Ni-Eng received his doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and his undergraduate and masters degree in Chinese Studies from National University of Singapore (NUS). Since 2003, he has been actively involved in the research and teaching of Language and Linguistics (especially Mandarin Chinese), predominantly in Singapore and the United States. Growing up speaking three languages at home, and educated in Singapore’s bilingual school system, Ni-Eng is has taught students from a wide range of level, age and proficiency levels.

The scope of his disciplinary training includes interactional linguistics, Conversation Analysis (CA) & Ethnomethodology, multimodal discourse analysis, and corpus linguistics (with Mandarin as a focus). The courses he has taught include topics concerning natural talk-in-interaction, multimodality, bilingualism and other general sociolinguistics interests.

Ni-Eng is the current review editor for Chinese Language and Discourse under John Benjamins. He has also reviewed and published articles in journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Chinese Language & Discourse, Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association, Language and Dialogue, Discourse Processes and International Journal of Bilingualism.

His ongoing interest is on the interactional, socio-cultural and cognitive operations at work in everyday talk. Currently, Ni Eng is involved in investigating doctor-patient interaction in various medical settings, with a focus on Advance Care Planning (ACP) or End-of-Life conversations. Research grants that Ni-Eng is or has been involved in as a PI or Co-PI include: Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 2 for "Doctoring the Elderly: Doctor-Patient Interaction in a Urology Clinic", ARISE Strategic Initiatives Fund for "Quality Healthcare Delivery for the Elderly: Consent-taking in a Cataract Surgery Clinic in Singapore", ARISE-GERI Joint Research Fund for "Examining doctor-patient communication triadic versus dyadic medical interactions in geriatric clinics in Singapore"; NTU Start-up Grant (SUG) for "Communicative Difficulties in Healthcare settings: Talk and Interaction with Chinese-speaking Elderly Patients"; and the University of California Consortium for Language Learning & Teaching (UCCLLT) grant for "Developing a Library of Video Clips for Mandarin Chinese Class Use".