Skip to Content | Skip to Footer
Professor Shih Choon Fong Biography
Prof Shih received his PhD from Harvard University. Thereafter, he led the Fracture Research Group at the Corporate Research Lab at General Electric in the U.S. He later joined Brown University as a professor. Prof Shih is a Foreign Associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.
Prof Shih has made contributions in nonlinear fracture mechanics and computational methods for fracture analyses. His work underpins experimental methods now widely used to measure the fracture properties of engineering materials as well as computational models to assess the structural integrity of nuclear reactors. Prof Shih has about 200 publications in leading academic journals to his credit.
Prof Shih has been a consultant to National Aeronautics Space Administration, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, among others. He was awarded the Swedlow Award and the George Rankin Irwin Medal by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Prof Shih is a member of the MIT Corporation Visiting Committee for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
In 1996, Prof Shih returned to Singapore as the founding Director of the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. He is the founding President of the Materials Research Society of Singapore, which is affiliated to the International Union of Materials Research Societies.
Prof Shih has been actively promoting NUS' global profile. He serves on the Executive Committees of several university consortiums, including Universitas 21. He is the Chairman of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a consortium of 36 leading research universities along the Pacific Rim. APRU is modeled after the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU).
In Singapore, Prof Shih has served on national committees. He chaired the Committee on University Admission System which recommended significant changes in the admissions criteria accepted by Government in 1999. Prof Shih also served on the Economic Review Committee that crafted wide-ranging strategies for re-making Singapore.
Prof Shih is the Chairman of the Singapore-MIT Alliance Governing Board as well as an Executive Committee member of the Economic Development Board. Prof Shih is also a board member of Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Biomedical Research Council, Science and Engineering Research Council, Institute of Policy Studies and Singapore International Foundation.