Singapore - People

There are 206 Singaporean students currently studying at Oxford, making Singapore the 7th largest source of non-European students for the University. Singapore is currently the third-largest source of international undergraduates at Oxford, a remarkable achievement for a city-state with the world’s 115th largest population. There is a greater proportion of the Singaporean population studying at Oxford than any country outside the British Isles. The majority of Singaporeans at Oxford are full-time undergraduates, with the remainder being fairly evenly split between postgraduate research and postgraduate taught courses.

More than half of the Singaporean undergraduate students at Oxford study courses in the Social Sciences and the next largest cohort studies subjects related to the Medical Sciences. Top courses studied by Singaporean undergraduates at Oxford are: Jurisprudence, PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), and Economics and Management. Postgraduate students are spread fairly evenly between the Social Sciences, Medical Sciences and Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences. There are a number of scholarships available to Singaporean students wising to pursue studies at Oxford. The Singapore Public Service Commission offers scholarships for outstanding young men and women who want to serve Singapore through a career in the Singaporean Civil Service. Oxford is delighted to welcome ten of the 61 scholars from the 2012 round of awards: five studying law, three studying PPE, one in economics and one in engineering science.

Oxford University Malaysian and Singaporean Students' Association
The Oxford University Malaysian and Singaporean Students' Association (OUMSSA) provides support for Singaporean and Malaysian students studying at Oxford and there are a number of societies dedicated to the wider region including the Oxford Asia-Pacific Society (OUAPS) and the Oxford Majlis Asian Society - the second oldest student society at the University and the oldest Asian student society in the world.

Oxford currently has ten Singaporean academics and research staff among its faculty.

Professor John Quah
Professor John Quah is Professor of Economic Theory and a fellow of St Hugh’s College. His research interests are in monotone comparative statics, revealed preference analysis, demand theory, and general equilibrium theory. He is an associate editor of two academic journals in economics: Economic Theory and the Journal of Mathematical Economics.

Professor Quah was born and raised in Singapore. He graduated with first class honours in Mathematics from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and received his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined Oxford as a lecturer in the Economics Department in 1996 and was an ESRC Research Fellow for three years between 2001 and 2004. He visits NUS regularly as a Visiting Professor.

Professor Luke Ong
Professor Luke Ong is Professor of Computer Science, Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Computer Science, and a Fellow of Merton College. His research interests revolve around logical methods in computation and include the semantics of computation (especially game semantics), infinite systems, software model checking, and formal analysis of programming languages.

Professor Ong was born in Singapore and read Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, before obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College, London. After a lectureship at the NUS (1990-1992) and a research fellowship at Cambridge (1992-1993), he moved to a lectureship at Oxford in 1994, and was made professor in 2004.

With well over 1,000 Oxonians, Singapore boasts the 9th largest international concentration of Oxford alumni. Many are active in the Oxford & Cambridge Society of Singapore (Oxbridge Singapore) which promotes social contact among Oxbridge alumni through organising more than 12 events each year. These include speaker events, dinners, lectures, receptions, and an annual Boat Race Dinner and Ball with its neighbouring Oxbridge alumni society in Malaysia.

Famous Singaporean alumni in politics include:

•    Mr Raymond Lim Siang Keat, Singaporean Minister for Transport and the Second Minister for Foreign Affairs
•    Calvin Cheng, Nominated Member of the Singapore Parliament and a leading Asian modelling mogul
•    Chen Show Mao, Singaporean Rhodes Scholar, corporate lawyer and Singapore Member of Parliament
•    Mr Eddie Teo, Chairman, Public Service Commission
•    Mrs Ow Foong Pheng, Second Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Trade and Industry
•    Lieutenant-General Desmond Kuek Bak Chye, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, immediate past Chief of Defence Force

Singaporean alumni in business and finance include:
•    Mr Ronnie Tay, former Chief of Navy, current CEO of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
•    Professor Lim Chong Yah, past President of the Economic Society of Singapore and former Chairman of the National Wages Council
•    Mr Michael Hwang, Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)

Alumni from Singapore in sports and academia include:
•    Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, President of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Deputy Chairman of Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
•    Thum Ping Tjin, better known as PJ, Singaporean Olympic Swimmer and the first Singaporean and first Oxford graduate to swim the English Channel.