PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Chew Lim Tan

Also known as Chew L Tan, Chew Tan, Chew-Lim Tan

Chew Lim Tan is a computer scientist whose research connected language processing with text analysis in images. He earned degrees in physics, radiation studies, and computer science, and coauthored research on bilingual news alignment, word-sense disambiguation, and scene-text detection. In Singapore, he helped form PREMIA, represented it on IAPR's Governing Board, and became an IAPR Fellow in 2012. In 2017, he was a professor in the Department of Computer Science at NUS's School of Computing.

Now at
School of Computing, National University of Singapore
Works
405
Citations
14,413
h-index
55
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1971–1986

    Degrees in physics and computing

    He earns a BSc (Hons) in physics from the University of Singapore in 1971 and an MSc in radiation studies from the University of Surrey in 1973. He completes a PhD in computer science at the University of Virginia in 1986.

  2. 1996

    Bilingual news alignment

    In 1996, he coauthors a method that aligns English-Chinese bilingual news reports from China News Service with lexical and statistical approaches.

  3. 2002

    An IAPR society in Singapore

    In 2002, IAPR President Rangachar Kasturi approaches him to form an IAPR society in Singapore.

  4. 2003

    Founding PREMIA

    In 2003, he serves as president of PREMIA's founding Pro Tem Committee.

  5. 2005

    Word-sense disambiguation

    In 2005, he coauthors an ACL paper on word-sense disambiguation using label propagation and semi-supervised learning.

  6. 2010

    Chairing IAPR membership

    In 2010, he represents PREMIA on IAPR's Governing Board and chairs the association's Membership Committee.

  7. 2012

    An IAPR fellowship

    In 2012, IAPR names him a Fellow for contributions to document analysis and services to the association.

  8. 2016–2017

    Text Flow and NUS professorship

    In 2016, he coauthors Text Flow, a scene-text detection system that uses a min-cost flow model to combine steps at character and text-line levels. In 2017, he is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at NUS's School of Computing.

Career

  1. From 2017School of Computing, National University of SingaporeProfessor
  2. From 2010International Association for Pattern RecognitionGoverning Board representative and Membership Committee Chair
  3. 2008–2012Agency for Science, Technology and Research
  4. From 2003PREMIAPresident of the founding Pro Tem Committee
  5. 1994–2017National University of Singapore

Education

  1. 1986University of VirginiaPhD in computer science
  2. 1973University of SurreyMSc in radiation studies
  3. 1971University of SingaporeBSc (Hons) in physics

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Discretization: An Enabling Technique2002 · Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery · 983 citations
  2. Supervised and Traditional Term Weighting Methods for Automatic Text Categorization2009 · IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence · 563 citations
  3. A robust arbitrary text detection system for natural scene images2014 · Expert Systems with Applications · 532 citations
  4. Recognizing Text with Perspective Distortion in Natural Scenes2013 · IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) · 480 citations
  5. A case study on using neural networks to perform technical forecasting of forex2000 · Neurocomputing · 397 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 19 October 2026.

  1. 14% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Chew Lim Tan. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after their doctorate, and how the timing changed across cohorts.
  2. Stanford University trained or employed 20 of the 89 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes National University of Singapore. Stanford University trained or employed 20 of the 89 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and employment links for major-prize and best-paper winners.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes National University of Singapore. Our estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers rose from 2% to 32%Includes National University of Singapore. We estimate where leading AI researchers worked when their most-cited papers appeared. The company share rose from 2% in 1975–1979 to 32% in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Chew Lim Tan yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Gland segmentation in prostate histopathological images pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Automatic Alignment of English-Chinese Bilingual Texts of CNS News arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. History – PREMIA premiasg.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Word Sense Disambiguation Using Label Propagation Based Semi-Supervised Learning aclanthology.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. INSIDE old.iapr.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Chronological List of IAPR Fellows iapr.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. Text Flow: A Unified Text Detection System in Natural Scene Images arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.