Cham Tao Soon

Cham Tao Soon (born 1939) is a Singaporean academic and engineer. He was the founding president of the Nanyang Technological University.

Early life and education Cham was born in Singapore in 1939. He attended Pasir Panjang Primary School and Raffles Institution. He graduated from the University of Malaya with an honours degree in civil engineering in 1964. Following his graduation from the university, he worked briefly as a consulting engineer and later as a lecturer at the Singapore Polytechnic. Two years after becoming a lecturer, he left Singapore to further his education at the University of London. He graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with honours and soon began studying at the University of Cambridge on a Commonwealth Scholarship, where he obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in Fluid Mechanics. In 2008, he was elected the director of the Board of Trustees of United Overseas Bank Limited and served as the chairman of the Board of Governors of Raffles Junior College. From January 2009 to 2010, he served as the deputy chairman of the Board of Governors of Raffles Institution. He became the board's chairman in 2011. He was involved in the establishment of the Singapore Rail Academy in 2016. He and Tan Gee Paw received the Distinguished Professional Engineer Award on 17 November 2018. His autobiography, titled Life At Speed, was published in 2020.

Cham is a fellow of the Institution of Engineers Singapore, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Strathclyde, the University of Surrey, Loughborough University and Soka University. He has also served as the director of the UOB subsidiaries Far Eastern Bank and United Overseas Bank (China), and the chairman of MFS Technology and the Singapore China Foundation.