Organizing Committee members

Chair

Yang How TAN

Tan Yang How, a radar systems engineer and defence systems architect, is the President of DSTA Academy in the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) where he leads the organisation’s Systems Engineering and Programme Management Training. Prior to this appointment in 2012, he had served in various technical and managerial positions in the Ministry of Defence and DSTA. His previous appointments included Director (Naval Systems) and Director (DSTA Masterplanning and Systems Architecting).

Yang How’s extensive contributions to the defence systems engineering and radar community span three decades. He was instrumental in the invention and wide-scale operationalisation of the Infrared Fever Screening System (IFSS) in Singapore, which was the first system in the world that could detect fever through a non-intrusive mass screening of passengers at the airport. His innovative integration of technologies and techniques applied in advance radar systems and electro-optic sensor systems led to the development of the IFSS in record time. He received a Certificate of Commendation in 2003, as the success of the IFSS had played a key role in the national effort against SARS.

The IFss project was one of the AFFYMETRIX HEALTH Laureates of The TECH MUSUEM AWARD 2004. An award based in the Silicon Valley USA that gives recognitions to innovations that benefit humankind.

For his outstanding engineering innovations and project achievements over the years, Yang How won Defence Technology Team Prizes in 1992, 1995 and 2001. He was also the winner of the 1997 Defence Technology Prize (DTP) Individual Award for his outstanding contributions in the Radar Domain. In recognition of his contributions, Yang How was conferred National Day Public Administration Medals in 2000 (Bronze) and 2003 (Silver). Yang How also served as an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Temasek Defence Science Institute, National University of Singapore, where he supported curriculum development and taught radar courses in the postgraduate programmes from 2002 to 2011.

Yang How obtained a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical Engineering) degree and a Master of Science (Management of Technology) degree from the National University of Singapore in 1983 and 1994 respectively. He also attended the Programme for Management Development (PMD 79) at Harvard Business School in 2004.

Members

Samuel CHAN

Dr Sam Chan obtained his BSc degree and Ph.D in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from University of Birmingham, U.K. in 1985 and 1988 respectively. He is currently Director of Systems at Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore. His main areas of work have been in systems engineering and integration of land transport related electrical and mechanical systems. Since joining LTA in 1997, he has been working in the above areas on many local and overseas rapid transit system and road tunnel projects undertaken by LTA and MSI Global(subsidiary of LTA). Prior to this, he had worked with London Underground Limited and Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation in systems engineering on several railway and transit projects for over 8 years. He is one of the founding members of IES CSEP and is currently committee member of IES CSEP Registry Monitoring Committee. Sam is also Fellow of IET, UK and IES Singapore.

Bernard KOH

Bernard Koh is the Head of Water Systems Unit in PUB, national water agency. Bernard is responsible for the operations of PUB to ensure overall system reliability, resilience and optimization. His work includes operational planning to address vulnerabilities and gaps in the systems, and stress test the robustness of the systems. Bernard was instrumental in the development of PUB’s Intelligent Water Management System (IWMS) which enables PUB to improve its management of water quantities, water qualities, systems efficiency and reliability, as well as build PUB’s capabilities in the integrated command and control of its entire water operations.

Bernard has more than 20 years’ experience in water and used water management, and project development of PUB infrastructures. A registered Professional Engineer (Electrical) in Singapore, Bernard obtained his BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Nanyang Technological University and MSc in Electrical Engineering from National University of Singapore in 1994 and 2001 respectively, and attended the International Executive Programme at INSEAD in 2009.

Jimmy KHOO

Jimmy Khoo has a diverse background, with a broad range of experience in planning, designing and operating large complex organisations and systems.

Jimmy Khoo is Senior Vice President in the Singapore Power group‎ and is currently the Managing Director of Singapore District Cooling. SDC provides centralised production of chilled water in the premium district of Marina Bay and is the largest fully underground network in the world. Mr Khoo previously headed the planning and strategy division responsible for developing the extensive electricity network in Singapore, which is one of the most reliable power grids in the world. ‎Other roles involving complex or large systems included starting Singapore’s LNG Terminal project as Acting CEO and being involved in integrating two large SP companies in Australia.

‎Prior to joining Singapore Power, Mr Khoo held senior appointments in the Ministry of Defence and the Singapore Armed Forces. As Director of Joint Operations and Planning, he was responsible for spearheading the transformation of the Singapore Armed Forces. As a key part of this transformation, he subsequently led the Future Systems Directorate to enable disruptive innovation in a large and complex organisation.

Erick LANSARD

Erick LANSARD holds a degree in Aerospace Engineering (1983) and a PhD in Space Geodesy (1987). In 1987 he joined Alcatel Espace to start mission analysis activities and to manage several advanced studies in the field of radar observation, signal intelligence, telecommunication and navigation (GNSS2). In 1999 he was appointed Director of System Engineering of Alcatel Space Industries then Director of Architecture, Observation & Sciences Space Systems in 2000 (optical, infra-red, hyperspectral, radar). He has been successively Director of Research of Alcatel Space, then of Alcatel Alenia Space in 2005 and of Thales Alenia Space in 2007, with R&T teams in Toulouse, Cannes, Roma and Torino. In 2010, he was appointed VP R&T France and Director of Thales Research & Technology-France, the Thales Corporate Research lab in Palaiseau. In October 2013, he was appointed VP Technical & Space Development at Thales Solutions Asia, based in Singapore.

Among other duties, Erick is member of Scientific Council of CNRS, Chairman of the International Astrodynamics Committee of the International Astronautical Federation, member of the Academy of Air & Space, member of the International Academy of Astronautics, AIAA Associate Fellow and Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Fellow. He has published over 40 papers and holds several patents in the field of space system engineering.

William Yue Khei LAU

Mr LAU Yue Khei, William graduated with a Bachelor degree in Electronic Engineering (First Class Honours) at the University of Western Australia in 1978. He was awarded the DSO National Laboratories (DSO) Scholarship thereafter and in 1986, William graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a Master degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

In a career spanning more than three decades, William has held various key appointments within the Defence Technology Community. This includes organisations such as the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), Defence Research and Technology Office under the Ministry of Defence and DSO.

William has been awarded the prestigious Defence Technology Prize twice and also received the Public Administration Medal (Bronze) in 1996.

Currently the Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Research) and Director of DMERI at DSO, William’s core responsibility is to raise the quality of DSO research.

Yew Weng LEE

Yew Weng has 22 years of experience in the estate management consultancy and technology solution business. As an electrical engineer with Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) from 1993 and 2003, he played a key role in developing and implementing the large scale real-time lift performance tracking system for all lifts installed in HDB public housing estates. To date, the system is tracking close to 23,500 lifts round the clock to ensure reliable and safe lift service for 81% of our Singapore population staying in HDB estates.

Since joining Surbana in 2003, Yew Weng has spearheaded further technology developments to expand the functionality into a complete suite of estate maintenance solutions into today’s Integrated Estate Management System (IEMS) that integrates machine-sensing data with human feedback data. Through his in-depth technical domain knowledge, Yew Weng has helped to orchestrate a highly modular and customizable software technology platform for asset maintenance management for institutional buildings, industrial parks, airports and hospitals both locally and overseas.

As an experienced practitioner in technology adoption and integration for township management, Yew Weng is also undertaking consultancy and training work for Surbana in this area to numerous overseas government agencies.

Grace LIN

Dr. Grace Lin is the Director General and VP of the Data Analytics Technologies & Applications Research Institute at the Institute for Information Industry (III), a government think tank in Information Technology Industry in Taiwan. Dr. Lin is leading several national development programs, such as Smart Living, Smart Healthcare, Smart Tourism, Smart Media, andSmart Community related strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Institute for Information Industry, she worked at IBM for 18 years in various capacities such as Research manager for e-Business Optimization at IBM T.J Watson Research Center and has been a recognized leader and innovator in the areas of Supply ChainManagement.

Dr. Lin is an INFORMS Fellow, Chair of the INFORMS Fellow Selection Committee, a member of the Edelman Award Committee, and on the editorial board of the INFORMS Interface Journal and Service Science Journal.Dr. Lin has served on university and government panels and boards, and on editorial boards of major journals including Operations Research and MSOM. She has chaired a number of INFORMS and IEEE conferences, and is a frequent keynote speaker at international conferences and global company strategy sessions. She has also served as an Adjunct Full Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) at Columbia University and has published more than 60 technical papers, book chapters, and articles, and co-authored seven patents, with another five pending

Dr. Lin received her Ph.D. in IE and M.S. in Applied Math from Purdue University, and an M.S. and B.S. in Math from Taiwan’s Tsing-Hua University.

David LONG

For over twenty years, David Long has focused on enabling, applying, and advancing model-based systems engineering (MBSE) to help transform the state of the systems engineering practice. David is the founder and president of Vitech Corporation where he developed and commercialized CORE®, a leading systems engineering software environment used around the world.

A committed member of the worldwide systems community, David is president of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), a 10000 member professional organization focused on sharing, promoting, and advancing the best of systems engineering. Throughout his career, David has played a key technical and management role in refining and extending systems engineering to expand the analysis and communication toolkit available to systems practitioners. He continues to lead the Vitech team as they deliver innovative, industry-leading solutions to help organizations develop and deploy next-generation systems. David has served INCOSE since 1997 including a term as the Washington Metropolitan Area chapter president and international roles including Member Board Chair, Director for Communications, and Director for Strategy. He is a frequent presenter at industry events worldwide delivering keynotes and tutorials spanning introductory systems engineering, the advanced application of MBSE, and the future of systems engineering. His experiences and efforts led him to co-author the book A Primer for Model-Based Systems Engineering to help spread the fundamental concepts of this key approach to modern challenges. In 2006, David received the prestigious INCOSE Founders Award in recognition of his many contributions to the organization.

David holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering Science and Mechanics, as well as a master’s degree in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Nicolas MARECHAL-ABRAM

Nicolas Maréchal-Abram, working for Veolia Research and Innovation since 2011, is Scientific Director of the VE City Modeling Center, at Singapore. Prior to this position, he worked in the Veolia Innovation team, dedicated to Open Innovation. Arrived in Japan in 2000 as student, he got a PhD. in Environmental Science from Shizuoka University in 2004. He worked on bioindicators of environment quality studying heavy metal partition coefficient in calcitic organismes. He worked for several local companies in Japan and joined Veolia Water Japan group in 2007 as R&D manager, until 2011.

Chandran NAIR

Mr Chandran Nair is the Managing Director for National Instruments Southeast Asia and Oceania. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for running the NI business in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Under his leadership, NI has grown its market share exponentially in these regions and successfully forayed into Myanmar.

A business thinker, Chandran takes interest in a variety of subjects including business, finance, management and technology. He is a regular contributor to a weekly Business Times column – Views from the Top and has been featured on several regional media channels such as HRM Asia magazine, the CEO Chat Room - a Channel News Asia terrestrial broadcast program and BFM 89.9 radio program in Malaysia among others.

Chandran started his NI career in 1997 and went on to lead the successful initiative for a new PXI instrumentation standard that is the industry-standard platform today. Based in Austin, Texas, he was also responsible for driving the product strategy and market positioning for the instrumentation product lines in NI before taking up the directorship in Singapore in 2003.

Chandran has a bachelor’s degree in Physics, Mathematics and Chemistry from Bangalore University and Master’s degree in Mathematics from Arizona State University.

Chandran is the currently the Chairman of the board of Advisors at Nanyang Polytechnic’s Centre of Innovation and Excellence. He also sat on the advisory boards of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the Institute for Infocomm Research, Monash University Malaysia and is a member of the Science Centre board and executive committee for the Science Centre.

Chee Seng TAN

Mr Tan is presently holding the appointment of Head System & Capability Group 1 in Future Systems & Technology Directorate, Ministry of Defence, Singapore. Prior to this, Mr Tan has held appointments as Director, Emerging Systems Division, as well as Director, Sensors Division in the DSO National Laboratories, as well as Deputy Chief Research & Technology Officer (Sensor Systems) in the Defence Research & Technology Office (DRTech), Ministry of Defence. He was conferred the title of Distinguish Member of Technical Staff in November 1999.

Mr Tan received his Bachelor of Art (1st Class Hons) degree in Engineering Science from the Oxford University UK in 1980. He also won the Maurice Lubbock Award for graduating as the top student in Engineering Science. In 1986, he received his Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering with Distinction from the US Naval Postgraduate School in USA. In 2006, he completed the Program for Executive Development in International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Mr Tan joined the Ministry of Defence in 1982 as a project engineer involving in the specification, evaluation & acquisition of defence systems. He worked on a variety of different types of systems - air defence radar & weapons, command & control systems, and ground, naval & airborne radar systems. Upon joining DSO in 1989, Mr Tan worked on Radar and Radar-related technologies, and subsequently in other Sensors areas such as EO, acoustic & image processing. During his technical career, he has led several large project teams in the design and development of complex radar systems based on technologies that span across several disciplines, e.g., antennas, RF & signal processing. Mr Tan has demonstrated his ability to integrate technologies across disciplines into complex systems.

Mr Tan was awarded the prestigious Singapore’s Defence Technology Prize (Individual) in Year 2001. In Year 2002, his was also awarded the Defence Technology Prize (Project Team) for his technical leadership in the project.

Over the years, Mr Tan has held various management positions in DSO – Head of Surveillance Systems Laboratory, Programme Director (Radar systems), Director of Sensors Division in Jun 2004, and more recently Director of Emerging Systems Division in 2007, Deputy Chief Research & Technology Officer (Sensor Systems), DRTech in the Ministry of Defence in Feb 2012 before his current portfolio in the Future Systems and Technology Directorate (FSTD) in Ministry of Defence. His current portfolio in FSTD is to oversee the research & technology development in the areas of Radar, Microwave, EO/IR systems as well as enabling technologies in Electromagnetic, Antennas, Materials, Electronics & Photonics.

Su Chern TAN

Su Chern is Deputy Director of Civil & Structural Engineering Dept under Technical Services Division, in JTC Corporation, leading a team of 15 engineers to develop innovative, productive and environmentally sustainable engineering solutions for JTC customers and conceptualise land reclamation, infrastructure and innovative spaces designs. She obtained the Bachelor degree in Civil Engineering (1st Class Honours) from NUS and the Masters of Science degree in Geotechnical Engineering from NTU in 2002 and 2006 respectively. Since joining JTC in 2006, she had managed high profile road infrastructure projects – the “Realignment of Jurong Island Highway”, “Construction of Ayer Merbau Road extension”, working closely with several MNCs like Exxon Mobil, Croda, Eastman and Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore, conceptualised the and saw through the completion of the $680 mil Singapore Marina Bay Cruise Centre. She has been involved in the master planning of Tuas, Tuas View industrial estates and Jurong Island, including the 10-year, multi-agency initiative named Jurong Island Version 2.0, which will chart the island’s next phase of growth. She is currently working on the projects ranging from the land reclamation works like the Ayer Merbau Phase 2 reclamation, underground spaces research studies to innovative spaces such as Multi-Storey Steel Hub, Industrial Space Development above the Tuas Terminals.

Prior to joining JTC, she had designed aboveground ammunition facilities as a project engineer with DSTA.

Philippe VANCAPERNOLLE

Philippe Vancapernolle (MSc. Ecole polytechnique ParisTech 2004 – MSc. Ecole des Ponts ParisTech 2007) has been in charge of the structural execution design of iconic projects built by French construction group VINCI, like Hôtel de Région Rhône-Alpes in Lyon (with the architect Christian de Portzamparc), and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (with the architect Frank Gehry), in close relation with the newly introduced BIM technologies. Since 2014, Philippe has been appointed Technical Director for VINCI Construction in Singapore, bringing technical support and coordination to the brands of the group in Southeast Asia, including VINCI Construction Grands Projets, Bachy-Soletanche, Freyssinet, Entrepose and Structures Vietnam.

Pablo VIEJO

Pablo Viejo is a graduated architect with expertise in Geographical Information Systems and Urban Planning. After studies in Spain (La Coruña) and Germany (Karlsruhe), he joined EIFER (Germany) in 2006 and EDF in 2012. In 2005 he got an excellence scholarship from the Spanish King Juan Carlos, funded by the bank La Caixa and the German International Exchange Program.

Apart from his working experience in several Architecture offices, Pablo Viejo has being teaching at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology courses about Geographical Information Systems and Planning. Its academic work includes publications in different domains, including energy systems modelling and simulation (mainly simulation of smart grids, micro grids and urban systems), renewable energy production and energy urban planning.

From 2008 to 2011 was responsible of modelling and simulation projects in EIFER, and the creation of a new group in 2009, “Geosimulation for Energy Research”, where a dozen of researchers worked under Pablo’s responsibility on the development of geographically distributed models for simulation using complexity science approaches. Main topics of the group were the diffusion of technologies, the impact of electrical mobility on the load curve, energy demand on urban areas, integral simulation of energy systems or behavioural energy models.

Between 2012 and 2014 Pablo was responsible of the project Sustainable Cities for EDF R&D in Singapore. The project brought together industrial partners and Singapore Government agencies, on the development of Sustainable Cities solutions.

Since 2014 Pablo is in charge of EDF Lab Singapore Pte Ltd, being Head of the EDF Asian Sustainable Cities Center of Excellence, and of the development of different projects in Asia on the field of Sustainable Cities.