Provost’s Chair Professor of Ophthalmology
Senior Consultant and Medical Director, Singapore National Eye Center
Vice-Dean, Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore
STaR Investigator (2008-2012, 2013-current), National Medical Research Council

Prof Wong is one of Singapore’s pioneering academic clinicians. Having completed medical school at the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a President’s Scholar, he obtained a PhD in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University, USA, before returning to Singapore to complete his clinical residency training in ophthalmology at the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC). Subsequently, he received fellowship training in retinal disease at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and Westmead Hospital, University of Sydney, Australia.

He is currently Professor and Medical Director of SNEC, one of the largest tertiary eye hospital in Asia, with a faculty of >70 ophthalmologists managing >300,000 outpatient visits and >30,000 surgeries annually. He is also Chairman of the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), one of the world’s leading eye research institutes. Prior to these appointments, Prof Wong was Executive Director of SERI, Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at NUS and when he was in Australia, Professor and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Melbourne and Managing Director of the Centre for Eye Research Australia (CERA).

As a clinician-scientist, Prof Wong has a focused clinical practice on retinal diseases, in particular diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. His research in these areas has resulted in >1,000 peer-reviewed journal papers, including first and senior author papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet. He has >$50M in grant funding and given >300 plenary, symposium and named lectures globally.

For his professional and academic contributions, Prof Wong has been recognized with numerous awards, such as the Ten Outstanding Young Person of the World for “academic leadership in people younger than 40 years of age”, the Sandra Doherty Award from the American Heart Association, and the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award in Australia. He has been recognized as the top researcher from two leading Universities: the Outstanding Researcher Award from NUS (two occasions, 2004, 2009) and the Woodward Medal from the University of Melbourne (2006). He has received the National Clinician Scientist Award (2010), the President’s Science Award (2010) and the President’s Science and Technology Award (2014), the highest awards for scientific contribution in Singapore.

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