Hong Tat Chee was born in Singapore in 1973. He was awarded the Prime Minister's Book Prize and the Overseas Merit Scholarship by the Singapore Government to study in the University of California at Berkeley, where he received the B.Sc. degree (with highest honors) in electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS) and the B.A. degree (with highest honors) in economics in 1996. While at Berkeley, he was awarded the Departmental Citations for EECS and Economics for graduating as the top student in both departments.
He joined DSO National Laboratories, Singapore, as an Engineer in 1996 and has been working on sonar signal processing, including the modeling of underwater sounds, classification of sonar signals, higher-order statistics, and fluctuation-based processing.
Mr. Chee is a member of Mensa, Eta Kappa Nu, and Phi Beta Kappa.