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Chee Yeow Meng

CHEE Yeow Meng

Provost, Chief Academic & Innovation Officer
EMAIL
ymchee
sutd.edu.sg

Biography

Professor Chee Yeow Meng joined SUTD on 2 April 2025 as Provost and Chief Academic & Innovation Officer (CAIO).

 

As Provost/CAIO, Prof Chee supervises and oversees curricular, instructional, and research affairs. In his concurrent roles, he will also look into aligning education to Design AI, ensuring that the Office of Provost works seamlessly with the Office of Innovation and Enterprise.

 

Prof Chee brings with him 28 years of experience in both industry and academia – a rare combination amongst academics. Prior to joining SUTD, he was Vice President (Innovation and Enterprise), Professor at the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management and the Director of the NUS Enterprise Academy at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He has held senior academic positions in both NUS and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), as well as top posts in public service including Head of Security (Information Infrastructure) and Assistant Director (Internationalisation) at the National Computer Board, Deputy Director (Strategic Programmes) at the Infocomm Development Authority, and Programme Director (Interactive Digital Media R&D) at the Media Development Authority. He has also participated in national level committees and represented Singapore in various international forums and councils.

 

With extensive experience in the field of innovation and enterprise, Prof Chee has founded several start-ups and remains actively involved in the ecosystem. He also has a number of co-patents and technology disclosures.

 

Currently, Prof Chee serves as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and an editorial board member of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications. His research interest lies in the interplay between combinatorics and computer science, especially coding theory, extremal set systems, and their applications.

Education
  • PhD, Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada, 1996
  • MMath, Department of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada, 1989
  • BMath (Hon), Double Major, Department of Computer Science and Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo, Canada, 1988
Research interests

My research concentrates on areas in which combinatorics and computer science interact in an elegant way. Three main directions are:

  1. Designs, codes and cryptography: triple systems, block designs, pairwise balanced designs, group-divisible designs, t-designs, Latin squares, error-correcting codes, erasure-resilient codes, insertion/deletion codes, permutation codes, codes for unconventional channels, combinatorial cryptography, algorithms and computational methods, applications in computer science, engineering and biology.
  2. Extremal set systems: Turán-type problems, packings and coverings, nonadaptive group testing, cover-free systems, applications in computer science, engineering and biology.
  3. Data science and artificial intelligence: combinatorial structure of databases, spatial databases, social networks, applications of machine learning.
Awards and achievements
  • 2018, Public Administration Medal (Silver), National Day Awards, Singapore
  • 2018, Long Service Award, Nanyang Technological University
  • 2017, Fellow, Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications
Selected publications
  1. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, and H. Zhang, “Recovery sets of subspaces from a simplex code,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, to appear (accepted May 2024).
  2. J. Li, Y. Ma, Z. Cao, Y. Wu, W. Song, J. Zhang, and Y. M. Chee, “Learning feature embedding refiner for solving vehicle routing problems,” IEEE Trans. Neural Netw. Learn. Syst., to appear (accepted Jun. 2023).
  3. Z. Chen, P. N. Karthik, V. Y. F. Tan, and Y. M. Chee, “Federated best arm identification with heterogeneous clients,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 70, no. 6, pp. 4258–4279, 2024.
  4. Y. M. Chee, A. Vardy, V. K. Vu, and E. Yaakobi, “Transverse-readcodes for domain wall memories,” IEEE J. Select. Inform. Theory, vol. 4, pp. 784–793, 2023.
  5. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, and A. Vardy, “Domination mappings into the hamming ball: existence, constructions, and algorithms,” Adv. Math. Comm., vol. 17, no. 5, pp. 1027–1059, 2023.
  6. T. T. Nguyen, K. Cai, H. M. Kiah, K. A. S. Immink, and Y. M. Chee, “Two-dimensional RC/SW constrained codes: bounded weight and almost balanced weight,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 69, no. 8, pp. 4961–4976, 2023.
  7. S. Jiang, Y. M. Chee, S. Ling, H. Wang, and C. Xing, “A new framework for deniable secure key exchange,” Inform. and Comput., vol. 285, Part B, 104866, 2022.
  8. Y. M. Chee, M. Horovitz, A. Vardy, V. K. Vu, and E. Yaakobi, “Endurance-limited memories: capacity and codes,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 68, no. 3, pp. 1599–1613, 2022.
  9. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, S. Marcovich, A. Vardy, V. K. Vu, and E. Yaakobi, “Locally-constrained de Bruijn codes: properties, enumeration, code constructions, and applications,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 67, no. 12, pp. 7857–7875, 2021.
  10. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, A. Vardy, and C. Wang, “Explicit Baranyai partitions for quadruples, Part I: Quadrupling constructions,” J. Combin. Des., vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 447–481, 2021.
  11. K. Cai, Y. M. Chee, R. Gabrys, H. M. Kiah, and T. T. Nguyen, “Correcting a single indel/edit for DNA-based data storage: linear-time encoders and order-optimality,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 3438–3451, 2021.
  12. Y. M. Chee, H. M. Kiah, and H. Zhang, “Lower bounds for total storage of multiset combinatorial batch codes using linear programming,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 67, no. 1, pp. 255–267, 2021.
  13. Y. M. Chee, H. M. Kiah, and H. Wei, “Efficient and explicit balanced primer codes,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 66, no. 9, pp. 5344–5357, 2020.
  14. Y. M. Chee, J. Chrisnata, H. M. Kiah, and T. T. Nguyen, “Efficient encoding/decoding of GC-balanced codes correcting tandem duplications,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 66, no. 8, pp. 4892–4903, 2020.
  15. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, A. Vardy, and H. Wei, “Low-power cooling codes with efficient encoding and decoding,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol. 66, no. 8, pp. 4804–4818, 2020.
Selected conference papers
  1. Y. M. Chee, H. Lao, T. L. Nguyen, and V. K. Vu, “Window weight limited gray codes and robust positioning sequences,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 3166–3171, 2024.
  2. T. V. Bui, Y. M. Chee, and V. K. Vu, “Efficient designs for threshold group testing without gap,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 3005–3010, 2024.
  3. Y. M. Chee, S. H. Dau, T. Etzion, H. M. Kiah, Y. Luo, and W. Zhang, “Repairing with zero skip cost,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 2134–2139, 2024.
  4. T. X. Dinh, B. T. Le, S. H. Dau, S. Boztas, S. Kruglik, H. M. Kiah, E. Viterbo, T. Etzion, and Y. M. Chee, “Repairing a single erasure in Reed-Solomon codes with side information,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 2122–2127, 2024.
  5. Y. M. Chee, Q. T. Le, and H. Ta, “On the asymptotic nonnegative rank of matrices and its applications in information theory,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 1955–1960, 2024.
  6. H. Lao, Y. M. Chee, H. Chen, and V. K. Vu, “New constructions for linear maximum sum-rank distance codes,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 1544–1549, 2024.
  7. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, H. Ta, and V. K. Vu, “On de Bruijn covering sequences and arrays,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 1343–1348, 2024.
  8. Y. M. Chee, T. Etzion, K. A. S. Immink, T. T. Nguyen, V. K. Vu, J. H. Weber, and E. Yaakobi, “Thermal-aware channel with multiple wires,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 1035–1040, 2024.
  9. Y. M. Chee, K. A. S. Immink, and V. K. Vu, “Coding scheme for noisy nanopore sequencing with backtracking and skipping errors,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 458–463, 2024.
  10. S. Wang, Y. M. Chee, and V. K. Vu, “Permutation codes in Levenshtein, Ulam and generalized Kendall-tau metrics,” in ISIT 2024 – Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, pp. 43–48, 2024.