Jin

If there’ one thing from an NUS canteen stall that Jin Zhe could eat for the rest of his life, it’d be the dry ‘ban mian’ from the BiZ canteen. Most people may be surprised to learn that Jin’s command of Mandarin isn’t the greatest, even though he was born in China, grew up in Singapore, and went through the Singapore education system and National Service. If he were stranded on a deserted island for eternity, he’d like to have a compound bow for hunting, a journal, and Wilson the volleyball for companionship. He is averse to small talk and the word ‘entrepreneur’ (despite being the founder of a startup). He discovered his weakness for American food while away at NOC and is a self-professed pizza and junk food fiend. He thinks that we could really, really improve the printing system at SoC and hopes that someone will build an app for their FYP that will show users their print quota and queue, instead of us wasting paper, printing cover pages for every print job. Any takers?

Describe your SoC experience.

I was a Computer Science major with a focus area in Information Retrieval. I’ve just graduated and it took me a total of 5 years if we also count in the 1 year for NOC.

My journey at SoC wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. I had a really tough time picking up programming in the beginning as it was such a drastic switch from what I’m used to learning in 12 years of public education. I remember being completely gutted and utterly embarrassed when I received C+’s for both my CS1010 and CS1231 in my first semester. Till this day I still get a tinge of guilt when I think about it because I feel I’ve let down Mr. Aaron Tan and Prof. Bressan. After the disaster of a first semester, I took it upon myself to do whatever it takes to improve. It would take me 3 years and countless hours of practice to eventually love, embrace and appreciate the world of programming and Computer Science.

One of the most challenging aspects of being in the field of CS is keeping up with the times. The democratization of the internet, growth of smartphones and advancements in hardware within the last decade had really propelled technological progress at jaw-dropping speeds. Software engineering paradigms are shifting, new machine learning techniques are developed by the likes of Google and Facebook. Due to this phenomenon, many outsiders feel that a CS education is losing its relevance because it doesn’t cater for the shifting landscapes of technology. That misconception couldn’t be any farther from the truth. Applications and methods of application change, however fundamentals never change and the value of a CS education in SoC is that it imparts strong fundamentals. I actually wrote a Medium article in April to discuss this issue. 

The craziest thing I did was willing ‘tanking’ most of my projects, except for rare a few which I happen to get star players on my side. In college and in the workplace, there will always be an unequal distribution of contributions from the people you work with. You can’t change them and neither can you change the system. However you are in control of how much you can gain from the projects. For the projects where I did most of the work, I was also the one in the team who learnt the most.

I’d definitely wished to have been more involved with the SoC community. I had been a geeky, hermit for the most part of my time here and so have only made a handful of friends from my classes.

In my third year, I went onboard the NUS College in Silicon Valley and became a full-time software engineering intern at a tech startup. It was there that I realized the importance of working on real world projects. To quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” That really applies to software engineering as taking part in real-world projects and shipping production-grade code is a great opportunity to apply our knowledge in the industry. Iteration cycles at startups can get pretty intense and there was at least one day a week where I had to put in about 15 hours of work. I dare say that the hours I clocked churning code can put investment bankers to shame. It was a lot of hard work but what my internship gave me was a ton of practice and immense confidence as a programmer.

Returning from NOC, I found a renewed sense of optimism and enthusiasm. I no longer looked at my assignments with reluctance and fear. In fact I looked forward to problem sets, assignments as I thoroughly enjoyed solving them. Accomplishing them gave me a sense of achievement I hadn’t experienced before. As I progressed in my CS curriculum, I also realized that it was a lot more than just coding, algorithms, data structures and software engineering. I was introduced to entire fields in computer graphics, artificial intelligence, information retrieval, computer security and many more which were all extremely interesting. Despite being more demanding, I found the last 2 years in SoC being much more enjoyable than the first 2. One could certainly say that college ended on a high note for me. I actually enjoyed my FYP the most because it was self-proposed and it also eventually turned into my startup! How cool is that! 

I must say my experience in SoC is something most students can relate to. The most defining moment for me as an undergraduate actually happened while being on the NOC programme when I was at a dinner party and a Venture Capitalist whom I was with turned to me and asked “what is your goal in life? What gets you out of bed every morning?” My pursuit to the answer of that question would eventually bring me to realize my passion in utilizing technology to make this world a better place. So I’d say what set my student experience apart from most is actually NOC, which for me was pretty life-changing.

Which faculty members made impressions on you?

SoC truly has an exceptional group of professors and staff which makes me proud to be part of this family. It would be impossible to exhaustively name everyone here so I’ll just attempt to mention those who come to mind, not in any particular order whatsoever. 

I’m truly grateful towards Dr. Steven Halim for believing in me and taking up the project as my supervisor. Hadn’t it been for his support, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today. His algorithms classes are also world-class and comes with a top-notch algorithmic visualization website (VisuAlgo) to aid learning. Mr. Aaron Tan is someone almost every SoC freshman will have the opportunity to take classes under. His enthusiasm is simply infectious and he also goes above and beyond to make classes engaging and interesting for students. When lecturers are passionate about teaching, it really shows in their classes and Aaron is exemplary of that. Dr. Alan Cheng taught me Computer Graphics and his assignments were some of the most fun and engaging ones I’ve ever done in NUS. Prof. Ng Teck Khim is a wonderful lecturer at Computer Vision in CS and has a knack of breaking down complex ideas into really simple concepts. I took Information Retrieval under Prof. Kan Min-Yen and had thoroughly enjoyed his classes, assignments as well as his dry wit. Prof. Leong Hon Wai was the one who really pushed us to maturity in our algorithmic journey. Prof. Wong Weng Fai taught me Computer Organization and I will always remember his detailed PowerPoint animations on MIPS architecture. Dr. Bimlesh Wadhwa taught me for all my software engineering courses and she is the without a doubt one of the kindest and most caring lecturers around. 

For those who didn’t make the list, please forgive me, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t make an impact on my SoC life, it just means that I wasn’t able to load everything into memory all at once.

What do you count as your most significant achievement to date? 

My most significant achievement to date is being able to build a production-grade social network entirely by myself. It was an end-to-end implementation which covered UI design, frontend development, backend development, database, caching, server load balancing, web security and scalable architectures. I really learnt A LOT from the one year working on it. The project is called Mooder and it is the startup that I am working on right now. I’d like to cheekily think that I have outdone Zuckerberg because Mooder is definitely more advanced that the first version of Facebook, but to Zuck’s credit, web development in the early 2000s is vastly different from what is today; I had it much easier with the embarrassing array of tools and knowledge that web developers enjoy today. Do check out the platform at www.mooder.com! 

As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt famously said, “Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality.” Human emotions is something very primal and it’s ironic that it has been almost swept under the rug during the digital revolution of our time. 

I am a very heavy user of social media and I do believe it is the single most defining technology in this decade. It has become such an integral part of our lives! It redefined the way we connect to people, changed the way we consume information and brought new ways to how we project ourselves to others. However as social networks continue to evolve, there is a void being left behind and that is emotions and empathy. To paint a bleak picture, Facebook has evolved into a platform for content sharing and self-assertions, Instagram and Snapchat are starting to become the center stage for the vainglorious, twitter became a one-way channel for celebrities and politicians to project their views and opinions onto others and the list goes on. In 2010, a Stanford research paper published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin showed that Facebook makes people sadder because users mostly post about overly positive emotions and it harbors the illusion that everyone around us are leading way better lives than us such that when we experience negative emotions, we think that we are alone in our sorrows. The conclusion of that study proposed that if we could share our negative emotions as much as our positive ones, we could be way happier people. That is what Mooder sets out to accomplish: to create an environment where users would feel welcome to share any emotion they experience and connect with other users who feel the same. Empathy has always been the cornerstone for authentic human relationships but we have yet to see mechanisms online which facilitate that. 

I first proposed the FYP idea to Dr. Steven Halim and was very fortunate that he agreed to be my project supervisor. I then acquired SoC’s Validating Startup Concept (VaSCo) grant last July followed by getting into SoC’s incubator The Furnace in December. In February I was accepted onto AliCloud Startup program 2016 and then in April I went onboard Mediacorp’s Mediapreneur programme which also provided additional funding for the startup. It all started out from a FYP project! This journey so far was made possible by a lot of people, my friends, family and professors. The SoC Entrepreneurship committee has also provided tremendous support, encouragement and mentorship, for which I am extremely grateful! 

It is A LOT of hard work. I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to run a company and I don’t think there’s anything that can be done to prepare oneself for something quite like this. I have an office under The Furnace at I-Cube which has been my home for the past 8 months because I literally stay there on weekdays. Every single day is spent working and ironically one of the few things that keep me sane throughout this time is actually Mooder. For anyone reading this, feel free to drop by I-Cube #03-31 to say hi!

What did you want to be when you were younger?

I wanted to be an artist and I have been really wieldy with a pencil for as long as I could remember. My strength was in drawing portraits and in secondary school my art teacher told me I was pretty talented (humble brag) and suggested that I go to an art school. Well I decided against that because pursuing art as a career was a pretty risky move and more so making that decision at the age of 16. So I pretty much gave that idea up and haven’t practiced drawing ever since. You know when you make a hard decision like that, you really can’t look back anymore. I might return to it someday, maybe when I retire.

What advice would you give a prospective SoC student?

1. Be patient with your learning. Coming from the public education system, a lot of us will have this conditioned expectation to grasp something within a couple of months and if we don’t, we think we’re not fit for it. That couldn’t be any further away from the truth. It took me 3 years to get comfortable with coding. What computing had taught me was that if you stayed on a challenge long and hard enough, you will almost certainly overcome it. Just don’t apply that during exams! 

2. Go for internships, ideally one at a big company followed by one at a startup. Internships at big companies teach you industry best practices and production-grade standards, while internships at startups provide you with incredible control over your responsibilities and lots of room to experiment. Both will prove to be great learning experiences 

3. Work on your own projects. Passion is not given, it is cultivated and grown. A software engineer without a pet project is like a novelist without a genre. 

4. Do not rush to graduate. The more time you spend on learning, the more appreciation you get to develop, the more concepts you get to internalize and most importantly, the more opportunities you get. Staying in school longer could mean that you have more time to work on personal projects or going for more internships.

What are your future plans?

My focus now is entirely on my startup and I seek to grow it as much as I possibly can. Oh my mom is also urging me to get a girlfriend, maybe I’ll start to make some plans for that too!

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

I am a huge fan of combat arts and have trained in various systems including Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Boxing, Brazilian Jujitsu and Olympic freestyle wrestling. These days I don’t have time commit to regular classes at a gym and so I pretty much train by myself in school.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

6 years ago I declined the offer to study CS in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s college of engineering. I chose to enroll in NUS instead. You know after all these years, the biggest lesson I learnt is that decisions are rarely right or wrong in and of themselves, it’s what you make of them and where you allow them to take you that ultimately define their worth. In my attempt to justify my decision, I made sure I’d be the best that I can be with the opportunities that I can get. My stint in NUS had brought me great friendships, blessed me with amazing professors and wonderful mentors, led me to Silicon Valley, to Stanford and eventually to founding my own tech company. I’m not so certain that I could be in the same position today had I gone to Illinois. 

While I may not have been the valedictorian for my batch, I too would like to leave with a message to the graduation cohort of 2016: You are only as decisive as you are willing to fly with your decisions, so fly, and never look back!

Ru Hong

Seah Ru Hong will be receiving his Master of Computing in Computer Science degree this July. The thing he enjoys most about being a student here is the immense relief of completing a particularly difficult assignment. He’s an ‘East-side’ guy and loves the convenience of the East-West MRT line, when it’s actually working. He also did his Bachelor’s degree with us from 2003 to 2007, and can claim to have been a student of both the IS and CS departments.

What do you do now?

I co-founded my company QQstay. QQstay is a website that helps people find reliable property agents through customer reviews. I’m the only software engineer on the team and I developed the website. 

For many, property is the biggest purchase of a lifetime and you want to entrust this important deal to someone reliable. Advertisements of property agents are very common, and yet, finding a reliable property agent is not as easy as it should be. Very often, we rely on our friends’ recommendations to engage a property agent. What if we can bring those recommendations online? Hence, we created QQstay, a community where people can share reviews of property agents in Singapore. 

We believe that customer reviews can also help property agents. Positive reviews attract more customers and constructive feedback help agents to level up their service. It is a win-win situation. No one can deny the influence of online reviews on purchase decisions. Nowadays, we don’t book an overseas vacation until we have read a TripAdvisor review. We want to bring the same effect to the property agent profession. 

Currently, I am working to add other service providers to the QQstay community, such as renovation contractors, electricians and plumbers.

What do you count as your most significant achievement to date? 

I was the regional winner of the Google Cloud Developer Challenge 2013. It was during this time when I started to learn website development on the Google Cloud Platform. The Google Cloud Platform is powerful, easy to setup and affordable. When our QQstay website was in the prototype stage, I did not have to pay a single cent for using Google’s cloud. That’s because the Google Cloud Platform is free to use so long as your application lives within its basic resource quotas. There are no limited time trials. That’s ideal for entrepreneurs like me who need to quickly iterate on prototyping, without having to worry about splurging on experiments. 

I reinvested the prize money of US$20,000 into my start-up QQstay. Google also disbursed an additional grant of US$18,000 to SoC as I was representing the school.

What was your academic path before coming to NUS Computing?

I enrolled in NUS through the ‘A’ levels route. SoC was my first choice even though I did not read ‘A’ level Computing. I was very curious about computers and the Internet as I spend a lot of time on these media (still do).  

Which NUS Computing faculty members made impressions on you? 

Several teaching staff have impressed me with their patience and dedication. Particularly, I want to thank Mr Aaron Tan, Prof Chua Tat Seng, Prof Yu Haifeng, Prof Ng Teck Khim, Prof Chan Chee Yong, Prof Heng Cheng Suang and Prof Tan Kian Lee. Last but not least, I want to thank Dr. Sharon Tan for her referral to help me gain admission to the MComp programme.

I also want to thank the school committee that decided to teach Java to freshmen many years ago. The Java programming language has been my steady workhorse throughout my career and I still use Java extensively at work now. The Java ecosystem is so mature that I can always find a tool I need without having to reinvent the wheel. 

What is something most people would be surprised to learn about you?

That I got my Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems (E-commerce) but I pursued a Master’s degree in Computer Science. Moving to a more technical career is off the beaten track in Singapore. But I was determined to pursue a technical career out of passion, even though sometimes I feel like I am swimming against the tide. I hope that, one day, engineering and management would be equally viable career paths in Singapore, just like the top software houses in the US. 

I must confess that I was one of those ‘kiasu’ students when I was an undergrad. I was obsessed with my grades, so I felt insecure when I entered SoC with zero programming background. I remembered that I totally flunked an interview for a vacation job because I did not know how to create a database table in Microsoft Access! Thanks to SoC’s dedicated teaching team, not only did my confidence in programming grow but I fell in love with it. Even though I find the technical parts interesting, I hesitated to risk my grades by reading more Computer Science modules, which have a reputation of being really hard.   

So when I came back to do my Master’s, I gave myself a new goal; and that is to learn as much as I can. I wanted to take all the interesting modules, no matter how intimidating they may seem. The course requires 10 modules, out of which at least 5 must be in Computer Science. I took 9 CS modules. I have very humble grades but I’m satisfied with what I have learnt.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not studying or working?

To satisfy my own curiosity, I like to do data visualizations in my spare time. I have a side project SG Charts that showcases public data ranging from salary, COE prices to dengue clusters. Recently I read two great books that I would like to share with everyone: Peter Siebel’s Coders At Work and Brad Stone’s The Everything Store. 

Quick-fire! Most annoying word? 

When people ask you to “revert” to emails

Guilty pleasures?

I have only just discovered the Game of Thrones books and I recently finished A Clash of Kings. I can’t resist a good tiramisu, which is hard to find in Singapore!

Colin

Trust Colin Tan’s responses to break the eight-question mould. He says he’s extremely free spirited and can sometimes fire off wildly inappropriate things, but he doesn’t mean any harm. One of his pet peeves, however, might result in someone being harmed one day, because he finds it very hard not to punch people in the back of the head when they walk around with their heads down looking at their mobile phones – but he says that ‘as civilised individuals, we must try our best not to’. If there were only three things he could eat for the rest of his life, it would be cold fish ball noodles (explained later), durians and satay. He reckons that Singapore’s best kept secret is the satay shop across the road from his house.

Colin, as commander of the Achaemenid guards.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in a cow-shed (Kandang Kerbau) in a small sunny grungy seaport island called Singapore, which, according to legend, comes from the phrase “Singh Kapo!”, which means “Mr. Singh confiscated my stuff!”. True story. I spent a little bit of time in the Arabian deserts fulfilling my own dreams of being Lawrence of Arabia (minus the discomforts of riding camels all day long, and add in the creature comforts of the biggest most ornate malls you’ve ever seen). Think of it as Lawrence of Arabia with drinks by the beach.

But yeah most of my 25 years of existence was in Singh Kapo.

Describe your work and its significance.

I’m a typical boy, so I love anything that has flashing lights and beeps. Major brownie points if it flies, so naturally I found my love in drones. They’re big, loud, have flashing lights and they fly! How much cooler can you get than that?

Right…many drones! So I’m working on a cheap way to coordinate large clusters of big, loud, flashy, flying machines.

What effect do you think your field will have on the world in the next decade?

Lots. Surveillance, making money, transport, making money, making the world a better place, making money, world peace, making money. And making money.

Describe your SoC experience. 

As a student, [I enjoyed having] uber-cool profs like A/P Leong Hon Wai, who taught me (via his infamous Cattywampus lecture) that I should never trust anyone. Least of all professors. I carry on that tradition with my students, who have learnt that professors can “convince” you of anything.

As a staff member, in all seriousness, I love SoC! It’s the awesomest workplace in the world with colleagues who care about what they do and about giving their best to the students. It’s no wonder we’re #1. :D

Colleagues aside, management is extremely supportive, especially when it comes to coolest ways to teach our students. Watch out for a drone class coming in January 2017!

What do you find most challenging/interesting?

Definitely starting up a new class all on your own, with absolutely no idea where to begin. It’s fun but stressful because there’s no reference point, and students will hate you if you screw it up! Also teaching is like marriage; no one notices when you’re doing a great job, but mess up and there’s going to be tons of complaints in your feedback.

But I take all that in my stride. Ultimately if we care about our students, karma will take care of us. :)

Who made impressions on you?

Students: My awesome CS3216 teaching team! They’re brilliant, extremely dedicated people who endure no end of abuse from me but yet deliver all my marks accurately and on time! In particular Tay Yang Shun, who is helping me pro-bono this semester. Seriously how much awesome-r can you get than that?

Staff: Where do I begin? Damith, Gary, Yuen Jien, Steven, Ben, Lifeng, Sun Teck, Aaron and a ton of other colleagues who are extremely dedicated to ensuring that their students get the best in their education. And of course Prof. Leong Hon Wai… Cattywampus.

What was the craziest thing that you did during your time here? 

So many stories! Giving first aid to an unconscious girl in the toilet (there were other staff present around me), catching and detaining a mentally unstable individual until campus security and the police arrived, getting sliced by a drone propeller, having a drone crash while delivering a project to a customer, getting stalked by a student for a bit, having another student refuse to leave my office until I agreed to pass him for something (despite the fact he had absolutely no clue about the subject matter),  suicidal students, another student whose father was shouting at her so much that I was trying to calm him down..

Many other stories... being a prof is kinda exciting.

  

Is there anything you would have done differently during your time as a student?

Taken mathematics much more seriously. I am very math challenged. Also taking design concepts more seriously. I’m a pretty good back-end coder, but, while I have decent design and colour matching skills, I can’t code front-ends to save my life. 

What is the one thing you would change about NUS?

Have more schools be as awesome as SoC. No, seriously. Students tell me how they love the friendly, informal atmosphere here, where profs are often more like senior friends.

What do you think makes your experience here different than anyone else’s?

I’m blessed with the ability to convince people of just about anything. Especially about knowing something I really don’t know anything about. That makes life much easier.

What do you count as your most significant achievement to date?

I’m extremely proud of my CS3216 Software Development for Digital Markets class. :) Every year I get the best students in the school, put them through the wringer, and make them even better than when they started. 

Actually [before running CS3216] I was pursuing something else, and I asked Ben Leong for advice, and he said “Hey why don’t you take over CS3216?” And I was like “Oh ok”.

I never got that something else done, but I inherited what is probably the most legendary class in the whole of NUS. :)

Running this class takes very thick skin, which fortunately I have. The bulk of the lectures are delivered by guest speakers, covering topics from project management, to communication, to sales and marketing. It’s not your typical technical class.

This also means I constantly have to approach people I don’t know but who have interesting backgrounds, and convince them to give up 2-3 hours of their time on a Monday night (and sometimes other nights as well) to come give a talk to my students.

The thing I’ve learnt though is that people are amazingly helpful. I’ve never been rejected before. :)

[I am lucky I have an] awesome Teaching Assistant, Chin Su Yuen, who also runs her own company called Momocentral, specialising in outsourcing coding and designing jobs. 

What did you want to be when you were younger? 

I wanted to be a pilot! In fact after my PhD I applied to SIA to become a cadet pilot. After hearing nothing except for the sound of crickets, I applied for a teaching appointment here in SoC, and here I am!

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

Hmm that’s a tough one. I sometimes spend my free time coding up my own iOS apps, or writing software for my drones.. but the beauty of my job is that I can count that as work!

Aside from being a geek… I love a good single malt and a great Cuban or Nicaraguan cigar. Hakushu + Cohiba Corona Especial. You can’t get better than that.

Quick-Fire: What’s your signature dish?

I make a pretty good ayam buah keluak! Also pork rib curry, beer pork ribs, and quite a few other things. I can cook almost any cuisine except Chinese. Chinese food is _hard_ with its elaborate ingredients and seasonings.

I mean.. take the famous sweet-sour pork. The sauce is made up of tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, pineapples, onions and peppers.. and because Chinese flavours are relatively delicate, you have to balance everything well. With Indian or Peranakan/Malay cuisine, you can just spice everything to death. But not with Chinese cuisine.

Vietnamese cuisine is very simple, but so delicious!

Best movie you’ve seen this year?

Don’t remember any good movies this year, but the best movie I’ve _ever_ watched in my life is Cloud Atlas. It’s a huge story spanning 500 years showing how one’s actions today can affect the fates and destinies of thousands of people, hundreds of years down the road.

“Death, life, birth. Future, present, past. Everything is connected"

Worst fear?

Hair in the bathroom drain grating. >.<

Guilty pleasures?

I absolutely love cold noodles. No, not soba, but normal fish ball noodles or wanton noodles. I’d buy a packet early in the morning, leave it until it’s nice and cold (which, in my office, is about 23 degrees C), and guzzle it down! When I tell anyone that they’d go “Ewww that’s disgusting!”

But it’s seriously good.

I also have an unhealthy obsession with African cuisine, though I’ve never tried it. But ugali with peanut stew? How can that not be good?

Three ultimate dinner party guests?

i) Adolf Hitler (no seriously… what the hell was he thinking?)

ii) Jesus (He’s God. How much cooler can you get?)

iii)  Elon Musk (Charming brilliant man!)

What would be your ‘dream’ Halloween costume?

I'd go with happy clown in full clown getup and huge shoes wielding a honker in one hand and a huge axe in the other. The idea is to hack someone to a couple of pieces, honk a few times and run away gleefully laughing. That would be legen...wait for it...dary. Legendary!

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Khyathi, literally.

Class of 2014 Information Systems alumna Khyathi Nirmal Kumar hails from Chennai, a city in the South-Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Most people would be surprised to learn that she’s an introvert, and only 22 years old. If there was one thing from an NUS canteen stall that she could eat for the rest of her life, it would be The Terrace’s Western stall’s eggless brownies. She hates piercings of any kind and the incorrect usage of the word ‘literally’ [Ed: I hate to break it to ya Khyathi but they’ve accepted that ‘incorrect’ usage so technically it’s no longer wrong – I know, I know it’s the end of civilisation]. If there was one thing she would change about SoC, it would be to have modules with more emphasis on practical, real-life projects and experiences, especially for less technical courses like IS. When she’s not working and broke, she enjoys sleeping and binge watching TV shows. When she’s not working and flush, she loves travelling. Khyathi’s three ultimate dinner party guests would be Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and one of her own bosses, Prantik Mazumdar. 

Khyathi about to do some adventure parasailing on one of her travels abroad

What do you do now? 

I currently work as a Senior Consultant, Search and Social Media, at a Singapore-based digital agency called Happy Marketer. I handle clients from the Education and Technology verticals. My main responsibilities include client management, strategy and project management. I've always been fascinated with creativity and marketing requires creativity to be used to solve business challenges. I find this mix very interesting and this made me apply to agencies to do internships when I was studying.

Happy Marketer is a digital agency founded by NUS SoC alumni Rachit Dayal, who is also an NOC alumni. We help businesses innovate and grow their business through Digital. Some of our services include Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Paid Advertising and Web Analytics. The company turns seven this June and has grown at an amazing pace since its inception in 2009. It is now one of the leading independent agencies in the region. 

I am currently in the process of transitioning to a new role at Happy Marketer. This role involves managing branding, PR, internal marketing, award submissions, industry research for Happy Marketer as well as charting out the strategy for all our existing clients, pitch planning for new clients and lastly defining processes and benchmarks which we as a company should live up to in-order to stay ahead of competition.

I have loved working at HM since I started interning here 3 years ago. I've been in the company since we were just 4-5 people in a tiny office, and I am here now when we are 30+ people strong. I've been through the entire journey with the team and even though I did not start the company, it feels like my baby!


So, I am really excited and thrilled about this role because it is my one big chance to shape the brand, to shape the work that we deliver and to assist on a strategic level, and really give something back to the company.

Marketing has always been crucial [in business], it’s just the way it's delivered or executed that changes every decade. As boundaries and limitations keep reducing, the amount of clutter around us increases every day. Hence, as marketers, we hope to be able to help brands connect with their customers and stand out of the clutter by being "future ready". 

Describe your SoC experience.

I loved 2 things the most - the diverse classes and the CCAs. I met some of my closest friends in SoC who I still stay in touch with. I loved hanging out with them on campus, camping at SoC, working late nights or even just slacking to take a break. As for the CCAs, I was the Vice Chair of the NUS Student Chapter of the ACM. I've always been passionate about organizing events and running this club for over 2 years was one of the most memorable things for me as a SoC-ian. My team organized multiple events that were useful for techies. One of my favourite events was Developer Weekend which was the largest student-run hackathon at the time. Being a part of this club taught me a lot about leadership, expanded my network as I used to reach out to companies for corporate sponsorships and gave me a lot of experience with marketing. It was like my own little project. Another very interesting initiative by NUS ACM was Code for Cause (CFC). CFC was set-up to help social enterprises or NGOs that need technical help, be it building a website or an app or even something trivial. My team worked with 2-3 enterprises and built products that helped these companies. Sadly, the club is not very functional at the moment from what I hear, but those 2 years got us a lot of recognition in NUS.

Khyathi receiving the Student Achievement Award for Code for Cause

The most challenging thing for me was to balance work and school. I used to intern or work part-time pretty much every semester and it was good fun balancing school, work and my personal life. Even while studying, I was working with Happy Marketer which kept my passion for marketing alive. Studying IS and working in Marketing kinda go well together. I applied things that I learnt at school at work. And work helped me discover my interests, which helped me structure my curriculum in school and not just take modules blindly. 

Of course, this was possible only because of the flexibility that SoC and HM provided me with. And that's another thing I love about SoC. The school not only gives students enough space to discover or pursue their passion, but also supports them whenever possible.

Prof. Anand Ramchand was one of my favourite profs in year 1. I loved his style of teaching, it’s very practical and interesting. There are 2 other profs that I really admire, Prof. Tan Wee Kek and Prof. Tuan Phan. I studied the toughest modules in my curriculum with them and it’s awesome how they support their students. For Prof. Tan's module, he used to stay around on campus, overnight, to help students with their projects. His students were his first priority and he just goes the extra mile to help them. Prof. Tuan was my FYP supervisor. Everyone told me FYP would be tough and it was. But it just became so much more enjoyable with a great supervisor like Prof. Phan. He's always open to suggestions and he doesn't micromanage. He gives students the liberty and support to experiment, fail and re-try. 

[On top of all that,] we did have a lot of fun while we worked overnight on group projects. We'd play card games, share silly stories, take funny/embarrassing pictures of friends while they dozed off, draw on their face etc :P [If there was one thing I would have done differently,] I think I would have liked to try more cross-university or global programmes. Learning and travelling at the same time :)

What do you count as your most significant achievement to date?

Being recognised as the "Most Promising Newcomer" in Asia in the marketing industry (at the 2015 Mumbrella Asia Awards in May). It was my first "big" achievement. I just made sure I continuously add value to the company (Happy Marketer) and its clients, and keep learning every single day - and it paid off! Both my bosses and my clients were kind enough to recommend me and nominate me for this award. My bosses, Rachit & Prantik who've always been my mentors, my friends & family, my clients & colleagues. I just made sure I have fun doing my work :)

Khyathi with her bosses and colleagues at the 2015 Mumbrella Asia Awards

What did you want to be when you were younger? 

I wanted to be an astronaut! Haha! I am still very fascinated with space and stars and extra-terrestrial activities and would definitely like to visit another planet someday (doesn't seem so unreal given all the advancements!).

What are your future plans?

No big plans yet. But 3 things that I want to do, backpack around the world, start a business at some point, help social causes through marketing (as in take up pro-bono marketing projects that can make a difference).

Quick-Fire! Worst fear?

Getting tickled :P. 

On a serious note: losing my freedom

Worst experience with public transportation?

Hate traveling by buses specially double deckers. The constant feeling that you might just be thrown out of the window while moving on the upper deck is scary! :P

Most interesting development in technology this year?

I am very curious about the interesting applications of IoT in store for us!

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Weng-Fai

Weng-Fai is third generation born and bred, self-professed ‘product of our system’, Singaporean. It annoys him when people don’t clean and clear up after themselves in hawker centres and when they repeatedly say ‘actually’. Hokkaido is the best place he’s been to and he’s keen about no longer needing ‘a wallet and all those cards’ with the advent of technology like Apple Pay. He can’t think of anything he would change about SoC, not because it’s perfect, but because he ‘can live with the warts’. If he could only eat three things for the rest of his life, it would be laksa, mee rebus and wanton mee. Incidentally, Weng-Fai also volunteers his photography skills, equipment and time to capture images of you quirky SoC-ians for our school brochures and publicity materials.

Describe your research and its significance. 

Research wise, I work in the area of parallel processing, computer architecture and systems. I am currently working on approximate computing. While the computer is extremely precise, there is a cost to pay for the precision. One example that everyone is concerned with is the energy consumption of computing devices. I have worked on different techniques for improving energy consumption in the past, and recently have focused on approximate computing – how to “cheat” by being imprecise when it doesn’t matter that much. Our group has just started but results are encouraging. Why am I interested? The idea of “cheating” just intrigues me :). I hope it will contribute a small drop to the way that we use the computer, especially in a green way.

Describe your SoC experience.

SoC has been my life. Almost all of my adult years have been spent here in the company of great friends, teachers, and students. The people and the quality of thought processes that I am privileged to witness and learn from [are what I enjoy the most]. [The challenge is that] the system can be very frustrating and counter-productive at times. [But I feel that my most significant achievement is] to have helped students in trouble or achieve their dreams. It feels great to have helped – [there are always students who need help] and it comes with the job. 

Which faculty members made impressions on you? 

When I was young, I had no idea what to do with my life – until I met Professor Yuen Chung Kwong, the most important teacher in my life. He used to be the Head of Department. It was under his guidance that I embarked on the journey of a university professor. 

What is the craziest thing that you have done during your time here? 

I climbed to the rooftop of AS6 and COM1 to photograph birds and the surround. That was before they locked up the access doors.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working? 

Photography. Especially going “birding” – shooting (photographing) birds – with my buddies.

Quick-Fire. Best movie you’ve seen this year?

Interstellar. I like the twist in the plot.

Three ultimate dinner party guests?

I rather dine with family and close friends than any “great” persons.

Singapore’s best kept secret?

Its forests. They are full of life.

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Steven

Dr. Steven Halim grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia and moved to Singapore to do his undergraduate degree in Computer Science at SoC. When that wasn’t quite enough, he stayed on to do his PhD, got his doctoral degree in 2010 and then landed a job here. He still looks young enough to be mistaken for one of the (postgraduate) students here and when he isn’t working, he enjoys ‘revisiting’ his childhood toys – Lego Technic and Mindstorms.

Steven and his family at Legoland, Malaysia

What are you working on and why are you passionate about it?

Currently, visualgo.net, which is a tool I built to help with the visualisation of data structures and algorithms through animation. It combines my passion of teaching algorithms and the visualization work that I did back in my PhD days. When more and more CS-based Universities pick up visualgo.net, I think it should reduce the usage of static PowerPoint (or even manual hand-drawn explanations) to explain the operations of basic data structures/algorithms. The online quiz side will also eliminate the need to ask trivial questions in final examinations anymore.

 
Describe your SoC experience. 

[The part I enjoy the most is] when I can make my student's jaw drops after explaining a certain cool concepts in class. [But the part I find the most challenging is] marking... I hate marking so much that I tried to write programs to automate the process :O.

I have been in SoC for 14 years now so there are many [people who have made impressions on me]. But if I have to choose one, I pick Associate Professor Tan Sun Teck who took me as part-time TAs for his CS1102 module in 2005-2008 period, collaborated in ICPC and IOI activities, and recommended me to stay on as Lecturer here.

I like computing so much and being in SoC is a natural fit. I’d probably suffer if I had picked another course of study for my Undergraduate degree.

What do you count as your most significant achievements to date? 

Before 2008, I thought training a team that can qualify to ACM ICPC World Finals or get Gold medal in IOI was a super achievement (because I had never done so before as a student). Fast forward 6 years later, I have been to ACM ICPC World Finals 3 times (with our team), prepared a team that won an ACM ICPC Regional Contest 2 times, trained Singaporeans who brought home 4 IOI Gold medals, and all these are still ongoing. The core achievement is a system of training that ensures continuity of these (good) results. 

Currently my competitive programming training schedule is like this:
Jan-Apr: CS3233
Mar: National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI)
May: Asia Pacific Informatics Olympiad (APIO); ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) World Finals with NUS team 1
Jun: Singapore (SG) International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) Team Intensive Training
Jul: IOI with SG IOI team
Aug-Sep: Train and select new team members for NUS ICPC teams
Oct-Nov: Typical ACM ICPC Regional Season
Dec: SG NOI training
Then repeat for another year…

[I pursued all this] because I had never won any programming competition during my student days. The turning point seems to be 2011, when SoC decided to keep me as Lecturer here. With more job stability, I can setup that system of training. [It was] heavy work at the beginning to train the first few students. The senior ICPC+IOI students from 2008-2013 era now help me train the current batch of competitors (2014-15). The system is now good enough that I can step to the side and watch it run (and still produce good results).

What did you want to be when you were younger and is that still an interest of yours?

My childhood dream was to be someone who speaks in front of many people and those people listen attentively to me. There are not many jobs in the world where I can do that. Being a lecturer is one such job and yes it is still my interest :).

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

NUS SoC will host the ACM ICPC Programming Regional Contest in Singapore in Sep and Dec 2015. I encourage SoCians, especially CS students [I am planning to have prizes for teams with female member(s)], to form teams of three and join this prestigious programming competition right here in NUS.

Quick-fire! New Year’s resolution?

Do some exercise each week.

Worst fear?

Cockroaches

Guilty pleasure?

Ice-cream

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Aaron

Aaron Tan is one of quite a decent number of faculty members here who are also our alumni. At our recent anniversary gala, Aaron hosted a mini musical game where he sang a number foreign language songs, like Maori,Hindi and Indonesian, and the audience tried to guess the songs' origins. He is an avid Facebooker - follow his daily musings on his page. 

The man himself at a Christmas Fiesta rehearsal (circa 1993/1994)

Where did you grow up? 

This is an interesting question, as I guess my answer would be rather interesting for the readers. I grew up in Geylang, a notorious red-light district. So, as a little boy, I ran around prostitution dens and got to know the sex workers and, occasionally, I would bump into clients who were local celebrities and even my own teacher! 

Well, I guess anything more juicy might be inappropriate for this publication so I shall stop here. 

What’s your academic background? 

At one point of time, I studied at two kindergartens at the same time because I was bored at home. I enjoyed going to school so much that I kept pestering my parents. May I add that it was very rare for kids to even attend kindergarten in those days. 

Later, I studied in the GEP school. No, that’s not the Gifted Education Programme which was to be introduced only 13 years later. It’s the Geylang English Primary school, which you may not have heard of because it has long been defunct. 

Then, from being the top student in my primary school, I landed in Raffles Institution only to realise that everybody around me was smarter than I. I was intrigued, particularly by my smart school-mates who were writing BASIC programs on the Apple computers. 

I chose Computer Science as one of my subjects in my junior college years, and then came to NUS in 1985 to study Computer Science in the then Department of Information Systems and Computer Science (DISCS), which was under the Science Faculty. Four years later, I graduated with a first-class honours degree. 

Do you have any interesting stories to share about your time as a student here? 

Too many stories to share that they might fill a book. The undergraduate years were the most colourful and memorable years in my life. Like the song goes: “those were the days my friends, we thought they’d never end…” 

Our batch was small by comparison to today’s class size. There were fewer than 200 of us in our batch, and most fortunately, an equal number of male and female students! This is important because it gave rise to many interesting love stories, as well as triangular and multi-sided relationship, but I shall not digress. 

The department was small too, so we were close to our professors and tutors. It was quite common for a lecturer to take us out for lunch treats, or we would visit our tutors at their offices for a chat. 

But we were also hot-headed young adults then. I remember we were unhappy with the light workload given to us by one of the lecturers and so we wrote a letter to the head of department to complain about it. Talk about being impetuous! Well, today I would advise students to talk to your lecturer first before shooting a letter to the head of department. 

Those were the pre-modular system days where all of us took the same package of modules. We were in the same tutorial group throughout the 3 years – at that time, the general degree took 3 years, with an additional year for honours degree – so the bonding was very strong. Such strong bonding became history when the modular system was introduced, so we lament. At the end of our third year, we organised a campfire at car park 10 for remembrance sake and to thank our professors. I wrote a song called 年轻的歌 (Song of Youth) for my tutorial group, which we sang at the campfire. Lecturers and tutors were also invited and some of them put up their own performance. 

During my fourth year in the university, a certain junior college was looking for a relief teacher to cover one of their Computer Science teachers who was due for reservist training. A university classmate of mine recommended me for the job, so I ended up taking a short teaching stint while I was still an undergraduate. And guess who was in my class? Dr. Colin Tan, in his tender years!

What did you want to be when you were younger?

Realising that I wasn’t as smart as my secondary school classmates, coupled with my immense craving for chicken rice – I ate it almost every day, and it was only 80 cents or $1 at that time – I actually thought that I might end up selling chicken rice. Serious! However, I am now into healthy eating, so no more chicken rice for me. 

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working? 

Since young, I have been very interested in writing songs and lyrics – mainly in Cantonese and Mandarin – though I had no formal musical training. I wrote quite a number of them, even took part in some competitions and I was lucky enough to grab a few prizes. 

I wrote a song last year to honour our nation's 50th National Day, and I have been wishing to make a video out of it. Unfortunately, so far I have little luck in getting people to help out with this personal project. So readers out there, if you are keen, whether in singing, acting, playing the musical instruments, script-writing, directing, video-shooting, choreographing, please contact me! 

Recently I posted the lyric “This is C” sung to the tune of “Home” by Kit Chan on Facebook and somebody suggested to make it into a video as well. What a cool idea, but again, I need volunteers! 

As a pastime, I enjoy singing and playing the guitar. I learned classical guitars for many years after I graduated. At the end of every semester, I would invite students to join me for some karaoke sessions. 

I run regularly too. During the recent summer vacation, I invited students to join me run around the campus. A couple of them and some alumni came and it soon became a weekly running event on every Wednesday evening. We have completed our 24th run at the writing of this article (23 November 2014)! 

What are some of the craziest things you have done recently? 

Five and a half months ago, as I approached my 50th birthday, I thought of doing something totally wacky and so I enrolled myself into Wing Chun class and I’ve never neglected it. These days, you will find me practising Wing Chun in the gym. 

Recently I took part in the Swim-for-Hope event and swam 20 laps. Never a serious swimmer, I swam occasionally and have not attempted more than 4 laps at a go for many years. I wouldn’t call this crazy but just another little thing I wanted to try outside my comfort zone. 

The photo above was taken last year. I was pestered by my son Cowen to take him to the ice-skating rink, and that was my first ice-skating experience! A painful experience, but fun nonetheless, and it makes me realise that it is never too late to learn something new. 

Do you have any interesting stories to share about your experience as a teacher here? 

When I was a tutor, the students were quite active in organising activities such as charity events. I joined them in some of the activities, such as going around the housing estates collecting old newspapers. There were charity concerts as well, where our students showed their varied talents. Karaoke was very popular then, so the students organised a number of karaoke singing competitions, which I was invited as a judge for some of them. It is a pity these days our students don’t organise such events. I also miss the student-staff games (sports games, not computer games) which we used to have. 

Do you have any advice for our students? 

Don’t just spend all your time on the computer! Get out of the house and sweat under the sun. Healthy body, healthy mind. That’s why in the past, when I trained the IOI students, besides training in the classroom, I also took them out to jog and swim. 

Recently I came across this powerful article and would like to share it here, along with a message for all our students: 

 “Your job — as students who are receiving an education — is to be aware of your privilege. And use this particular privilege called “education” to do your best to achieve great things, all the while advocating for those in the rows behind you.”

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Chirpy Clovis

Clovis Tan studied Electronic Commerce graduated in June this year. He thinks that maybe he should have practiced his programming a bit more, but otherwise he had a blast here. If you’d like to peeve this oft-good-humoured dude, just unleash a torrent of broken English on him. It isn’t widely known, but the man can also play the piano and sing. 

What do you do now? 

Well, I am now a Senior Officer at the Immigrations and Checkpoint Authorities. I know it is totally irrelevant to my course at NUS, but I am actually pursuing what I love to do. I personally do not like doing mundane 9-5 desk jobs and my position as a Senior Officer & Team Leader at ICA allows me the adrenaline and constant hype that I actually quite crave for! Basically, border security is the crux of my job scope and being part of the Home Team allows me to cultivate and nurture my passion to serve and for leadership!

I actually do still read quite a bit on data mining and am still interested in big data. Information harvesting and essentially making sense of these infinite data that is practically floating around is prevalent in almost every working environment. Organisations want to be better and more often than not, they rely heavily on these data to either be ahead or to be both efficient and effective. ICA isn't any different and yes, data harvesting is certainly both a science and an art here!

Describe your SoC experience.

Wow, where do I begin... I can touch my heart and say that it was and is (up till now), the best 4 years of my life. I came in thinking that, you know, I would just try to get by university but what I acquired at SoC, and the opportunities made available to me at SoC, allowed me to not just grow, but excel. I was the Director of Sports in my freshman year and in that year my committee and I started the annual SoC Sports Camp in 2011! What a breakthrough that was! We saw that students from other faculties at that time had the idea that SoC-ians were boring and geeks and that drove us to prove them wrong. What delights me most is really seeing this camp grow from strength to strength and I hope this will stay on as a tradition for SoC! Truth is, some faculties are still amazed at how we are actually doing this and making a sports camp happen. 

In my second year, we decided to rebrand SoC's O'Week. I had the most amazing committee that believed in the same vision I did and we made history by not only just having a proper computing bash at Sentosa's Wavehouse, [but also having] the biggest camp turnout ever (at that time in 2012). PARODY 2012 was to me, the best experience at SoC. I would stay in school for 2 straight weeks at SoC during the days when I was organising camps and not have a proper bed or sleep. That adrenaline is really one to die for. Being the project director and eventually seeing the camp to its fruition showed me how amazing this faculty can be and I am just thankful and privileged to be part of it all. Especially after I stepped down from my committee positions and people actually thank me for the effort I had placed in doing a certain something, that drives me to want to be a better person. Knowing that people appreciate you really keeps you going and the acknowledgement not only from the students, but also the faculty is something that really humbles me.

I was also a student representative at the Students' Union level for SoC, the Director of Internal Relations and Alumni Relations (in 2012) and the elected Student Welfare Secretary (in 2013) of the NUS Students' Union. My heart was always wanting to make a difference in the lives of NUS students but truth be told, it was at SoC where I felt most at home. Some of my closest friends are friends I made at SoC. Though I struggled a little in the beginning, my more learned friends never fail to guide me. 

Programming was a big challenge for me, honestly. But at E-Commerce, we are required to not only program and understand the IT aspect of the broader scheme of things, we are also required to articulate and incorporate the business side of things into our projects. That, on its own, is something I find both challenging and yet, at the time, really interesting! Dr Anand Ramchand is one faculty staff member who not only encouraged me since I was in my freshman year, he guided me and believed in me enough during my time at SoC. Not only was he my coach for 2 case competitions, I was his teaching assistant for 2 semesters and I would say that I am deeply touched by his sincerity all these years!

In my final year, I also represented SoC and NUS at an International Business IT Case Competition in Vancouver and that really left a strong, lasting impression on me. I grew so much as a person during that whole training process and I would say that it was one of the few things that I will always hold dear to my heart. Like they always say, it’s these sorts of memories that make a person whole. 

SoC is such a small faculty and, yes, we may not have the manpower to do big things or what not but we certainly are a close-knitted family. I would have never traded that for anything else. [The thing I enjoyed the most was] seeing familiar faces around SoC each and every day. Literally :)

What is the one thing you would change about SoC?

I would prevent other students from using our common, air-conditioned study areas at the basement and outside SR1! We need some exclusivity yo, it’s our zone!

What do you count as your most significant achievement to date?

Winning a medal (NUSS Medal for Outstanding Achievement) during commencement and seeing my parents glow with pride :) That medal summarises everything I had ever lived for in SoC and NUS and being presented with that award during my commencement really had me thanking God, my friends and my family for their belief and support throughout my 4 years.

My passion is to make a difference and to, as a leader, leave something behind for my juniors to make better (like Bash, Sports Camp and Orientation Week). My desire is to lead by example and to prove critics wrong because there will always be these people around, no matter where you are! It all began when I started taking the leadership opportunities that SoC and NUS provided me with!

[To make it work, I had] to be able to compartmentalise my life properly; balance studies, extracurricular activities and friends well; sacrifice certain things (which I would say I wish I did not - like going on a semester long exchange). My girlfriend, Dionne, (though she is not from SoC, she was like an honorary SoC-ian) supported me and stood by me through it all. My Bro, Sean Pea (my batchmate), who helped me so much for my programming and being a listening ear. My BFF, Li Ru (my batchmate), for always making sure I was okay and most importantly, God, for everything and every blessing that He has showered me with! The medal that I had won would not have been possible without them!

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Don't ever let anyone dictate who you should be. University is a time when you really find out who you are and who your real friends are! Oh and, don't just study!! University life is probably the last time in your life that you can really go all out to explore and enjoy! :)

Don't ever give up, ever. Even when the going gets tough. Cliché as it may sound but at the end of the day, be a person whom you want people to remember you for :) Stay true to your values and remember that the sky is the limit!

Quick-fire: Best song on air now?

BANG BANG by Jessie J, Ariana Grande and Nikki Minaj

Worst fear?

Having no friends.

If you could eat only three food items for the rest of your life, what would they be?

Sashimi, Rojak and the Barley Ginko Beancurd dessert haha!

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Progressive Nishanth

Nishanth Sudharsanam studied Computer Engineering and graduated in 2012. Before moving to Singapore and leaving the country for the first time at age 16, he lived in Chennai, India. He reads a lot of non-fiction, biographies and biopics to get more perspective on life, is a fan of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, enjoys south Indian classical music, cooking, and staring at the wall and day dreaming (but he calls it "assimilation" to make himself feel better). The man also deserves a ginormous award for his response to the quick-fire question, ‘Worst fashion trend?’ – he said ‘Heels’. *mic drop*

What do you do now? 

I founded Klinify, a healthcare start-up. Our vision is to unlock medical data and use it to save lives. The most popular and sadly, the most usable tool for managing patient records right now is paper. Data locked away in paper folders isn’t very useful. So, the first step is to ease the workflow of doctors by giving them better tools to manage patient data. The next step would be to help them use the data to drive healthcare forward.

As a computer engineer, I was shocked by the inefficiency in the healthcare system, and I wanted to fix it. At first sight it seems like doctors are tech-averse, but that's not so. They use and operate some pretty hi-tech machinery. They are however busy people operating in a high stress environment, so they have a strong preference for systems that get out of their way and allow them to focus on their practice. The tools available to manage patient records are too clunky, so they keep reverting to paper.

I felt this was very fixable with modern tablets and text-recognition technology, and the lack of usable data is greatly holding back data-backed innovation in healthcare. [I think in the next decade, this field will result in] better, smarter and more accessible healthcare, and computer aided diagnoses.

Klinify definitely [is my most significant achievement to date]. The whole process of starting from scratch, identifying a problem, a potential solution, selling it, and the convincing others to join you for the ride (be it investors or colleagues) has been quite a journey and I feel good when I look back at how far we have come and how much I have learnt. It is a very incomplete achievement though. There is a long way to go before I [will] feel a sense of pride at what we have accomplished.

Describe your SoC experience.

I like math and computer science, so the modules were obviously fun. The environment at SoC is casual, and had a feel of self-initiated learning as opposed to strictly imposed curriculum. There was lot of room to explore and play around, so it was a great atmosphere to be in.

[What I found most interesting and useful was] the focus on learning reusable concepts, like algorithms, architecture instead of programming languages, specific implementations. It helped me start thinking in terms of systems, processes and algorithm as opposed to one-off fixes. It is a very practical skill that extends far beyond computing, and I believe I honed that skill at SoC.

[The one thing I would have done differently during my time here would be to have] picked specific modules, perhaps one per semester and gone all out to gain really in-depth knowledge about it. 

What is the one thing you would change about SoC?

CS1101C seems to have the effect of making most non-programming (typically non-SoC) students develop a strong aversion to programming, which makes me sad, because many of these are smart people scarred by that one intense experience. Given that programming is such an important skill these days, part of me wonders if the initiation could have been gentler. Perhaps focussed less on C and more on the concepts behind it?

Which faculty members made impressions on you?

Wow, that's a long list, because I enjoyed most of my modules. The most prominent were probably -

Profs Juzar Motiwalla, Martin Henz, and Pete Kellock for their guidance and genuine support, even when they knew we had no clue what we were doing initially.

Prof Ben Leong, for introducing me into SoC with that awesome scheme module that remains among my best at SoC.

Profs Wong Weng Fai and Lee Wee Sun, for the ATAP that led to my FYP and the SPC programme respectively. They helped me explore my interest in Comp. Sci. research. Something I hope to get back to someday.

Prof Damith for an extremely useful software engineering course, the importance of which I failed to appreciate until 1 year after graduation when I had to maintain and collaborate on a project that was becoming a little too large for me to hack my way through.

What is something most people would be surprised to learn about you?

I was extremely interested in becoming a quantitative analyst in an investment bank in the first couple of years of university. I did a minor in financial maths, an internship in Credit Suisse, finished my CFA level 1 and also signed up for level 2. And then the start-up bug bit me, and investment banking began to seem a little boring. I'd still like to finish my CFA sometime, more for fun though than to become a banker.

Quick-Fire: Most interesting use of or development in technology this year?

HP's The Machine sounds very interesting. Practical experiments in Quantum teleportation have started to validate theory, which is huuge!

Pet peeve?

So often I see the loudest - not the soundest argument wins.

Three ultimate dinner party guests 

Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates (I’d just serve food and listen to them talk to each other)

Tell us who we should we talk to next. Email tien@nus.edu.sg