Professor John Thong

Deputy President (Academic) & Provost, Singapore Institute of Technology

Professor John Thong is the Deputy President (Academic) and Provost, Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), overseeing the university’s academic policies and curriculum, applied learning, faculty development and student administration.

Prior to joining SIT in August 2020 as Vice Provost, Prof Thong was the Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He graduated with a B.A. (1st Class Honours) in Electrical Sciences from Cambridge University in 1985, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the same university in 1989. In the same year, he was elected to a research fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge, where he remained until 1991 before joining NUS in 1992.

He has served on various grant and oversight panels and committees for A*STAR Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) and the Ministry of Education’s Academic Research Fund (AcRF). He was co-director of the National Research Foundation (NRF) Quantum Engineering Programme before stepping down in August 2020.

Following his PhD research, Prof Thong’s early research interests were in scanning electron microscopy and related techniques, electron-optical instruments, and electron sources. He co-founded Scanning Beam Technology Pte Ltd in 2000 to commercialise electron-beam techniques for integrated circuit analysis. His interests turned to nanotechnology in the early 2000’s, with his most recent research being focused on structural, electrical and thermal properties of 1D and 2D nanomaterials.