Professor Wong Tien Yin                         

Chairperson of SMA Charity Fund Board
Director of SMA Charity Fund since 2013.

Prof. Wong Tien Yin has been a director of the SMA Charity Fund since 2013.

Prof. Wong Tien Yin is Medical Director of the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC) where he is a senior consultant ophthalmologist sub-specialising in medical retina.

Prof. Wong is also the Academic Chair of the Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences Program at Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore where he is concurrently Deputy Group CEO and Vice-Dean, coordinating clinical and translational research strategy and execution across the SingHealth-Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre (AMC).

Prior to these roles, Professor Wong has served as Professor and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, National University of Singapore, Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology, Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital, the University of Melbourne, Australia and was the immediate past Executive Director of the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), where he continues to chair SERI’s Board and is a Senior Principal Clinician Scientist.

Prof. Wong is a physician-scientist, practicing as a retinal specialist and with a broad-based research focused on the epidemiology of retinal diseases, such as diabetic and hypertensive retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. His research has led to the concept that retinal vascular imaging may predict risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as stroke and ischemic heart disease.

Prof. Wong has published more than 1,000 peer-reviewed papers, including papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, has given more than 300 invited named, plenary and symposium lectures, and received more than US$50million in grant funding from the Biomedical Medical Research Council and the National Medical Research Council in Singapore, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, and the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia.

Prof. Wong completed medical school at National University of Singapore (NUS) as a President’s Scholar, clinical ophthalmology training at the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC), and retinal fellowships at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, and the University of Sydney, Australia. He obtained his MPH and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, USA.

Prof. Wong has served as the Executive Editor of the American Journal of Ophthalmology (2007-2014), and is currently on Editorial Boards of JAMA-Ophthalmology, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Diabetes Care, Journal of Hypertension, and Ophthalmologica. He is a Board member of the National Medical Research Council, Singapore and in various professional societies, including the Council of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology and the Asia-Pacific Vitreo-Retina Society. He is currently President of the College of Ophthalmologists, Academy of Medicine, Singapore

For his service and research, Prof Wong has been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards, such as the Ten Outstanding Young Person of the World for “academic leadership in people younger than 40 years of age” and the Sandra Doherty Award from the American Heart Association. He has been recognized as the top researcher in any field from two leading Universities: the Outstanding Researcher Award from the National University of Singapore (winning it twice in 2004 and 2009) and the Woodward Medal from the University of Melbourne. He has received the Alcon Research Institute Award, USA, the Novartis Prize in Diabetes (Global Young Investigator), the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research, the Australian Society of Medical Research AMGEN Medical Research of the Year Award for “outstanding contribution to translational research”, and the Arnall Patz Medal from the Macula Society, USA.

Prof. Wong is a two-time recipient of the Singapore Translational Researcher Award (2008 and 2014). He received the National Clinician Scientist Award and the President’s Science Award in 2010 and the President’s Technology Award in 2014; these are three of the highest awards for research in Singapore. He is a recipient of the 2013 Eisenhower Fellowship from the USA.

The above information is accurate as at 26 July 2018.

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