Brief Bio

Ah-Hwee TAN is Lee Kong Chian Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean (Research) at the School of Computing and Information Systems (SCIS), Singapore Management University (SMU). Prior to joining SMU, he was a tenured full Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computer Science and Engineering (SCSE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU). During his 17 years with NTU, he served several senior academic positions, including the Associate Chair (Research) of SCSE from 2017 to 2020, the Head of Division of Software & Information Systems from 2008 to 2014 and the founding Director of Emerging Research Laboratory, a research center for incubating new interdisciplinary research initiatives from 2005 to 2008. Before NTU, he was a Senior Member of Research Staff and Research Manager at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), spearheading the Text Mining and Intelligent Agents research programmes. His current research interests include cognitive and neural systems, brain-inspired intelligent agents, machine learning, knowledge discovery and text mining.

Prof. Tan received the Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University, the M.Sc and the B.Sc (1st Class Honors) in Computer and Information Science from the National University of Singapore. He has published over 200 technical papers in major international journals and conferences of his fields, together with an authored book and ten edited proceeding volumes. He holds two US patents, five Singapore patents, and has commercialized a suite of document analysis and text mining technologies. His research has been supported by research funding from major agencies, including National Research Foundation (NRF), Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), DSO National Laboratories, and ST Engineering. He has also served as a technical consultant to A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) and DSO National Laboratories for technology transfer and exploitation of several technologies.

Prof. Tan has served as Associate Editor/Editorial Board Member of several international journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on SMC Systems, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, Applied Intelligence (Springer), Journal of Database Management (IGI Publishing), Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environment (IOS Press), Applied Soft Computing (Elsevier) and the multidisciplinary IEEE ACCESS. He also plays active roles in international research communities in his fields, and most recently serves as General Co-Chair of 2024 IEEE/WIC Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT’24) and 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI 2022), and Area Chair for International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2021, 2023-2024).

Prof. Tan has been known internationally for his work on fusion Adaptive Resonance Theory (fusion ART) and has delivered many keynotes, plenary and invited talks at international conferences held in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Poland, Japan, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Singapore Chapter, Member of IEEE CIS Neural Network Technical Committee (NNTC), member of Web Intelligence (WI) Technical Committee and Web Intelligence (WI) Conference Steering Committee, and Vice Chair of IEEE CIS Task Force on Towards Human-Like Intelligence. He received the ACM Recognition of Service Award and the Web Intelligence Consortium Outstanding Service Award in 2015. He is also a recipient of Lim Soo Peng Book Prize, Asia Life Gold Medal, Cambridge Scholarship, Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor Award (Silver), NUS Overseas Graduates Scholarship, KRDL High Achiever Award, Optimal 2003 Gold Award, Tan Chin Tuan Fellowship in Engineering, DSO Divisional Innovation Award, Cardiff University Visiting Professorship, Jubilee Technology Fellowship on AI and Cognitive Computing, Lee Kong Chian Professorship, and Fellow of Web Intelligence Academy.

Recent Activities

• Chair, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Singapore Chapter (2023-2024)

• General Co-Chair, 2024 IEEE/WIC Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT’24), Bangkok, Thailand, December 2024.

• Area Chair, The 33rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2024), Jeju, South Korea, August 2024. 

• Panel Co-Chair, 2024 IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI 2024), Singapore, June 2024.

• Area Chair, The 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2023), Macao, August 2023. 

• General Co-Chair, 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI 2022), Singapore, December 2022.

• Area Chair, The 30th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2021), Montreal, Canada, 2021.

News 

• [2025/05] Congratulations to Budhi and Shantho for their paper on Relation Prediction in Knowledge Graphs: A Self-Organizing Neural Network Approach accepted by Neural  Networks journal.

• [2025/05] Congratulations to Budhi and Shantho for their paper on DisambiguART: A Neural-based Inference Model for Knowledge Graph Disambiguation accepted by ACM TKDD journal.

• [2025/05] Congratulations to Minghong for his paper on L2M2: A Hierarchical Multi-agent System Integrating Large Language Model and Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning accepted by IJCAI 2025.

• [2024/12] Congratulations to Minghong for his paper on MOSMAC: A Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning Benchmark on Sequential Multi-Objective Tasks accepted by AAMAS 2025.

• [2024/12] I am honored to receive the Fellowship award from the Web Intelligence Academy.

• [2024/10] Congratulations to Shubham for his paper on FedART: A Neural Model Integrating Federated Learning and Adaptive Resonance Theory accepted by Neural Networks Journal.

• [2024/10] Congratulations to Budhi for his paper on Self-Supervised Fine-tuning for Neural Expert Finding accepted by 2024 IEEE/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT 2024).

• [2024/7] I am honored to receive the Lee Kong Chian Professorship conferred by SMU.

• [2024/4] Congratulations to Minghong for his paper on HiSOMA: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Model Integrating Self-Organizing Neural Networks with Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement Learning accepted by Expert Systems with Applications.

• [2024/3] Congratulations to Doudou for her paper on FedSTEM-ADL: A Federated Spatial-Temporal Episodic Memory Model for ADL Prediction accepted for presentation at IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2024), Yokohama, Japan, 30 June - 5 July 2024. 

• [2024/3] Congratulations to the SINEW team for the paper on Predicting Mild Cognitive Impairment through Ambient Sensing and Artificial Intelligence accepted for presentation at 2nd IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI 2024), Singapore, 25-27 June 2024.

• [2023/12] Congratulations to Budhi for his paper on Machine Learning for Refining Knowledge Graphs: A Survey, accepted for publication in ACM Computing Surveys.

• [2023/12] Congratulations to Minghong for his paper on Benchmarking MARL on Long Horizon Sequential Multi-Objective Tasks accepted by AAAMS 2024.

• [2023/12] Congratulations to Khaing for her paper on Explaining Sequences of Actions in Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Model accepted by AAMAS 2024.

• [2023/12] My invited talk on Self-Organizing Neural Networks for Universal Learning and Multimodal Information Fusion was delivered at South-Central Minzu University on 7 December 2023. [News in Chinese]

• Congratulations to Francisco for his paper on Deep Reinforcement Learning with Explicit Context Representation accepted by IEEE Transactions of Neural Networks and Learning Systems.

• The conference report for 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2022) has been published by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine.

• Congratulations to Shubham for his paper on Value-based Subgoal Discovery and Path Planning for Reaching Long-Horizon Goals accepted by IEEE Transactions of Neural Networks and Learning Systems.

• Congratulations to Khaing for her paper on Towards Explaining Sequences of Actions in Multi-agent Deep Reinforcement Learning Model accepted by AAMAS 2023.

• 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2022) has been successfully held at Singapore Management University from 4 to 7 December, 2022. Check out my photo taken at the conference opening.

• Congratulations to Lincoln for his paper on EEG-Video Emotion-based Summarization: Learning with EEG Auxiliary Signals  accepted by IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing .

• Congratulations to Seng Khoon for his paper on Predictive Self-Organizing Neural Networks for In-Home Detection of Mild Cognitive Impairment accepted by Expert Systems With Applications.

•  Congratulations to Tianze for his paper on Real-time Hierarchical Map Segmentation for Coordinating Multi-Robot Exploration accepted by IEEE Access. 

• Congratulations to Hu Yue for his paper on Spatio-Temporal Episodic Memory for Identifying Asymptomatic COVID-19 Cases accepted by Neural Computation and Applications.

• The conference website for 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2022) has been launched.

• Our new homepage on Neural and Cognitive Computing Group is under development and will be online soon.

• 2022 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2022) will be held in Singapore on December 4-7, 2022.

• Budhi's paper on Hierarchical Control of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Team in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) Games has been accepted by Expert Systems With Applications. [PDF]

• Ah-Hwee Tan has been conferred the inaugural Jubilee Technology Fellowship for his work on AI and Cognitive Computing (2021-2024)

• Hu Yue's paper on Vision-based Topological Mapping and Navigation with Self-Organizing Neural Networks has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. [PDF]

• Shubham Pateria's paper on End-to-End Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning with Integrated Subgoal Discovery has been accepted by IEEE Transactions of Neural Networks and Learning Systems. [PDF]

• Shubham Pateria's paper on Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning: A Comprehensive Survey has been published by ACM Computing Survey,  vol. 54, no. 5 (June 2021), Article No.: 109, 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/3453160. [PDF]

• Gao Shan's paper on Learning ADL Daily Routines with Spatiotemporal Neural Networks has been published by IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 143-153, 1 Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TKDE.2019.2924623. [PDF]