Tengku Silvana Sinar is a senior lecturer in the Department of English Literature, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU). She earned her Master of Arts (M.A.) in Applied Linguistics from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1986, and her Ph.D. in Discourse Analysis from the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2003.

She previously served as the Coordinator of Private Higher Education Institutions (Kopertis) Region I, covering North Sumatra and Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD), from 2003 to 2008. From 2006 to 2016, she was the Head of the Master's and Doctoral Programs in Linguistics, and later served as the Head of the Department of English Literature at USU from 2018 to 2021.

Her research in 2018 and 2019 was funded by the Directorate of Research and Community Service (DRPM), Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education, focusing on the Functional Features of Forensic Corruption Cases in Indonesia. Since 2018, she has also received research funding through USU's TALENTA Research Program, with a primary focus on English language teaching.