Ling San

Professor Ling San

Acting President
Deputy President and Provost 

Professor Ling San is Deputy President and Provost at NTU Singapore. Currently President’s Chair in Mathematical Sciences, he joined NTU in April 2005 as the Founding Head of the Division of Mathematical Sciences in the School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences (SPMS). He was Chair of SPMS from April 2008 to December 2010, and Dean, College of Science, from August 2011 to December 2017, before being appointed Provost on 1 January 2018. Prior to joining NTU, he spent 13 years at the National University of Singapore (NUS).


Since August 2022, Professor Ling also serves concurrently as the Chief Scientific Advisor for the National Research Foundation, Singapore. He is also a member of the Committee of Government Scientific Advisors, Singapore.  

Professor Ling’s research interests are in applications of algebra and number theory to combinatorial designs, coding theory, cryptography and sequences. He has published about 220 journal and conference papers and two textbooks, and edited several conference proceedings. His research has clinched more than S$23 million in funding.

A visiting scholar at institutions such as the University of California, Berkeley, CNRS, ESSI Sophia Antipolis, INRIA, ENS Lyon, Macquarie University, the Technion, and Hanyang University, he is a recipient of the Singapore Youth Award (Science & Technology) in 2001, National Science Award (Team) in 2003, Service to Education Award from the Singapore Ministry of Education in 2010, Public Administration Medal (Silver) from the President of the Republic of Singapore in 2013, and Fellowship of the Singapore National Academy of Science in 2014. A passionate educator, he has also won numerous teaching excellence awards at both NTU and NUS.

Active in serving the professional community, he has previously been a Vice President of the Singapore National Academy of Science, a Past President of the Southeast Asian Mathematical Society and the Singapore Mathematical Society, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. He is also on the Management Boards of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at NUS, and has served as a reviewer for research funding agencies in Singapore and abroad.

He obtained his BA and MA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, and has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.