FACULTY AWARDS & RECOGNITION
Prof Lam Khee Poh named as Global WELL Educator of the Year 2025
Shaping healthier built environments starts with education.
Professor Lam Khee Poh has been named Global WELL Educator of the Year 2025 by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), one of the organisation’s highest honours.
The award recognises individuals whose work has significantly advanced education and leadership within the global WELL movement. For over four decades, Prof Lam has shaped how healthy and sustainable built environments are researched, taught, and practised, impacting generations of students in Singapore and internationally.
At the heart of his work is a human-centric philosophy rooted in the Total Building Performance and Diagnostics framework, guiding his WELL and GREEN initiatives across academia and industry.
His leadership has also contributed to key milestones at NUS and CDE, including SDE4 becoming the first building in Singapore to receive WELL certification and the first university building worldwide to attain this distinction. In 2021, SDE4 also achieved the IWBI WELL Health-Safety Rating, reflecting strong attention to operational excellence and preparedness in managing building health and safety, particularly in response to pandemic challenges.
Reflecting on the recognition, Prof Lam shared: “I am utterly humbled and deeply honoured to receive the Global WELL Educator Award 2025. It is an immensely fulfilling journey which started some four decades ago, working with PhD students on research and imparting newfound knowledge to generations of architecture and built environment students around the world.”
This recognition marks a significant milestone in his continued efforts to integrate research, education, and real-world impact in shaping healthier and more sustainable built environments.
Read more: https://cde.nus.edu.sg/news/professor-lam-khee-poh-named-iwbi-global-well-educator-of-the-year-2025/
Prof Lim Chwee Teck elected as International Member of the US National Acedemy of Engineering
Professor Lim Chwee Teck, NUSS Chair Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been elected an International Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional honours accorded to engineers worldwide.
His election recognises his contributions to biomedical engineering, particularly in mechanobiology, microfluidics, and wearable and AI-enabled health technologies. Through innovations ranging from label-free cell capture to blood-based cancer screening, his work has advanced both fundamental understanding and real-world healthcare applications, translating research into patented technologies and spin-off companies
Reflecting on the recognition, Prof Lim said, “I am deeply grateful for this tremendous recognition from the NAE. It truly reflects the dedication and hard work of my lab members, collaborators, and colleagues, with whom I am proud to share this honour. I look forward to continuing our journey together in translating research from the laboratory into meaningful real-world impact.”
Prof Lim joins other CDE faculty members of the US NAE, including Prof Liu Bin, NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology), and Visiting Professor and CDE alumnus Dr Radha Nagarajan. Their appointments highlight the College’s strong engineering community, including internationally recognised faculty and alumni.
Prof Richard Liew and research fellows receive the Feature Paper Award by Engineering Structures (Elsevier)
Congratulations to Professor Richard Liew and his research fellows, Dr Liu Haokun and Dr Li Shan on receiving the featured Article Award from Engineering Structures for their article on "Improved Progressive Collapse Resistant Behaviour of Steel Beam - CFST Column Connections with Energy-Dissipating Rebars"
Read more: (Volume 345-A, 15 December 2025, Article 121435).
Professor Cheng-Wei Qiu (Provost’s Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering) has been named the 2026 recipient of the Joseph Fraunhofer Award/Robert M. Burley Prize, one of the highest honours in optical science and engineering, by Optica.
First presented in 1982, the Fraunhofer Award recognises significant research accomplishments in optical engineering and honours the contributions of German scientist Joseph Fraunhofer to the field. Prof Qiu is the first scientist from Singapore to receive this award.
The award citation notes Prof Qiu’s “pioneering works in interfacial optics of low-dimensional and van der Waals materials with photonic nanostructures, fusing multiscale symmetry, topology, and geometry from within natural crystals and meta-optics.”
Prof Qiu is Director of the Optical Science & Engineering Center (OSEC). His work has achieved worldwide recognition for advancing the understanding of multiscale symmetry, topology and geometry in natural crystals and meta-optics. His pioneering research and leadership in optical metasurfaces and photonics have earned him several honours, including a Visiting Miller Professorship at UC Berkeley, the President’s Science Award in Singapore, recognition among Physics World’s Top 10 Breakthroughs (UK), and the Robert T. Poe Prize from OCPA (US). He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Academy of Engineering of Singapore, Optica, International Society for Optics and Photonics, The Electromagnetics Academy (US), and a Foreign Fellow of the Chinese Optical Society.
Commenting on the award announcement, Prof Qiu said: "I'm deeply honoured by this recognition, and an honour like this is never an individual achievement."
"Singapore has witnessed a great transformation in science, particularly in nano-optics and photonics because of their widespread and profound application value. Both my team and I are grateful for the sustained support from the NUS community and national agencies, which has positioned Singapore at the forefront of optical science and applications."
Optica, formerly known as Optical Society of America, was founded in 1916 and is dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in optics and photonics.
Prof Tang Loon Ching awarded JRSE Outstanding Contribution Award
Congratulations to Professor Tang Loon Ching on receiving the inaugural Outstanding Contribution Award from the editorial office of the Journal of Reliability Science and Engineering (JRSE) - the first international journal founded in China dedicated to reliability research. The award was presented at JRSE’s First Annual Meeting of the Editorial Board on 31 January 2026.
Prof Tang has served as JRSE’s Co-Editor-in-Chief since its inception and is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Quality and Reliability Engineering International, published by Wiley, the first international journal founded in 1985 that covers both quality and reliability engineering in the world.
