Phern-Chern Tor completed his medical degree at the National University of Singapore under the Singapore Armed Forces Local Study Award. In his military career he served as Head Psychological Care (PCC) services in the SAF and was responsible for the provision of psychiatric care for all enlistees and regular staff in the Singapore Armed Forces. During his tenure as Hd PCC he revamped the psychiatric services to provide consultant lead care, focused the services on outpatient assessments and established a Case Tracking Unit (CTU) .
In his psychiatric career, Phern-Chern distinguished himself by obtaining the Eli-Lily gold medal and the Singapore Psychiatric Association Book Prize for his undergraduate and postgraduate psychiatric examinations respectively. He has been active in education and research, publishing more than 80 peer reviewed articles and being an adjunct assistant professor in psychiatry for the Yong Loo Ling School of Medicine, Duke-NUS School of Medicine and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. He underwent advanced research and neurostimulation training at the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales and Toronto Western Hospital.
He established the first Neurostimulation services at the Institute of Mental Health (Singapore) and was the inaugural Service Head and is now the inaugural Director of the Centre for Interventional Psychiatry at the National University Hospital of Singapore. He is also the Chairperson of the Section of Neurostimulation, College of Psychiatrists (Singapore), Treasurer of the International Society of ECT and Neurostimulation and Vice-President of the Singapore Neuromodulation Society, a Chapter of the International Neuromodulation Society.
He is interested in how functional connectivity and neuronavigation can enable precision psychiatry treatments of treatment resistant neuropsychiatric disorders.
