Associate Professor Benjamin Tee has been appointed to the newly-created role of Vice President (Ecosystem Building) at NUS, supporting the Deputy President (Innovation and Enterprise) in overseeing the growth and development of the University’s Innovation and Enterprise ecosystem.
Prior to his appointment, which takes effect on 1 April 2024, Assoc Prof Tee was Associate Vice President of NUS Enterprise, as well as Vice-Dean (Research) at CDE.
In these roles, he spearheaded the creation and implementation of several strategic programmes such as the new GRIP 2.0, which enables researchers and postgraduate students to transform research into deep tech start-ups, and expanded the University’s global BLOCK71 nodes.
He also helped establish partnerships with major industry players and prominent investors including Microsoft, JR East and Temasek.
Announcing the appointment, NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said: “Assoc Prof Tee is an accomplished researcher and innovator. He develops ground-breaking flexible and stretchable electronic sensors for robotics and healthcare by pushing the boundaries of materials science, mechanics, electronics and AI.”
In 2015 Assoc Prof Tee was named an MIT TR35 Global Innovator, and received the Singapore Young Scientist Award a year later. In 2019 he was named the World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist of the Year.
He has also been listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (2021) and one of the World’s Top Two Per Cent Scientists (2022, 2023) by Stanford University. His research team won the International James Dyson Foundation Prize in 2021 for their work on healthcare sensors, the first Singaporean winner in the award’s 17-year history.
Assoc Prof Tee is also a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded three start-ups, Privi Medical, Hannah Life Technologies and Tacniq.AI.
Privi Medical has since been acquired while Hannah Life Technologies raised $10M from leading tech investors including YCombinator. Tacniq.AI is a recent spinout that translates sensor technologies developed by his lab.
