Professor Lai Choy Heng is Vice Provost (Academic Personnel) at the National University of Singapore. Prof Lai chairs the University Promotion and Tenure Committee. He works with the Provost in academic personnel matters, performance evaluation, benchmarking, university resources and space allocation. His responsibilities also include setting up a comprehensive Faculty Development programme and overseeing the functions of the University's Centre for Information Technology, University Scholars Programme, The Logistic Institute-Asia Pacific, NUS-Fudan Joint Graduate School and the NUS NanoScience and NanoTechnology Initiative.

A graduate of The University of Chicago, Prof Lai was a post-doctoral Research Fellow of the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen from 1978 to 1980. He was a Visiting Member to the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy from 1983 to 1986 and Visiting Scientist, Center for Theoretical Physics, Laboratory for Nuclear Science, MIT, from 1986 to 1987. Prof Lai has been a faculty member of the NUS Department of Physics since 1980. He was the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Science from 1996 to 2000, and then the Dean from 2000 to 2003. He was also the Head of the Departments of Computational Science (1996-97) and Physics (1998-2000). His current appointment as the University's Vice Provost (Academic Personnel) started in June 2003. Since September 2007, he is also the Deputy Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies, a Research Centre of Excellence in quantum information science and technology at NUS.

Prof Lai's current areas of research are nonlinear dynamical systems; quantum chaos; complex systems as well as quantum information and computation. Research projects which he is engaged in include the control and synchronisation of chaotic systems and applications; complex networks; properties and manifestations of quantum chaos in mesoscopic physics; and quantum information science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in Singapore, as well as member of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers. In addition, he is a member of the Editorial Board, International Journal of Modern Physics C (since 1995), and serves as reviewers for many of the respected physics journals.

Over the years, Prof Lai has spearheaded several developments in science and technology in the University. He was among the pioneers in the Computational Science efforts at the Faculty of Science in 1990, and became its first Department Head in 1996. As a member of the theoretical physics group in the Department of Physics, he initiated in 1999 the "quantum computing" movement, which eventually attracted Artur Ekert and led to the formation of the first Research Centres of Excellence at NUS, the Centre for Quantum Technologies, in 2007.

Prof Lai is involved in the NUS NanoScience and NanoTechnology Initiative as the Chairman of its management board, and was also the Chair of the A*STAR TechScan Panel on Nanotechnology in 2004-5. He currently leads an active research group in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems, with support from the Singapore Defence Science and Technology Agency.

In 2003, Prof Lai received the Public Administration Medal (Silver) from the Singapore Government. In 2002, the French Government conferred upon him the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques for his contributions to relations between the two countries within the academic field. Prof Lai also received the Faculty Award for teaching of Physics and in Computational Science in 1994.

He has published over 100 papers in international refereed journals, numerous conference papers and edited three books.