Dr Reuben Ng, an assistant professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has become the first recipient from Asia to win the prestigious
Harkness Fellowship since its inception in 1925. Envisioned as a “reverse Rhodes Scholarship” for top mid-careers, the Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice is a premier leadership programme for policymakers and innovators from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and, now, Singapore.
The Fellowship has been awarded to Dr Ng in recognition of his impact trajectory through research on ageing and health policy. He has put Singapore on the map through many firsts. He won the
Margret M. and Paul B. Baltes Foundation Award in Behavioral and Social Gerontology, from Gerontological Society of America for
creating innovative AI techniques to study how older adults have been portrayed in books and newspapers over 200 years. He is the first Singaporean to win one of the most important awards for ageing research in 25 years. He has also won the
Mather Innovative Research on Aging Award (Bronze) twice—in 2022 for seminal research on how highlighting the
roles of older adults, instead of their age, improves societal perceptions of them dramatically; in 2023 for the
older adults’ interaction with technology on TikTok. He is also the first social scientist to win the
Health in Aging Foundation New Investigator Award for outstanding contributions to Geriatrics, and named a
Rising Star by the Association of Psychological Science (APS) the premier society of 25,000 behavioural scientists from over 80 countries.
Reuben’s work achieved international media coverage at
The Guardian, New York Times, Bloomberg, Channel News Asia, BBC, and
CNN. He is often cited in global policy reports including the World Health Organization’s 2021
Global Report on Ageism, and in court cases on age discrimination.
Dr Ng said “Ageism is a global health crisis where older adults are viewed as a burden rather than a resource. My Harkness Fellowship seeks creative strategies and policy solutions to envision a world where older adults are a productive resource to tap on, rather than a burden to be managed. Interacting with experts and top policy thinkers in the US has energised me to seek global policy solutions as the world is rapidly ageing toward 2 billion seniors by 2050.”
The Harkness Fellowship is currently receiving applications for the
2025-26 programme.