Professor Thean Voon Yew Aaron

Dean
College of Design and Engineering

Aaron Thean is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is currently the Dean of College of Design and Engineering. In addition, he holds several technical leadership responsibilities at the University; which includes Director of National Research Foundation’s Next-Generation Microelectronics research center (SHINE) and A*Star SIMTech-NUS Joint Lab on Hybrid Flexible Electronics. From 2016-2018, he had also served under the Deputy President of Research and Technology of NUS as the Director of Industry Engagement & Partnerships.

Prior to NUS, Aaron Thean was the Vice President of Logic Technologies at IMEC. Working with Semiconductor Industry leaders like Intel, TSMC, Samsung, Globalfoundries, Apple, and Sony, he directed the research and development of next-generation semiconductor technologies and emerging computing architectures.  Prior to joining IMEC in 2011, he had worked for major semiconductor technology companies in the USA. These included Qualcomm San Diego-California, IBM East Fishkill-New York, and Freescale – Austin-Texas. He and his industrial R&D teams had successfully enabled some of today’s most successful mobile devices by Samsung and Apple.  Aaron started his industrial R&D career as a senior scientist at Motorola where he performed research emerging technologies.  Aaron graduated from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, USA, where he received his B.Sc. (Highest Honors), M.Sc., and Ph.D.  degrees in Electrical Engineering (Edmund J. James Scholar). 

He has published over 300 technical papers and holds more than 50 US patents in advanced semiconductor technologies. Aaron was also given the 2010 Young Alumni Achievement Award from his Alma Mater, University of Illinois, for his contribution to advanced transistor R&D. More recently, Aaron was recognized as Singapore’s National Research Foundation’s Returning Singapore Scientist.