Dr Desmond Lim
TC Co-Chair, Advisor (S&T), OSTIN
Dr Desmond Rodney Lim has spent the past three decades developing and translating “deep-tech” (semiconductors, space-tech etc) from laboratory research in academia and start-ups, to deployment in operational systems. At DSO National Laboratories, Singapore’s defence and security R&D organisation, Dr Lim made key contributions to Singapore’s national capabilities through large-scale system development and supporting technology programmes. Teams under his leadership have won several Defence Technology Prizes.
Dr Lim has also led several successful research satellite projects. These projects included Singapore’s first commercial earth-observation satellite (TeLEOS-1) launched in 2015. For the work on TeLEOS-1, he was part of the team that received the President’s Technology Award.
Dr Lim is a member of NRF’s Competitive Research Panel, Manufacturing, Trade and Connectivity Programmatic and IAF-PP Panels. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Semiconductor Translation and Innovation Centre and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore Hybrid-Integrated Next-Generation µElectronics Centre.
Dr Lim co-founded a silicon photonics start-up in 2000; a spin-out of his PhD work at MIT. His work on silicon photonics has been reviewed in Science magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Dr Lim was Singapore’s first science International Olympiad gold medalist (Physics) in 1989, was awarded the National Science and Technology Awards (Young Scientist Award), and named in the MIT Technology Review top young inventors list in 2003. He is the inventor of over 20 US patents.