Professor LOW Ee Ling is the President’s Chair Professor in Education (Applied Linguistics & Teacher Education) and Dean, Academic and Faculty Affairs at the English Language & Literature Academic Group at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She is also a member of the NIE Senior Leadership (NSL) team and an elected member of the NTU Senate since 2024. She is concurrently appointed as an adjunct professor at the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the National University of Singapore from 1 September 2024.

Her previous appointments include: Dean, Teacher Education and Director of the Teaching Scholars Programme (2018-2021), Chief Planning Officer, Director’s Office (2017-2018), Head of Strategic Planning and Academic Quality (2014-2017), Associate Dean for Programme and Student Development at the Office of Teacher Education (2009-2013) and Sub-Dean for Degree Programmes (2004-2009).

She obtained her BA (with Direct Honours) awarded to the top 1% of each cohort from the National University of Singapore (NUS), an M.Phil and a PhD in Linguistics (Acoustic Phonetics) from the University of Cambridge, UK under the Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education Overseas Graduate Scholarship. She was also awarded the Ministry of Education’s Humanities Scholarship which she pursued at Raffles Junior College. She won the Fulbright Advanced Research Scholarship in 2008 which she spent at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College and embarked on her research expertise in Teacher Education whilst there. Professor Low played a leading role in the conceptualization of the NIE Strategic roadmap: towards 2017 and the development of the Teacher Education for the 21st century (TE21) model. She also co-led the NIE Strategic Roadmap 2022. In 2012, she was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Bronze) by the President of the Republic of Singapore for her dedication and commitment towards furthering the cause of education in Singapore. She attended the 25th Governance and Leadership Programme (GLP) run by the Civil Service College in 2018 and was elected as the cohort valedictorian.

Professor Low is an internationally renowned expert in Teacher Education and World Englishes and is constantly invited to deliver keynote addresses in both these disciplines to international scholars and policymakers. Her current H index is 34 and her total citations stand at 6741. She has won competitive research grants in both these fields both locally and internationally amounting to more than $2 million SGD. In May 2021, she was recognized for her exemplary scholarship by the Academy for Leadership in Teacher Education (ALiTE), University of Hong Kong. In 2022, she was elected into the prestigious International Academy of Education (IEA) based in Belgium as an academy fellow.

Since 2009, she has led a suite of projects that has built an evidence base of teacher education across the continuum from pre-service to beginning teaching to career-long mentoring. The findings have been useful for informing teacher policy and enhancements in Singapore’s teacher education policy and programmes. The pronunciation metric system which she devised in her early career (known as the Pairwise Variability Index or PVI) was a breakthrough captured in The New Scientist, as it was able to robustly capture rhythmic patterning of the world languages empirically. The PVI is still widely used today by leading researchers in the field as well as in many multidisciplinary domains including music and language pathology.

Internationally, she is regarded as a thought leader in Education and Teacher Education. She is appointed as a member of the OECD Education 2030 Scientific Committee, along with Nobel Laureate committee members, and is also a member of the Forum for World Education (FWE) Steering Committee which features other international education thought leaders. She served as Singapore’s representative for the Global Education Innovation Initiative of Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Education 2030 initiative. In 2017, Prof Low served as an international expert for the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD)'s review of Initial Teacher Preparation for the Welsh government and the Australian government. She also serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education (BAGCED), De La Salle University. She is an Executive Board Member of the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA) and now serves as the Editor in Chief of the AILA Review, the flagship journal of the association. She is an Editorial board Member of World Englishes (Wiley-Blackwell), Journal of Educational Change (Springer) and is the series editor, Routledge Studies in World Englishes book series and is also on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Multilingual Education Book Series by Springer and served on the board of the Journal of Second Language Pronunciation. She is the co-series editor of the Empowering Teaching and Learning through Policies and Practice: Singapore and International Perspectives (ETLP) published by Springer and Handbooks of Applied Linguistics published by Walter de Gruyter.

She has been awarded visiting professorships in Linguistics at King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) in 2015, at Chulalongkorn University in 2008 and at Ball State University on the Fulbright Occasional Lectureship Award. She was a Centre Fellow for the Research Centre for Language Education and Acquisition in Multilingual Societies appointed by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIE) (2009 & 2016) and served as the external BA Programme Examiner in Applied Linguistics. She has served as a consultant to undergraduate programme development for the Emirates College for Advanced Education (ECAE) and played a key role in the Temasek Foundation-NIE Educational Leaders Programme for Vietnam which upgraded 30,000 principals in educational leadership in Vietnam. Most recently, Professor Low heads the capacity building cluster for the repositioning of the ECAE vision and mission and the team won the strategic partnership award in February 2024.

Professor Low excels in teaching and was awarded the Koh Boon Hwee Scholars Honoured Faculty award by the President of NTU for inspirational mentorship. Her teaching innovations developed with her colleagues include the development of a pronunciation game known as the Penguin Odyssey and the "NIE Well Said" app widely used by students.

She is currently the Advisor for Singapore Association for Applied Linguistics (SAAL) and was the past SAAL President (2008 - 2020) and also past President of the St Joseph's Convent Alumnae (2008-2020) and was appointed IJ Schools ambassador for being an outstanding alumnus. She is currently an Executive Committee member of the St Joseph’s Convent Alumnae and the Fulbright Association of Singapore. She has also served in the United Nations Association of Singapore. In 2008-10, she was the Executive Director of the Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA), a role for which she was awarded fellowship of APERA in recognition of her outstanding service in 2010. She served on the Speak Good English Movement, Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts from 2006-2012.