Yew-Soon Ong is currently President's Chair Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. At the same time, he is Chief Artificial Intelligence (CAS) Scientist of the Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). At NTU, he presently serves as co-Director of the Singtel-NTU Cognitive & Artificial Intelligence Joint Lab (SCALE@NTU). He was Chair of the School of Computer Science and Engineering (SCSE), Nanyang Technological University from 2016-2018, Director of the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Research Center (DSAIR) from 2016-2022, Director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence from 2008-2015 and Programme Principal Investigator of the Data Analytics & Complex System Programme Rolls-Royce@NTU Corporate Lab from 2013-2017.

Professor Ong received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (Specializing in Computing) from Nanyang Technological University and subsequently his PhD (Thesis Title: Artificial Intelligence in Complex Engineering Design) from the School of Engineering Sciences, University of Southampton, United Kingdom, under the British Aerospace Engineering-Rolls Royce University Technology Partnership from 1999-2002. He is a Fellow of IEEE, Area Chair of several top AI conferences, and founding Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, Senior Associate Editor or Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Neural Network & Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, and chief co-editor of Book Series on Studies in Adaptation, Learning, and Optimization. His current research interests is in artificial and computational intelligence, learning and evolution, transfer & multi-task optimization, surrogate modelling and machine learning. His research grants comprise of external funding from both national and international partners that include Boeing Research & Development (USA), Rolls-Royce (UK) and Honda Research Institute Europe (Germany), the National Research Foundation of Singapore, National Grid Office, A*STAR, Singapore Technologies Dynamics and MDA-GAMBIT. His research on Memetic Computation was first featured by Thomson Scientific's Essential Science Indicators as one of the most cited emerging area of research in August 2007.

Professor Ong has been listed among the Stanford Elsevier World's Top 2% Scientists yearly from 2020-2024 and also a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in 2015 and 2016, and among the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds. He has received 5 IEEE top publication awards, including the 2025, 2023, 2019, 2013 IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Awards and the 2019 IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation Outstanding Paper Awards for his works in Transfer and Multitask Optimization, and the 2015 IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine Outstanding Paper Award. He has been a Professorial fellow of the University of New South Wales (Australia), Visiting Professor of Imperial College London (UK), Visiting professor of MIT (US), Visiting professor of Honda Research Institute Europe (GM) and a Yonsei Distinguished Scholar (Korea).