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

Insta-Ali

When he's not studying or working, Ali Aljunied hangs out with his 'working-adult' friends at a local joint in Kembangan or watches that next Naruto filler. He is, in his words, 'a dinosaur of a Year 5 CS student' who may feel out of place sometimes, but he still totally rocked it at #NUSOpenDay2014, with his immensely popular live hashtag printing service, Tagronauts, drawing people from all the different events and halls across UTown that day to the SoC booth!

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

I would not consider it working, cause, well, it’s more of a side-project - Tagronauts. You could say I’m passionate about Tagronauts cause it’s something I made on my own, from scratch. I hacked a program to be able to automatically print Instagram photographs. Since I'm in Computing, obviously it had to be THE best Instagram printing service in Singapore, and it is. Really. 

After showcasing it around (big props to the NOC and NHouse RA's), people were really impressed by it. And after some thought, it could be the next big thing in the events industry, or at least until the fad dies.

Describe your SoC experience.

My SoC experience was (past tense cause like I’m graduating, finally, I hope) a pretty an intense, very rewarding roller-coaster ride. My favourite thing about SoC are the professors. They are like soooo friendly and extremely patient! (especially my FYP profs, Prof. Wynne Hsu and Prof. Lee Mong Li. And they are always together so much so they are like BFFs!)  

I think Prof. Ben Leong and Prof. Wei Tsang Ooi made a huge impressions on me. Prof. Ben obviously cause...well...he's Prof. Ben. If you are a Year 1 student, you CANNOT graduate without taking at least one of his modules. You'll understand why when you do! For Prof. Ooi, he has this way of teaching that just makes you feel like he is really interested in teaching you something, which gives you that warm fuzzy feeling in lecture and consultations. Their lessons are really enjoyable in very different ways. 

I think the non-academic staff are very supportive of the students (big props to External Relations Team!). They always look for student feedback and trying to improve things in-line with the latest trends among students. 

Oh, [I also like] the fact that SoC is fully air-conditioned. And we have awesome labs. And awesome equipment. And the print quota. And the many lockers. And that awesome sofa in the basement. 

If there was something I would have done differently during my time here, maybe I would have studied smarter and harder in Year 1? But that would change since there’s no more grading system in Year 1. So jealous. 

I stay in Pasir Ris, and the halls/residences are pretty expensive. I typically take the last bus home cause once I reach home after the gruelling travel, productivity is zero. So I'd do my work till then. For most part of my semesters during year 2 and year 4 (I went to NOC Silicon Valley in Year 3), I'd sleep in computing (remember the sofa?) and shower in iCube. It just doesn’t make sense to travel 1.5hrs, to go home, to take a shower, and sleep, and only to wake up 5-6hrs later, having to rush and travel for another 1.5hrs, for that morning lecture, which I'd most probably be late for anyway. So I slept in school. For free. Well, not really free since I’m paying tuition fees. Heh.

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

Tagronauts of course! Oh and that networked multiplayer game project I did for CS4243 Networked and Mobile Gaming. During STePs, I had two students (specifically these two) who were so engrossed by the game. If any of you two are reading this, yes, you made my heart melt. <3 

Tagronauts happened one night, in my room, some months back when I was bored and broke and I felt I was wasting my life playing games. I had to learn how to make a desktop application from scratch, and boy did that take a lot of patience, perseverance and time. But once you get the hang of it, adding a button or a checkbox for options suddenly seems to be so much fun, even if it’s just to print to console. haha. 

I pestered my friends to tag old photos and upload new photos for me to test the system. And my darling younger brother who taught me WPF and the custom controls and helped me compile a setup file so that I could install the software on other computers. And lent me his laptop cause my laptop's LCD screen wasn’t and still isn’t working when I had showcases. And helped me fix dependencies with the DLLs. <3 Muhammad. (He applied for SoC too!)

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

That I slept in school. And that my surname is actually Aljunied, and not cause I stay in Aljunied. And that I’m actually the descendent of one of the forefathers of Singapore, Syed Sharif Omar bin Ali Aljunied. If you are interested you can watch a video about my grandfather’s road (pun intended). 

What advice would you give a prospective SoC student?

It will be a tough journey at the start. But once you brave the storm, you'll be reaping in the sweet, sweet rewards of having a computing background. It’s all perseverance in computing. I came in with zero computing experience, and it was a huge struggle. But it will definitely pay off (and it has for me) especially when Facebook buys your app/software for a few billion dollars.

Also, if you are in Computing, definitely sign up for NOC Silicon Valley. Why you ask?

Cause this.

That’s why.

I also wrote a little blog post called Musing of the 1st NUS Intern in Ensuant about my NOC internship back in 2012 and I have this Awesome Album is Awesome I compiled during my stint in NOC Silicon Valley.

Ali and Elmo striking the pose in front of Radio City Music Hall, New York.

What are your future plans?

Send out my resumes to the cool and hip places to work in Silicon Valley and see who wants me. Heh.

Quick-Fire! Most interesting development in technology this year?

Facebook buying WhatsApp for 19 billion definitely.

Singapore’s best kept secret?

Tagronauts - Live Hashtag Printing.

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

Grinning Eugene

Most people will not be surprised to learn that Eugene Chiong is distantly related to the Cheshire Cat - explains the easy, ear-to-ear grin that he always seems to sport. Most people will, however, be surprised to learn that flunked his primary school streaming and secondary school exams. He has obviously come a long way since then and intends to venture into a special effects role in a visual effects company after he completes his studies. Like many of us, all this Bishan-boy wants for Christmas is ‘a longer holiday!’.

Describe your experience as an SoC student.

[I’m studying] Computer Science! I'm halfway through my 3rd year now, and going to finish it in one more year before I pursue my Masters in the US (in a Concurrent Degree Programme with CMU-ETC). My specialization is Interactive Digital Media, a clear choice for me, as my passion lies in visual effects and all things related. [My experience as a SoC student has been] pretty fun and challenging. I've always been one who loves going down the path less traveled, and I'm glad SoC offers courses that really pushes my limits and allow me to learn as fast as I would like to. 

[The thing I enjoy the most about studying at SoC is the fact that] some courses are very flexible, and let me get creative with the assignments and projects as long as I meet the basic requirements. One such example is Computer Graphics, where you can just make whatever you want in the assignments, it's entirely up to your creativity. And that you're welcome to try out all sorts of modules as you can SU them (not anymore though :/) 

[If find] anything that I cannot visualize [challenging]. I'm a very visual person, so things that exist beyond three dimensions can get exceedingly frustrating for me. Naturally, math (especially linear algebra) falls in that category. Beyond that, the more interesting things are basically just anything that has to do with visuals, such as computer graphics, special effects, etc.  

I used to be actively involved in Computing Club's activities as the Vice President, but now I have stepped down and am focusing more on my studies. I still help out with Computing Club's activities as a photographer, and a first aider if needed for their camps. Much of my time is still spent on activities outside of SoC though. 

I spend a considerable amount of time doing part time work (15 - 27 hours a week giving private tuition) while overloading on my modules as I have to graduate early, so I have little time to socialize with others, join hall activities, etc. 

Most of the faculty members have made some sort of impression on me, but I think the most unique one is Prof Colin Tan, due to his obsession with cats and how 99.99% of his Facebook posts has some relation to felines. 

One of the craziest things I did here was to cycle and take photographs during the night cycling event every year during sports camp. During night cycling, everyone is mostly on the move, so it is difficult to get pictures of them cycling as it requires photographers to stop to take snapshots along the way - that can be pretty tiring. So being the lazy person I am, I've been taking photos with my DSLR while cycling along with the different groups.

[If I could change one thing about SoC, it would be to have] better computers and network connection. I think a hardware upgrade to most of the computers are way overdue, and I think a computing based faculty should boast network connection that is faster than the others (which is not the case).

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

I'm working on an online tool for NUS students to help plan their future modules easily so they know what modules to take in which semester. I did that because many of my friends and I needed to plan future modules and there was no tool readily available for use. Right now, I have an offline version available in an excel file at http://eugenecys.github.io/NUS-Module-Planner/ 

I like doing stuff that helps solve real life problems, rather than random software that does not actually have any significant impact on the community.

What advice would you give a prospective SoC undergraduate student?

If you're here to learn as much as you can, and want to achieve as much as you want, plan your classes early (like, have your full 4 year plan done by the end of your first year!). I say this is because there's many classes that are only offered in alternate semesters, and you may run out of time clearing prerequisites before you get to the classes you want.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not studying?

Playing games! I believe in working hard and playing hard, so I spend a considerable amount of time after a day's work on playing popular game titles, such as Starcraft, Tomb Raider, etc. On top of that, I love cycling - it's my primary pastime outside of the house - and I cycle to pretty much anywhere in Singapore. Sometimes, I play around with some special effects software such as Adobe After Effects to make fun animations as well.

Quick-Fire! Favourite sport?

Cycling. I just love cycling. Been cycling since I was 5 and I have never stopped :D

Pet peeve?

Inconsiderate behavior. Things like people sitting on the outer seat on the bus, or not moving in inside a bus/train, and parents not controlling their extremely rowdy kids. They irk me to no end. 

Guilty pleasure?

KFC. It's so unhealthy but their fried chicken is just so tasty =D

Three food items you’d have with you if you were stranded on an island for eternity?

KFC. Haha! Ok, seriously, eggs, chicken, and potatoes. I think you can get pretty creative with those three food items. 

Got ideas about questions we should be asking or people we should be chatting with? Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Nim(antha) Can Cook!

Third year CS PhD candidate, Nimantha Baranasuriya, was top of his class, played varsity tennis and received the Most Outstanding Graduand award at his alma mater. He thoroughly enjoys unnerving people who he has only met briefly before (who don’t remember him) with his knack for remembering faces and names. He is an avid photographer and used to cover engagements, weddings and corporate functions through his small photography service start-up in Sri Lanka. He’s doing a PhD because he enjoys ‘fiddling around with unknowns’ and tackling problems that can’t be solved by googling. Nimantha happens to be of the rare breed of people who have a passion for teaching.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a small town, which was around 30km south of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. My home is what you would call a perfect holiday destination. It is located a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle of the town and it is within walking distance to a beach that had yellow sand stretching for miles. Every day, I would wake up to the sound of waves crashing on to the shore. On weekends, me and my friends used to play volleyball on a makeshift court on the beach or just sit and have a little chit-chat.

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

I am working on designing, implementing and experimenting novel communication protocols for dynamic networks like vehicular networks and smartphone networks. In these networks, the participants move around a lot and hence, communication links get established and disestablished pretty fast. So, our protocols can be used by applications that are designed to work on those types of networks. My work will aid the deployment of distributed sensor network applications on the types of networks that I mentioned earlier. For example, consider a fleet of taxi cabs that upload their status information (e.g., free/hired/shift, speed, location, etc.) to a server. The easiest way of achieving this is to give them all a 3G connection and get them to upload their individual information. However, this is very costly, as data connections carry a greater cost. Our protocols will allow the cars to talk to each other and upload all of the information in a cost effective and energy efficient manner. So, in the next decade, our protocols will allow application developers to deploy cost effective and energy efficient sensory applications. 

Describe your SoC experience. 

SoC really brings out the best in me. The school provides me with all that I need to do my work well. There are many opportunities like entrepreneurial support and internships that we can use to heighten our careers. The courses taught at SoC are really cool too. I sit in in the classes I find useful and none of them have disappointed me so far. The covered content is just right and has the correct depth. The school is very generous in funding as well. All PhD students’ receive a scholarship that covers all tuition fees and their expenses. This allows us to focus on our research without worrying about doing other work to get our next month’s allowance.

Dr. Seth Gilbert is my thesis advisor. He has inspired me in a multitude of ways. He helped me realize what exactly research is and how I should go about tackling research problems. On countless occasions, he assisted me in overcoming difficulties I was facing. I would have torn off all my hair by now if not for him (literally!). His supervision has been excellent and I really enjoy working with him.

From my first semester, I have being doing on and off TA work for Dr. Damith Rajapakse. His lectures are amazing! He uses out-of-the-ordinary lecture material that keeps the students focused and engaged. It was through him that I learnt the secrets of giving captivating talks that inspire audiences. It’s really wonderful to see the amount of effort that he puts into his courses. If I do teach someday, I aim to be a teacher like him.

[The one thing I would change in NUS is] I’d really like if NUS was made more bicycle-friendly. Adding cycle lanes, among many other things, would really make cycling safer on campus. I bike to school a lot, but unfortunately that it is not the safest way of getting to school. There were many times where I narrowly escaped from being bumped into by other vehicles. 

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

I’m a great cook (or at least my wife and friends tell me so). However, my skillset is limited; I can only prepare a few traditional Sri Lankan delicacies. My mom is a great cook and I used to help her in the kitchen when I could. That’s actually how I picked up the whole thing. When I get free time, I love to prepare some Sri Lankan dishes, which are hard to find in Singapore, and invite my friends over for dinner.   

What advice would you give a prospective SoC graduate student?

Research can get to you sometimes because it is pretty tough. More often than not, you will have a hard time getting past obstacles when you come across them. I’ve had breakdowns a few times when things didn’t go the way I want. That’s quite natural because research is all about dealing with unknowns. You have to work hard and persevere until you arrive at the solution. So change the way you look at the problem, talk to a friend about it (that will help to get a fresh perspective), or do anything else that you seem fit to overcome obstacles. But no matter what you do, don’t ever think of giving up!

Meet your advisor regularly, at least once a week. This helps to keep things moving and to make a bit of progress every week.

Target conference deadlines. Keeping a conference deadline at the back of your mind will push you to complete your work and avoid procrastination. I found that conference deadlines become a good motivator as well.

Read as much as you can. Make a habit of reading papers that get published in the top-conferences of your field. This will allow you to stay up-to-date on what’s hot currently in the community.

Take some time off of work. Being in the lab all throughout the day doesn’t really help that much. Go out and do some sports. Or better yet, do some travelling with your friends. There are plenty of less-known places in Singapore that are worth visiting.

Quick-fire! Favourite design?

Definitely, UTown. It’s an engineering marvel!

Guilty pleasure?

Having baths in lakes in the middle of the night.

3 ultimate dinner party guests, dead or alive?

Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Tom Hanks.

Got ideas about questions we should be asking or people we should be chatting with? Email tien@nus.edu.sg

Varun - the spoofer, ghost light controller and founder of Sent.ly

tenCube, the company that Varun Chatterji co-founded with his mates after graduating from SoC in 2005, and their breakthrough product WaveSecure, was acquired by McAfee in 2010. Now, Varun is the Co-Founder of Sent.ly. With the confessions we elicited in this interview and his varied interests, Varun is certainly aiding us in our quest to shatter the unjust ‘goody-two-shoesy-nerdy-one-dimensional-computer-geek’ stereotype.

What did you do at SoC and what do you do now?

Bachelor of Computing (Hons) Computer Science. Even though I did only a Bachelor’s degree, I think I completely agree with NUS' mantra of "Lifelong Learning". Though I am not formally trained, I have tried to learn what I can about subjects that interest me - Physics, Economics, Poetry, Art, Music and Law. 

Having started two companies, I can safely say that each day in a start-up is a research and learning experience. Every day in a start-up, you are researching on how to improve a product. Every day, you are researching on whether there is a market and how to reach them. And, just as research experiments can fail, so can start-ups. 

Working in a start-up is like going to school. In the end, even if you do not receive a degree, you will have received knowledge. And knowledge is what anyone who is true to him/her-self should seek in life and throughout life.

I am now co-founder of Sent.ly, a company focussed on providing Businesses with SMS send/receive capabilities in emerging markets. I like my position to be called "Member of the Team". I pitch in wherever I can but primarily, as a technologist, I like to write code when I can. My artistic temperament, though, kicks in at times and I can be a big pain in the a** arguing over something as mundane (though artistically relevant to me) as the size of an image or font or the choice of words in some text.

Describe your SoC student experience.

SoC was a great time for me. I am the sort who does really well when a subject gets a hold of me and I can just flow with it and enjoy it immensely. Unfortunately, this has a downside for if a subject does not get a hold of me, I do very badly in it. SoC was a roller coaster ride for me for this reason. My first semester grades were A+, A, A-, C+, F. 

I think failing in a subject is an important lesson in life. Failure can teach you more about life than an A+ can. Once you realise it is OK to fail and that it is not the end of the world, you can pick yourself up from every situation because you have the knowledge of "so what? I will do better next time". Even if people make fun of you as a poor student, failure teaches you to rise above all that and persevere.

I enjoyed programming modules the most. I also enjoyed Cross Faculty Modules like American Films (in which I made an atrocious film and got a C+), Writing Home (a University Scholars Program module in which I got an A though, I was later thrown out of the USP as my faculty thought I would not make it to honours though I eventually did) and Introduction to Indian Thought (a module in which I got an A and found that philosophy is exactly like programming in the application of logic).

The point that I am trying to make is that you don't have to get good grades to enjoy a module and to learn from it. As students, many of us are just in it for the grades. That is a very shallow objective in my opinion. Learning has to be the thing and not grades. Perhaps, this is a lesson that even our educational system needs to learn.

I would say that my stint in NUS Overseas Colleges (NoC) in Silicon Valley was both the most challenging and useful. The programme brought students from many different faculties from NUS together. The free flowing exchange of ideas and the camaraderie we developed, created a heady mixture especially in the intellectually charged environment of Silicon Valley. I met one of the co-founders of my first start up in Silicon Valley even though we were both from NUS. He was my housemate and course-mate in many courses.This collective experience of having a common root (NUS) and being in a new environment in which we were all on equal footing towards the new and unknown was a really useful experience.

Prof. Y. C. Tay is the faculty member who made the biggest impression on me. I failed in one of his modules once and nearly failed in it again in the subsequent semester, but I learnt one thing from him. He used to occasionally slip in a completely unsolved problem in his tutorials. He said he hoped one day one of his students would solve the unsolvable. Though at that time we were quite flustered to find these problems in our tutorials, I think, looking back, that at least this experience made us try to solve an insurmountable problem. Who knows, maybe someday some student might actually solve some of them and make a breakthrough in Computer Science!

A start-up company is like one of these insurmountable problems. Every day you have to solve a sub problem of the insurmountable. Every day, you have to discover how to break it down just a little bit more. If you are lucky, your breaking down of the problem into several solvable bits will give you success. If you are unlucky, it won’t. But that’s just life. Learn from the experience and move on.   

Different people have different interests at different points in life. When I entered university, I was 19. At 19, I had already been programming for 5 years since the age of 14 and had even started a company www.thewebartists.com with my friend Umang. This made me a little cocky and disinterested in the first year modules in programming (I did quite well in them even though I never studied). Now that I look back, I currently have a much more developed sense of interest in knowledge. I think if I was to do SoC again now, I would probably do a lot better and perhaps develop an interest in some modules that just went by because they didn't catch my interest. I often wonder if our education system is right in its imposing of learning at a particular age as a social norm.

What mischief did you get up to while you were a student here?

Please don't arrest me for these confessions!

I once spoofed an email from a professor and sent an email from his email address to my friend expressing "disappointment over his FYP efforts" and calling him to "my office". My friend got really flustered and went to the Professors office the next day. The Professor got really angry that someone had spoofed his email. I also spoofed the ‘From’ field in SMS and sent my friends messages which when opened appeared to come from "God". The text of the message read "I am watching you".

I also built a switch that could be turned on and off through SMS. So you could send an SMS to my system with the word "on" and the light in my room would switch on. And you could turn it off the same way. I once left one of my friends in my room after telling him that I thought the room was haunted and the lights seemed to be controlled by ghosts. After switching the lights on and off through SMS several times, I just walked into the room as though nothing had happened. My friend was as pale as a ghost!

What do you count as your most significant achievements since graduating from SoC? 

I would say co-founding tenCube and then selling it to McAfee would be my most significant achievement since graduating. It happened because I lost my phone and also because I was part of the NoC programme. I was still in school when I lost my Nokia 6600 which was a pretty darn new and expensive phone back then. It got me thinking if I could write a program to lock down a phone by sending SMS (I already had a reasonably good knowledge of SMS through my pranks and electronics experiments involving SMS). I posed the idea to my SoC mate Rishi and my NoC mate Darius and we agreed this would be a good problem to solve. So that’s how we got going.

Perseverance through all the doubt that surrounds a start-up is the key to making things happen. There were times when even my faith wavered as I went through a tough personal situation where I lost both my grandparents one by one. There were even times when things were not so good between my team mates and me. Looking back I can only attribute the success to who we were as a team and how we supported each other. Through any ugly situation, we were still a team and remained a team. That's what made it happen. The Team.

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

I enjoy reading. I enjoy writing poetry. I enjoy western and Indian classical music. I enjoy Rock, Jazz, Blues and Country music. I enjoy photography. I also enjoy making an occasional Charcoal sketch. I enjoy any kind of research activity.

Quick-fire time! Most Interesting development in technology/science this year?

Smart watches! I think we are getting closer to a "Beam me up Scottie!" scenario.

Worst movie you’ve seen this year?

Jobs.

Three ultimate dinner party guests?

Mahatma Gandhi - I would like to ask him what he thinks of our modern day world and what he would do to resolve the rampant mindless violence in the name of religion, ethnicity and politics.

Elon Musk - Because I would like to hear his vision for what technology can do towards creating a better world.

Stephen Fry - Because I would probably be tongue-tied with the first two guests and I trust Stephen Fry's creative genius would never let an awkward silence arise at the dinner table! As an interesting aside, if anyone is even remotely interested in English poetry, I highly recommend Stephen Fry's book - "The Ode Less Travelled".

Which faculty members should we interview and what should we ask them? Here's your opportunity! Email tien@nus.edu.sg