Dr Vivian Balakrishnan is the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore since October 2015. He previously served as Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative; Minister for the Environment and Water Resources; Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports; Second Minister for Trade and Industry; Minister-in-charge of Entrepreneurship; Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts and Minister of State for National Development. He has been a Member of Parliament since 2001. Dr Balakrishnan was a ministerial facilitator for many rounds of negotiations between 2011 to 2015 that led to the Paris Agreement on climate change at the United Nations. He was awarded the President’s Scholarship in 1980 to study Medicine at the National University of Singapore. Following post-graduate specialist training in Ophthalmology, he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1991. He was appointed Medical Director of Singapore National Eye Centre in 1999 and Chief Executive Officer of Singapore General Hospital in 2000. Concurrently, he was Commanding Officer of the 2nd Combat Support Hospital of the Singapore Armed Forces from 1999 to 2002.
