President's Office
Professor Choon Fong Shih
President Designate
Biography
Professor Choon Fong Shih received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1973. Thereafter,
he led the Fracture Research Group at the General Electric Corporate Research Lab
in the United States. In 1981, he joined Brown University.
Professor Shih has made significant contributions in nonlinear fracture mechanics
and computational methods for fracture analyses. With approximately 150 publications
in leading scientific journals, Professor Shih is listed by the Institute for Scientific
Information (ISI) among the world’s most highly cited engineering researchers. Among
his honors are the Swedlow Award and the George Irwin Medal, both awarded by the
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).
Professor Shih is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering
and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences. He was the inaugural recipient from Asia Pacific for
the Chief Executive Leadership Award presented by the Council for Advancement and
Support for Education. He has been awarded the French decoration "Chevalier" in
the Order of the "Legion d'Honneur."
Professor Shih has been a consultant to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, among others.
He is a member of the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee for the Department of Materials
Science and Engineering.
After 30 years in the United States, Professor Shih returned to Singapore in 1996
as the founding director of Singapore's Institute of Materials Research and Engineering
with concurrent appointment as the deputy vice-chancellor of the National University
of Singapore (NUS) from the following year. He is the founding president of the
Materials Research Society of Singapore, which is affiliated with the International
Union of Materials Research Societies.
In 2000, Professor Shih became president and vice-chancellor of NUS. In this capacity,
Shih has actively promoted NUS' global profile. He was a key driver for the formation
of the International Alliance of Research Universities, an alliance
of ten of the world's leading research universities spanning four continents. He
is the chairman emeritus of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU),
a consortium of 37 leading research universities modeled after the premier Association
of American Universities (AAU). Professor Shih chairs the Governing Board of the
APRU World Institute, an institute of advanced studies seeking
to address scientific, social and economic issues of global importance.
Professor Shih has also served on a number of national level committees in Singapore.
He is the chairman of the Singapore-MIT Alliance Governing Board as well as an executive
committee member of the Economic Development Board. He is a founding member of the
Singapore International Foundation. He is also a board member of the National Research
Foundation. Shih also served on the Economic Review Committee tasked
to develop wide-ranging strategies for re-making Singapore.