Professor Freddy Boey

Professor Freddy Boey is the Deputy President for Innovation and Enterprise. He oversees the university’s initiatives and activities for innovation, entrepreneurship and research translation.        

An alumnus of the National University of Singapore (NUS), Professor Boey was the Deputy President and Provost of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) from 2011-2017. During his tenure as the Provost, he helped transform NTU into a world-class research university, jumping from 74th in 2011 to 11th in the world in the QS World University Rankings 2017.

NTU College of Engineering was also ranked 4th in the 2017 QS world subject ranking. He was also instrumental in  building Singapore’s 3rd Medical School, the Lee Kong Chian Medical School, with Imperial College London. He was conferred the 2016 National Day Public Administration Gold Medal for this effort.

He was the Chair of NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) from 2004 to 2010, transforming it into NTU’s top research school and became known as one of the world’s foremost MSE institutions. Although MSE only started in 2000, it ranked 6th in QS world subject ranking and 2nd in US News world ranking in 2015 and 2016, with an outstanding reputation for generating startup technologies that can be commercialized. Professor Boey won the Singapore National Day Public Administration Silver Medal in 2010 for his achievement in building the School of MSE.

A keen inventor, Professor Boey pioneered the use of functional biomaterials for medical devices in Singapore. For his biomedical research achievements, he was conferred Singapore’s highest Scientific Award, the Singapore President Science and Technology Medal (PSM) for lifetime achievement, and the prestigious Imperial College London Faculty of Medicine Fellow award, both in 2013. His research team also won the 2014 President’s Technology Award (PSTA) for using nanostructures with a novel drug delivery approach to combat blindness from glaucoma.

He has developed 127 patents and founded several companies to commercialize his cardiovascular, ocular, and surgical implants. His customizable hernia mesh has received US and China FDA approvals and received US and China funding as a US company. His fully biodegradable heart stent company, Amaranth, has been substantially funded by a Silicon Valley VC, EDB, and one of the leading the US medical device companies, Boston Scientific, for a series of advanced US FDA clinical trials in several hundred patients worldwide.

His most recent company, Peregrine, is based on a nano-based drug delivery system to treat glaucoma, which has been successfully deployed in human trials. Professor Boey’s research has been published in over 347 top journals with 23,555 citations and he has an H-Index of 71.

He previously served as a director on the boards of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore and Defense Science Organization. He remains a Director for the Health Sciences Authority and also contributes on many boards of nationally-funded research centres.

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials (UK) and the Institution of Engineers Singapore, and a Founding Fellow of the Academy of Engineering, and was  a member of the National Cybersecurity Research and Development Laboratory and Singapore Rail Academy Board.