of Economics from 2008 to 2012 and the Risk Management Institute from 2018 to 2020. He is currently the Dean of Faculty of Science and had helmed this role since 1 July 2020.
Professor Sun's research interests include mathematical economics, analysis and probability theory. He was a recipient of the Outstanding University Researcher Award in 1998 and the National Science Award in 2000. He has been an Economic Theory Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory since 2011, and a Fellow of the Singapore National Academy of Science since 2014.
Dr. Keith Carpenter
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Senior Fellow, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore
Currently an A*STAR Senior Fellow, Dr Keith Carpenter leads the Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore (PIPS) as its Programme Director. Prior to this, Dr Carpenter was the founding Executive Director of the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES), A*STAR and led the institute from 2002 for 15 years. He has more than 25 years of industry experience with ICI, Zeneca, AstraZeneca and Syngenta, where he held leadership roles in technology development, corporate R&D, corporate engineering and process development. Dr Carpenter has lent his expertise and advice to several local and international advisory boards.
Dr Carpenter also serves as a Senior Advisor to Wilmar International and serves on various evaluation panels within NRF and MOE. Dr Carpenter received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Leeds. His professional qualifications include, Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Member of the American Chemical Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore.
Mr. Yeoh Keat Chuan
Member, I-FIM Governing Board
Chief Operating Officer, Temasek International
Keat Chuan (KC) joined Temasek in October 2017. He was appointed Chief Operating Officer on 1 April 2026, and is concurrently Joint Head of Portfolio Development and Deputy Head of Ecosystem Enablement of Temasek Singapore.
KC oversaw a number of initiatives related to building enterprises in areas such as cybersecurity, digital services, and agrifood in Temasek. He was the founding CEO of Ensign Infosecurity, a cybersecurity company majority owned by Temasek, a position he held concurrently with his role at Temasek until September 2019. He was also the CEO of Temus, a digital transformation firm established by Temasek.
Prior to Temasek, KC was Managing Director of the Singapore Economic Development Board.
Professor Sir Konstantin Novoselov FRS
Director, Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, NUS
Prof Sir Konstantin ‘Kostya’ Novoselov FRS is the Director of the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, as well Distinguished Professor at the Department of Material Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS). He currently holds a Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professorship at NUS.
Prof. Novoselov graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his PhD studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands (2004). He started to work as postdoc at the University of Manchester in 2001. He was the first Director of the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester. He currently also holds positions of the Langworthy Professor of Physics and the Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Manchester.
In 2019, he joined the National University of Singapore as Distinguished Professor and in 2021 became the Founding Director of the Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials at NUS.
Professor Novoselov is recipient of numerous prizes, including Nicholas Kurti Prize (2007), International Union of Pure and Applied Science Prize (2008), MIT Technology Review young innovator (2008), Europhysics Prize (2008), Bragg Lecture Prize from the Union of Crystallography (2011), the Kohn Award Lecture (2012), Leverhulme Medal from the Royal Society (2013), Onsager medal (2014), Carbon medal (2016), Dalton medal (2016) and the Otto Warburg Prize (2019), among many others. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for his achievements with graphene.
He was knighted Commander of the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 2010 and knighted at the UK New Year Honours in 2012.
Prof. Novoselov is best known for isolating graphene for which he won the Nobel Prize, and is an expert in condensed matter physics, mesoscopic physics and nanotechnology. Every year since 2014 he is included in the list of the most highly cited researchers in the world.