Tan Tin Wee
Tan Tin Wee[edit]
Tan Tin Wee | |
|---|---|
| Chief Executive, National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Singapore |
| Residence | Singapore |
Prof. Tan Tin Wee is Chief Executive of National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore. He graduated from from the Insititute of Biology in 1993.
Long history of pioneering involvement with the Internet since 1991[edit]
Dr Tan Tin Wee initiated a number of Internet firsts for Singapore, including the first WAIS server (biomed.nus.sg) in the region (1992); the first Gopher server (solomon.technet.sg) in the region (1992); joint first Web server and longest running in Singapore (1993) (http://biomed.nus.sg); Singapore InfoWeb (1994) (http://www.sg), the forerunner of the present National Web Homepage, InfoMAP; first WAIS and Gopher server in Japan (RIKEN); the first Internet Cybercast of Singapore's National Day Parade and many other events since 1994. Under his leadership, Singapore hosted the first Chinese Website in 1994, the first Tamil Web site using Tamil scripts in 1995, and a multilingual web site in 1996. During his headship of the Internet Research and Development Unit (IRDU), Singapore became the first regional Java Web site, VRML Website, 6Bone node, ActiveX Web site and the world's first operational Multilingual Domain Name system (iDNS). His near misses include fostering the first Asian email forwarding system POBox, before Hotmail became wildly successful; Allo! java chat system while ICQ made its international debut; Auto-GIF multilingual image rendering system before Sinanet became prominent. Currently, he is trying to drive the commercialisation of several technologies - MIRAGE, multilingual Java Input and multilingual DNS.
The biggest challenge was to successfully initiate the first Asian STAR-TAP GigaPOP in November 1997, the first advanced research network (SINGAREN) to link to the USA vBNS outside North America. He continues to drive Asia Pacific advanced networking technologies through his founding role in the Asia Pacific Advanced Network consortium (APAN) and his current portfolio as User Community Co-Director, particularly in the bioinformatics and medical informatics area. He has successfully driven the formation of the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network (APBioNet) and the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI) telemedicine project.
Three Decade Track Record for Awards[edit]
From 1968 to 1977 and 1979, he has consistently been awarded academic awards. Between 1977 to 1979, in at least a dozen science, mathematics and research competitions, he has won individual and/or team awards. Most notable was a Science Fair top prize Chemistry project "Possible Uses and Applications of Human Hair Keratin". During his military service in 1980, he was part of the best company team in a Military Knowledge Quiz. In 1982, he was offered a government scholarship (OMS) (declined). In 1985, he was awarded a Trinity College Traveling Studentship. In 1989, he won the Annual Prize of the Vaccine Research Trust, UK for his pioneering work on developing recombinant DNA vaccines for chlamydial infections at the Moredun Institute, Scotland. He won the Gold Medal at the World Congress for Medical Informatics in 1992 for his work in biocomputing and Internet, and was awarded the Singapore Youth Award for excellence in Science and Technology in 1994. In 1997, he led the team which was awarded the Life Insurance Association Award for volunteer community work in introducing Internet technology to the disability communities. In the same year, he was awarded the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (JCCI - Singapore Foundation) Education Award for his work on Internet technologies for education (previous winners including Dr Tony Tan and Prof Lawrence Chia).
In the same year, for his work in promoting R&D, he was awarded the ASEAN Achievement Award by the ASEAN Business Forum in Jakarta (other winners from Singapore including Dr Cham Tao Soon, President, Nanyang Technological University).
In 1998, in recognition of his pioneering contribution to the Tamil-speaking community in Singapore and world wide, through the development of Tamil Internet in Singapore, and the initiation of the first International Tamil Internet Symposium, the Boon Lay Community Centre organising committee awarded him and his colleagues the 7th Indian Cultural Festival Innovation Award. He continues to guide the development of Tamil internet. At the same time, he is also involved in the National Chinese Internet Steering Committee, as well as fostered the first Malay internet website, KampungNet. He is now technical advisor to the nascent Tamil Internet Steering Committee.
Career Appointments[edit]
He was formerly Head of Technet Unit (1994-95), National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore's first Internet Service Provider, which he took to the point of a $2.5M privatisation (The sale formed the basis of a new company, Pacific Internet, which in 1999 floated in NASDAQ). He was then tasked to head the NSTB-funded Internet Research and Development Unit (IRDU) (1995-1998 ) which he has taken to the second phase, handing it over to the School of Computing, NUS as the new Centre for Internet Research (CIR). He has successfully conceptualised and initiated a $28M project to link Singapore into the vBNS (Very High Speed Backbone Network Service) and Internet 2 of the USA through the formation of a Singapore Research and Education Network (SINGAREN), which is now transitioned to CIR and the Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL).
In 1996, after six years of negotiation, he and his colleagues finally established the formation of a Bioinformatics Centre (BIC) at the National University of Singapore with seed-funding of S$6 million from the Economic Development Board. He is now Director of BIC (concurrently Associate Director of CIR).
To commercialise biocomputing software solutions, he has co-founded a start-up Bioinformatics company (BIX) in Singapore with a presence in Menlo Park, California (1997). This company has completed a major contract with Schering Plough Research Institute with revenue of S$250,000 in the first year. It has now signed deals with JoyMail, SinaNet and Yahoo for some generic Internet technologies. In December 1998, BIX successfully licensed bioinformatics technology to a USA startup bioinformatics company, KRISTECH Inc. which is a $1.6M BIX-KRDL-NUS spin-off. BIX is now in the process of spinning off another company to handle the multilingual domain names system which he conceived and invented in March 1998.
On the conference circuit[edit]
He has delivered numerous papers in many international conferences, both in his original field of biochemistry and molecular biology, as well as in biocomputing, bioinformatics and Internet technology. He is a regular speaker at local and overseas conferences relating to the Internet, and has organised a number of local and international conferences in Singapore, including APRICOT'99, TamilNet'97 - Tamil Internet Information Processing Symposium and the APNG conference in 1996. He has also been invited to speak at a number of overseas conferences, including in Tokyo, Tsukuba (Japan), Puna (India), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Orlando (USA), Geneva (Switzerland) and Seoul (Korea).
As a Molecular Biologist[edit]
A molecular biologist, biotechnologist and biochemist by training, he was appointed Lecturer at the Dept of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, NUS in 1990 and rose to Senior Lectureship in 1995. During his PhD in Edinburgh, Scotland, he identified and prototyped a conventional subunit vaccine and a set of recombinant subunit vaccines against chlamydial infection in sheep. He has taught courses in molecular biology, immunochemistry and biocomputing, published refereed papers, edited a book on Biotechnology in Singapore, created the Singapore Biotechnology Database and the ASEAN Biotechnology Database, and from 1990 to 1994, edited several issues of the Singapore Biochemist, the official publication of the Singapore Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Research Interests[edit]
Current research areas include multilingualisation of Internet, music notation on the Internet, Internet communication protocols, VRML, Java, advanced Internet technologies, building regional advanced research networks, biocomputing and bioinformatics. In straddling two major technologies, IT and Biotechnology, he hopes to help Singapore establish a niche as a major technology player in Bioinformatics.
Community Service[edit]
In the social realm, he has been involved in a number of community projects e.g. Tampines Webtown, and in particular, with disabled people, including initiating computer networks at Singapore School for the Deaf (1994), Singapore Association for the Deaf (1994), Disabled People’s Association (1994), as well as the Mobile Internet POWER Wheelathon Project (1996), chairman of the Enable2000 IT virtual committee, spearheading Internet for the disabled communities. In 1997, he was appointed by the National Council for Social Service (NCSS) to be Chairman of the CAL Project for Special Education Schools. He chairs the APNG Sub-Working Group on Disabilities, and has chaired the INET'97 Disability Panel Discussion. He is currenty involved in a project to introduce Internet and assistive technology to the Singapore School for the Visually Handicapped, leading a team to build the school intranet, as well as a Braille-Book-on-Demand system. In 1999, he was appointed director the International Centre for Disability Resources on the Internet (ICDRI).
Professional Membership and Service[edit]
Professionally, he has served for several years as the Chief Editor for the Singapore Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He was Vice President of the Association for Informatics in Medicine Singapore (AIMS) before becoming the President in 1996. He was elected in 1997 for a two-year term as Chairman of the Asia-Pacific Networking Group (APNG), the leading Internet networking group in the Asia-Pacific region. In this capacity, he has steered the regional networking community to create APSIRC, APTLD, WWTLD and helped to found APAN - the Asia Pacific Advanced Network Consortium, where he serves as Co-Director, User Communities Area fostering the development of advanced research projects in specialised research communities including Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics. He is also currently serving as the President of Singapore's Medical Informatics association, and helping to launch the Asia Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI) telemedicine consortium.
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