Dr. Melvin Chan is Assistant Dean and Research Scientist at the Office of Education Research (OER) and is affiliated with two research centres: Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) and the Singapore Centre for Character and Citizenship. Education (SCCCE). As Assistant Dean of Knowledge Management at OER, he oversees matters related to research data management, data curation and reuse. From 2014-2019, he was Managing Editor of NIE's flagship journal, Asia Pacific Journal of Education. He is currently Review Editor at Frontiers in Psychology.

Dr. Chan is an education and psychological science scholar. His first degree was in psychology. After some years as a social policy analyst in the government sector, he pursued a Masters degree at the School of Demography, Australian National University, where he explored topics on the characteristics of global population changes. In 2014, he obtained his PhD degree in Education from Nanyang Technological University, titled 'Self, identity and agency in reflexive modernization: A case of Singaporean adolescents'.

Since 2014, Dr. Chan won several competitive research grants (amounting to over S$2m as PI ). His primary research focuses on the effectiveness of what works in teaching and learning (e.g., which types of pedagogical practices are beneficial, which are detrimental, and for which outcomes; how do individual and institutional contexts influence educational opportunity and advancement). Hundreds of reports have been disseminated and numerous presentations have been extended to practitioners, specialists and government leaders. He was the co-designer and principal analyst of the conceptual framework and instrumentation (building on work done by his predecessors). An important question remains: how much of what students learn and achieve during Secondary education matters for future post-school outcomes? A longitudinal panel design that captures student experiences across educational levels and life stages can address this complex issue. In 2021, he was awarded an important grant (Examining educational transitions and pathways in Singapore), which follows the same students into post-secondary as well as collecting new samples from the same population. This project integrates two important fields of human development (life course and positive psychology) and is possibly the first in pursuing a large-scale panel study on lifelong learning, well-being and school-to-work transitions (https://pathways.rdc.nie.edu.sg).

Dr. Chan's research interests are interdisciplinary, covering aspects of learning, motivation, future-readiness, youth development, and quantitative methodology. Among the topics that he has been invited to speak on locally and internationally are comparative research on student achievement, psychometric measurement, academic motivation, pedagogy and student outcomes, and future-ready learning. Dr. Chan likes to work with complex models and he is well-versed in a range of statistical methods that include structural equation, missing data designs, multilevel and longitudinal modeling, mixture (cluster) modeling, and Rasch models.