Alan Tan is Professor at the NUS Law School, specialising in Aviation Law, Maritime Law, Criminal Law and Environmental Law.
Born in Penang, Malaysia, Alan was educated at the Penang Free School and Raffles Junior College, subsequently obtaining an LL.B from NUS and an LL.M and J.S.D. from Yale Law School. He was the winner of the Koh Han Kok Prize for International Law at NUS, and his doctoral thesis on the law and politics of shipping regulation won the Ambrose Gherini International Law Prize at Yale Law School. Alan has been a Justices’ Law Clerk for the Supreme Court of Singapore and has also interned at the International Maritime Organization in London. He has published widely on Aviation Law, Maritime Law and Environmental Law, particularly in the context of Asian countries. In 2006, his book “Vessel-Source Marine Pollution: The Law and Politics of International Regulation”, was published by Cambridge University Press. In the same year, his article in the Air & Space Law journal – “Liberalizing Aviation in the Asia-Pacific Region: The Impact of the E.U. Horizontal Mandate” – won the Diedriks-Verschoor Prize for best law article.
Alan was Vice-Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at NUS Law (2006 to 2010) and Director (Projects) in the Office of the Provost at NUS (2011 to 2012), overseeing the newly-established Yale-NUS College’s double degree programs. He was also Director of the NYU@NUS Dual Degree program through which students obtained two LL.M degrees from the New York University and NUS Law Schools. In 2009, he was appointed as Hauser Global Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law, where he taught global aviation law and policy. He has also taught at the University of Sydney and served as a consultant to various governments and donor agencies, including the Vietnamese government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Alan has also been engaged as a consultant on aviation liberalization in Asia by the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Arab League and various national governments.
