News: NTU appoints LKCMedicine faculty to new named chairs

​At a University Town Hall on 26 March, NTU President and Distinguished University Professor Subra Suresh announced the creation of 50 new named faculty chair professorships, which came into effect in April 2019. He also revealed the names of NTU faculty members who were appointed to these newly created chairs. Eight LKCMedicine faculty members were among those appointed.

Prof Suresh said, "Today's announcement follows concerted efforts initiated to raise new funds from external gifts and the accompanying matching endowment that have been specifically set aside for term chair professorships. As a result, we are able to more than double the number of chairs available at NTU, to recognise and celebrate faculty accomplishments.

NTU Singapore continues to grow in global stature and impact as a result of the remarkable accomplishments of our faculty in research, education and innovation that benefit knowledge creation, industry and society. A key mechanism to recognise our early-career, mid-career and senior faculty colleagues is through named chair professorships. These chair professorships serve as an important tool to attract, nurture, recognise and retain outstanding faculty at all levels of progression."

In August last year, Prof Suresh had shared the university's ambitious plan to create up to 100 new term chair professorships over five years to recognise NTU faculty members who have contributed in many ways to advance NTU. Previously, as a young university, NTU has resources accumulated to fund only about 35 named chair professorships for permanent and visiting faculty across the entire university. This benefits less than 3 per cent of the university's outstanding faculty.

In order to rectify this situation, the President's Council in consultation with the Advancement and Development Committee (ADC) of the NTU Board of Trustees has established new mechanisms for the establishment of new named chair professorships for early- and mid-career faculty as well as for more senior full professors.

Prof Suresh added, "During the past several months, we had identified and secured new resources tied to external gifts in order to support a large number of chairs for faculty at all levels in all five academic colleges at NTU, as well as the National Institute of Education (NIE) and the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). These funds are ring-fenced specifically for named chair appointments so that supporting these faculty chairs will not have future budget implications. We will continue to build on this significant momentum to create additional term chairs and permanently endowed chairs in the coming years."

Prof Suresh added that the appointees were selected from a very competitive pool of highly accomplished faculty.

Congratulations to all new chair professorships appointees for the well-deserved recognition!

LKCMedicine Full Professor Chairs

Professor James Best: Dean of LKCMedicine and President's Chair in Medicine

Professor John Chambers: President's Chair in Cardiovascular Epidemiology

Professor Balás Gulyás: President's Chair in Translational Neuroscience

Professor Daniela Rhodes FRS: Director of NTU Institute of Structural Biology and President's Chair in Structural Biology

Professor Teoh Swee Hin: President's Chair in Chemical and Biological Engineering

LKCMedicine Early- and Mid-Career Chairs

Nanyang Assistant Professor Christine Cheung: Provost's Chair in Medicine

Assistant Professor Sanjay Chotirmall: Provost's Chair in Molecular Medicine

Nanyang Assistant Professor Luo Dahai: Provost's Chair in Medicine