Melvin Chen

Melvin is a philosopher by trade, although he also has an academic background in English Literature and possesses research interests that extend into Computer Science and the Medical and Health Sciences. Having originally been offered an overseas scholarship to read Law at Somerville College (Oxford), he decided to take the road less travelled and reject the conventional route in favour of his intellectual interests. That, he would like to believe, has made all the difference. He is now a Faculty Member at the University Scholars Programme at Nanyang Technological University and hopes to inspire like-minded students to pursue their dreams with courage and fearlessness. Melvin's research interests are both interdisciplinary and philosophy-specific in nature and they include AI research (applied), the philosophy of AI (theoretical), formal epistemology, metaethics and normative ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy and literature. His papers have been accepted for publication in STEM journals (The Lancet Regional Health-Western Pacific, Pacific Conservation Biology), philosophy journals (Philosophy & Technology, Philosophical Psychology, Hypatia, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, South African Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy & Literature), interdisciplinary journals (AI & Society), literary journals (Nordlit, Antae), and poetry journals (Tipton Poetry Journal, Eunoia Review, LONTAR). His art has graced the pages of Heartbeat: A Literary Journal. Melvin has previously served as the PI of a medical AI project entitled 'A Tale of Two Deficits: Causality & Care in Medical AI' (2019-2021 and c. SGD 195,952 in funding from an intramural NTU grant). He is currently a Collaborator for an interdisciplinary French-Singaporean AI project entitled 'Human-centred Frameworks for Inclusive & Sustainable AI Systems (DesCartes)' (2022–2027 and SGD 1,278,312.50 in funding from an NRF grant). Last but not least, he is also the Co-I of a metaverse project entitled 'A Proposal For A Normative Framework for the Future Metaverse(s)' (2022–2023 and SGD 20,000 in funding from an intramural CoHASS-NBS grant). He is also a member of the Medical Humanities and Digital Humanities research clusters at NTU.