Chan Heng Chee (; born 19 April 1942) is a Singaporean academic and diplomat who has been serving as Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 2012, Chairwoman of the National Arts Council and Member of the Presidential Council for Minority Rights. She had also served as Singapore Ambassador to the United States between 1996 and 2012. Academic career Chan graduated with a first-class honours degree in political science from the University of Singapore (now the National University of Singapore) in 1964, and went on to complete a Master of Arts degree at Cornell University in 1967. She subsequently received a PhD from the University of Singapore in 1974. Her thesis was titled: The Dynamics of One-party Dominance: A Study of Five Singapore Constituencies. Chan was previously the Executive Director of the Singapore International Foundation and served as Director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. She was also the founding Director of the Institute of Policy Studies. Chan was a member of the International Advisory Board of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, a council member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, and a council member of the International Council of the Asia Society in New York. When Ambassador Chan left Washington at the end of her appointment as Ambassador to the US, she received the Inaugural Asia Society Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award, the Inaugural Foreign Policy Outstanding Diplomatic Achievement Award 2012 and the United States Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. Chan has received a number of awards, including honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of Newcastle in 1994 and the University of Buckingham in 1998. She is also a political science professor on secondment at the National University of Singapore. She was also twice awarded the National Book Awards in 1986 for “A Sensation of Independence: A Political Biography of David Marshall” and in 1978 for “The Dynamics of One Party Dominance: The PAP at the Grassroots”. She is also the current chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Diplomatic career Chan served as Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1989 to 1991. During this time, she was concurrently accredited as the High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico. She became the Ambassador to the United States in 1996. At the time, she was the first