Dr. Shirley Ho is Associate Vice President (Humanities, Social Sciences & Research Communication) in the President's Office at Nanyang Technological University. She is President's Chair Professor of Communication Studies in the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at NTU. She is an elected fellow of the International Communication Association, a recognition of her distinguished scholarly contributions to the broad field of communication.

Her primary research area focuses on cross-cultural public opinion dynamics related to science and technology, with potential health or environmental impacts. Her work emphasizes the roles of values, social media and other emerging modes of communication in shaping public attitudes toward emerging technologies (e.g., nuclear energy and renewable energies), applications of artificial intelligence technologies (e.g., autonomous vehicles), as well as novel food technologies (e.g., cultured meat, nano-enabled food, and plant-based protein). As a firm believer of science communication, her research investigates how best to motivate scientists to take the role of the “public intellectual” to communicate their research findings to the general public and the media. Science communication is pertinent amidst the current climate of misinformation. Dr. Ho is invited by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering to serve as member of their study committee to address inaccurate and misleading information about biological threats through scientific collaboration and communication.

Dr. Ho is currently leading several large-scale, interdisciplinary science communication projects as Lead PI, including: (a) "SPACE: Shaping Public Adaptive Capacity for Environmental Infectious Diseases” (funded by the National Research Foundation); (b) "Climate Change Transformation Programme" (Lead of Sustainable Societies Cross-Cutting Theme) (funded by Ministry of Education Tier 3c Grant); (c) “ATTAIN*SG: Achieving public TrusT in AI in autoNomous vehicles in SinGapore” (funded by AI Singapore Governance Programme); (d) "Intelligent Modelling for Decision-Making in Critical Urban Systems (DesCartes)" (Lead of WP7) (funded by NRF through CNRS@CREATE); (e) “Facing Plastic Waste Through Virtual Reality (VR): Using Narratives to Promote Plastic Recycling Behaviours among Secondary School Students” (funded by NTU Accelerating Creativity & Excellence Grant); and (f) "A Multi-Methods Approach to Investigate Factors Shaping Public Acceptance of Cultured Meat in Singapore" (funded by Ministry of Education Tier 1 Grant). Her other research is funded by A*STAR, Defence Science Organization, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, the Infocomm Media Development Authority, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, National Medical Research Council, and the Workplace Safety and Health Institute.

She has given keynote talks, plenary speeches, and other invited talks on science communication, public opinion, and cyber risks at institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Tsinghua University, Peking University, University of Houston, the Science Centre Singapore, and many more. She has published over 100 papers in top-tier communication journals such as Communication Research, Journal of Health Communication, New Media & Society, Public Opinion Quarterly, Public Understanding of Science, and Science Communication, as well as journals in other disciplines such as Nature Nanotechnology and Energy Policy.

Dr. Ho is the recipient of the Hillier Krieghbaum Under-40 Award, given by AEJMC to honour a scholar annually who have shown outstanding achievement in research, teaching and service. She has twice won the AEJMC ComSHER Division’s coveted Top Published Article of the Year Award (2018 & 2013) on science and risk communication, and International Communication Association (ICA) CAM Division’s Best Published Article Award (2019), in addition to the numerous top faculty paper awards that she has won at AEJMC and ICA over the years. She is the recipient of the Women in Education Leadership Award at the 9th Asia’s Education Excellence Awards in Singapore. She won the 2019 AEJMC ComSHER's Teaching Award (Second Place) for innovative and effective pedagogy in the areas of science, health, environment, and risk.

She has been an advisor for a number of honors, masters, and PhD students. Under her guidance, her students have won numerous top research paper awards at international conferences.

She received a Ph.D. in mass communications and a M.A. in journalism and mass communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008 and 2005, respectively. She also received a B.A. in communication studies (first class honors) from NTU in 2002. Her personal homepage is https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/shirleysho/