Biography
Associate Professor Khoo Eng Tat serves as the Assistant Dean (Research & Technology) at the College of Design and Engineering. He is also an Associate Professor and the Area Director (Outreach) at the Engineering Design and Innovation Centre. Concurrently, he holds honorary joint appointments as Associate Professor at the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Institute of Operations Research and Analytics.
He directs the Immersive Reality Lab, with research and teaching interests in product development, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), conversational AI, and human-computer interaction (HCI). He is the founding lecturer and module coordinator of EG4301A Ideas to Startup, a pre-accelerator final-year project module, and also coordinates the EDIC Accelerator. Additionally, he supervises undergraduate students in EG3301R Ideas to Proof-of-Concept and EG4301 DCP Dissertation, as well as graduate students pursuing PhD and MEng degrees.
A founding member of the Holomedicine Association, he actively promotes mixed reality adoption in clinical education and practice. He mentors startups at PIXEL (Infocomm Media Development Authority) and through the Startup SG Network (Enterprise Singapore), and serves as an advisor to the Republic Polytechnic School of Technology for the Arts. Previously, he was a board director of the AsiaVR Association, contributing to the growth of the VR/AR developer community in Singapore and the region. He also served on the advisory board of the 2012 New Media Consortium, identifying emerging technologies in Singapore’s education system, and was the artistic advisor for the 6th Asia-Europe Art Camp organized by the Asia-Europe Foundation.
Prior to his academic career, he was the R&D Director of a pioneering VR/AR company, where he led interdisciplinary teams in new product development. He later co-founded a VR startup and served as Head of Engineering at a venture capital firm.
He holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore’s Mixed Reality Lab and the Keio-NUS CUTE Center.
Research Interests
Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality, Conversational AI, Human Computer Interaction
Research Projects
- Principal Investigator – AR Simulated Passenger for Cabin Crew Intuition Training and Passenger Experience Research, SIA-NUS Digital Aviation Corp Lab/National Research Foundation
- Co-Principal Investigator – Transforming Pilot Competency and Skill Development using AR/VR, SIA-NUS Digital Aviation Corp Lab/National Research Foundation
- Co-Principal Investigator – Use of VR and MR in Simulation Training for Obstetric Emergencies, Learning Innovation Fund – Technology (LIFT) Grant
- Principal Investigator – Near real-time rendering and auto-segmentation of ultrasound volumes and position on MR devices, MOE Tier-1 Grant/Engineering in Medicine
- Co-Principal Investigator – EyeLearnAR (Eye Examination Learning with Augmented Reality), Teaching Enhancement Grants (TEG)
- Co-Principal Investigator – The use of virtual paediatric patients to teach evaluation and management of respiratory distress in children, Medical Education Technology Enterprise (METE) Grant
- Principal Investigator – The use of virtual paediatric patients to teach evaluation and management of respiratory distress in children, Teaching Enhancement Grants (TEG) – Completed
- Principal Investigator – Mixed Reality in Healthcare Training, Education and Management, IHiS (MOH) RIEP grant – Completed
Teaching Awards
- NUS Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2023
- CDE College Educator Award 2023
- NUS Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2022
- NUS Annual Digital Education Award (Team) 2022
- Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine Digital Education Award (Team) for 2021
- Faculty Teaching Excellence Award AY2020/2021
- Provost Educator Award 2020
- Innovative Teaching Award AY2019/2020
- Faculty Teaching Excellence Award AY2018/2019
Keynote and Invited Speaker
- Transforming Medical Education through GenAI and VR/MR simulations, Singapore Healthcare Engineering Conference SHEC 2024, October 2024
- Metaverse – A Welcome Possibility or Unrealistic Utopia?, Singapore National Library Board, Mar 2023
- Metaverse for medical education, media arts and beyond, Meta Matters APAC Series, Aug 2022
- Metaverse: What you need to know, Canadian Business Chamber Singapore AGM, Jun 2022
- Imagine the Future (Metaverse) – Architecting a Future-Ready Cloud Strategy, Cloud Executive Summit Asia, Marina Bay Sands, April 2022
- Medical Education and the Metaverse, Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics Annual Congress, Los Angeles, 2022
- Recent developments and advances in Extended Reality in Medical Education, Neuroscience-20 Summit of the G20 Summit, 2021
- Crossing the Bridge between Realities for Medical Simulation and Training, Inaugural Holomedicine Summit, 2021
- Applications of AI and Mixed reality, International Hepato-Pancreato Biliary Association IHPBA V Reach Session 8, 2021
- Mixed Reality Intergenerational Games, IEEE GeronCAS, 2021
- Augmented Reality and Chatbot/AI for social media and businesses, Facebook id8, Singapore, 2018
- Future of VR/AR, IoT and AI for Industry 4.0, IoT Asia, Singapore, 2018
- AR/VR success in transforming brands and industries, Social Media Week, Jakarta, 2017
- Mixed reality games to engage elderly and children, Keynote for ISG2014, The 9th World Conference of Gerontechnology, Taipei, 2014
Selected Research Papers
- Qi, J., Yu, L., Khoo, E.T., Ng, K.W., Gao, Y., Kow, A.W.C., Yeo, J.C. and Lim, C.T., 2024. Bridging the digital–physical divide using haptic and wearable technologies. Nature Electronics, 7(12), pp.1098-1110.
- Liu, C., Tan, F.F.Y., Zhao, S., Kanneganti, A., Tushar, G.A. and Khoo, E.T., 2024, May. Facilitating Virtual Reality Integration in Medical Education: A Case Study of Acceptability and Learning Impact in Childbirth Delivery Training. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
- Ng, K. W., Furqan, M. S., Gao, Y., Ngiam, K. Y., & Khoo, E. T. (2023). HoloVein—Mixed-Reality Venipuncture Aid via Convolutional Neural Networks and Semi-Supervised Learning. Electronics, 12(2), 292.
- Ng, H. W., Koh, A., Foong, A., Ong, J., Tan, J. H., Khoo, E. T., & Liu, G. (2022, July). Real-Time Spoken Language Understanding for Orthopedic Clinical Training in Virtual Reality. In Artificial Intelligence in Education: 23rd International Conference, AIED 2022, Durham, UK, July 27–31, 2022, Proceedings, Part I (pp. 640-646). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
- Loh, A. P., Law, E., Putra, A. S., Koh, E., Zuea, T. K., & Khoo, E. T. (2021). Innovation, Design & Entrepreneurship in Engineering Education. Advances in Engineering Education.