City Hall Dialogue with Dr Cheong Wei Yang, DS (Technology), MOH

The American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore

Established in 1973, The American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore (AmCham Singapore) is the premier business association for international businesses seeking to establish or expand their presence in Southeast Asia.

As the largest and most active chamber in the region, it serves as a cornerstone for over 600 companies and over 6,000 members. For 50 years, AmCham Singapore has a commitment to advocacy, business insights, and connections while being a powerful voice for the business community. With its diverse membership base, it is dedicated to supporting businesses to strive for excellence in this dynamic and thriving region.

Find out more about us at https://amcham.com.sg/about-amcham.

Event Details

Speakers

Dr Wei Yang Cheong

Deputy Secretary (Technology) at Ministry of Health

Dr Cheong Wei Yang is Deputy Secretary (Technology) at the Ministry of Health of Singapore. He has been tasked to deploy technology in the fight against COVID-19, and to develop the innovation ecosystem within the healthcare sector so as to better achieve the strategic objective of the 3 Beyonds – beyond healthcare to health; beyond hospital to community, and beyond quality to value.

He was identified for his role at the Ministry of Health because of his previous posting as the Deputy CEO of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Singapore, where he oversaw the implementation of the Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2020 plan, and led an inter-agency effort to develop the Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2025 plan – for which S$25 billion was eventually allocated.

He has served on the Boards of Urban Redevelopment Authority overseeing long-term land planning in Singapore; ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore’s regional institute of South East Asia studies; National Medical Research Council; Governing Board of the Experimental Drug Development Centre (EDDC), a national drug-discovery platform hosted in the Agency for Science and Technology (A*STAR); Oversight Committee of the national Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub hosted in A*ccelerate; Steering Committee of the national Additive Manufacturing Programme and the Singapore Food Story (SFS) R&D Programme; Advisory Board of the Centre for Research & Development in Learning (CRADLE) hosted in Nanyang Technological University of Singapore (NTU); and on the Board of NRF Holdings Pte Ltd.

Prior to his role in NRF, Dr Cheong was Divisional Director of Planning Division in the Ministry of Education (MOE), where he led a package of educational reforms of the preschool and general education sectors, and designed the public engagement efforts to galvanise support from the educators and national consensus for the reforms. He also defined the research directions at the Office of Education Research (OER) in the National Institute of Education (NIE). He oversaw international benchmarking and international partnership efforts by MOE.

Before his stint at MOE, he served as Deputy Director for Manufacturing and Services at the Ministry of Trade & Industry (MTI), where he oversaw the work of Economic Development Board (EDB), and was Lead Secretariat for the Economic Strategies Committee (2010) chaired by Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam; and served as Head, Fiscal Strategy at the Ministry of Finance (MOF), where he oversaw the yearly budgeting for the entire Singapore government, and developed processes and plans to safeguard long-term fiscal sustainability.

Dr Cheong was a Rhodes Scholar (Singapore, Trinity, 1999) when he obtained his DPhil and MPhil in Economics (and awarded the George Webb Medley Prize for best MPhil examination results in 2001) from the University of Oxford. He was a Public Service Commission Overseas Merit Scholar when he obtained his S.B. in Chemical Engineering, with a Chemistry minor (with Tau Beta Pi honours, and awarded Roger de Friez Hunneman Prize for best undergraduate thesis), and his S.B. in Economics (with Phi Beta Kappa honours) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.