Girisha

Girisha Durrel De Silva is in his fifth year of our Computer Science PhD programme. He loves model railroading but has not been able to indulge in his hobby here in Singapore. He also watches cheesy reality shows even though he knows that most of them are scripted. Being from a cricket obsessed nation, like all the other kids, he wanted to be national cricket player, but then he grew up and realized it wasn’t his forte. Like other cyclists we’ve interviewed here, he hopes that our campus could be made more cycle-friendly. Girisha’s ultimate dinner guests would be former Top Gear UK presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond. He’s currently planning on a career in the teaching track of academia. 

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Kandy is considered a sacred city and is well known around the world as it is home to the temple of the Tooth Relic which houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. Kandy is also a popular tourist destination among the foreigners and the locals living in other parts of the island because of the cool climate, thickly forested hills and many historic landmarks. 

During my childhood, my city used to be more laid back in nature. For example, most of the shops would close by 6 pm and most bus services would stop by 7 pm :). So people used to spend more time with their families and enjoy the finer things in life :) I did all my schooling in Kandy and moved to the capital to pursue my degree at the University of Colombo.

Why are you doing a PhD?

I have played around with computers since I was very young and I have always been fascinated about all things related to computing. My eagerness to learn about computing made me pursue a degree in computing. Midway through my degree I got to work on a small scale research project in my university and that experience really made me think that research is what I want to do in future and here I am pursuing a PhD at NUS.

Describe your research and its significance.

Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous and people are moving from the traditional desktops to mobile devices to carry out their day to day computing tasks. For better performance, limited bandwidth and battery capacity of mobile devices need to be addressed by better power and bandwidth management techniques. 

State-of-the-art mobile devices in the market are equipped with multiple communication interfaces such as cellular, WiFi and bluetooth radio. Each interface has different power, radio and data rate characteristics. In brief, my research concentrates on exploring the diversities provided by these interfaces to improve the performance of a mobile device in terms of power consumption and data rates. 

In few years, almost everything in the world will be connected to the Internet and as a result, networking in general is going to impact our lives even more than today. Therefore, solutions to most of the interesting problems being researched by the networking community today, will be applied by people on a day to day basis in the next decade.

Describe your SoC experience.

[I enjoy] doing research work with professors who are world class in their research fields. The suggestions, criticisms and the guidance they provide help us to improve our work and follow the right direction. [The most challenging part is] coming up with a research problem which is both interesting and practical.

I work closely with two professors, namely: Prof. Chan Mun Choon who is my adviser and also Prof. Wei Tsang Ooi who is my co-adviser. Both professors are very kind and are always willing to help me in my research work through effective guidance. If someone wants a definition for hard work then they should see how my professors work :). Out of the courses I attended I really enjoyed attending Prof. Chang Ee-Chien’s course as he kept us entertained throughout the class with his witty jokes while delivering the lecture content. During my first semester at NUS I attended a course conducted by Prof. Tulika Mitra. I needed to make up for my low scores during mid-term and had to clear a lot of queries related to the first half of the course content. In spite of her busy schedule, she was kind enough to give me an appointment in which she patiently answered all my queries. 

I also used to be a tutor for an introductory networking module for Undergraduate students at SoC. It was a great experience to work with a bunch of very talented students.

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

My grandfather is from Hubei, China. That makes me part Chinese :)

Worst design?

Internet Explorer. LoL.

Favourite sports team?

The Sri Lankan cricket team and the English Rugby Team

Pet peeve?

Seeing unread emails, messages etc. At least take time to mark all of them read :D

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

Kristina

Kristina Egorova can’t stand uncertainty and noisy construction work but can’t live without friends, wifi, and her ultimate guilty pleasure, travelling over the weekend! She’s currently in the third year of her PhD programme and is the graduate student representative for the Department of Information Systems.

Where did you grow up?

I was born and grew up in a very small, but interesting place – a tiny small town of Visaginas, Lithuania. Back in the days, the town had just 30,000 inhabitants, there were people from about 10 different nationalities working and living together. So from the very young age, I was exposed to the multicultural and multi-religious society. We had to learn Russian, Lithuanian and English or German, and some of us could choose Polish or Tatar, based on family background and preferences. We celebrated Christmas twice – first, we did it in December with Catholics, and second – in January with Orthodox people. I believe it shaped my future since it is relatively easy for me to pick up some words from new languages and I am very curious about different cultural traditions.

When I was 17, my family moved to Russia, and I discovered that even though I was Russian, I spoke with a funny “Baltic” accent and used slightly different expressions, but it disappeared in 4 months. After graduating from high school I moved again to Saint Petersburg for my undergraduate studies. In “classic” Russian universities, there are no bachelor and master degrees; instead, we have a “specialist” diploma and to get it, you have to study for five and half years and write a substantial final year project. I graduated with a degree in Information Security and, for the project, I focused on extending the software cost model COCOMO in order to fit in the security requirements of one of the Russian state security standards.

Three months after graduating from University, I got to know about National University of Singapore and research scholarships and opportunities from a Russian social networking site, which looks very similar to Facebook. It caught my attention and I dropped a long email with questions to Pavel Korshunov, who was a PhD candidate at the department of Computer Science at the time. He answered all the questions, and encouraged me to apply and pursue a degree from School of Computing. It took me almost a year to get to Singapore, and… 

What are you studying at SoC?

…here at SoC I continue the exploration of various aspects of Information Security – currently I am a PhD student at the Department of Information Systems and I have just started my 3rd year of study. My research interest is in the individual decision making in the context of Information Security and Privacy, and I seek the answers for the questions like: “Why do we violate security rules and regulations, even being aware about the consequences?” or “Why do our good intentions rarely lead to actions: e.g. why do we think about being careful online, but rarely do it, and click on suspicious links?”, and, on another hand, I’m interested in the criminological aspects of information related offences. With the answers, I hope to make our world a bit safer, especially given the persuasion of information technology and early age of exposure to it.

Why are you doing a PhD?

I have decided to apply for PhD because at some point I discovered that my current job and future career opportunities were not challenging anymore: I used to work as a technical writer, business analyst and project manager for several small and medium IT companies in Saint Petersburg, and it was a bit predictable and started to get boring. My last job was a bit more exciting, since we were creating a large-scale e-learning system, which had social networking sites features and was used by 30,000 schools, 5,000,000 school kids, 600,000 teachers and 2,000,000 parents in different regions in Russia. I had developed a reporting subsystem before joining the IS department in January 2013.

After two years of studies, reading and struggling, I realize I made the right choice, since I really enjoy thinking about research questions, looking for another angle, reading the literature and discussing the matter with colleagues and professors. After taking one of the NUS PhD-level courses, I learned about one very exciting thing – neuroplasticity: our brain physically changes with the changes in environment, behavior, thinking, and emotions. I believe it is amazing, and I feel I have changed a lot thanks to PhD training and exposure to the Singaporean mix of cultures, and food of course. The most important skill I have (almost) pursued is patience: in research, everything takes time, and you have to be patient and continue doing the subject you truly enjoy.

But to be honest, my first experience of Singapore was shocking: at the queue to Passport Check, I’ve discovered that I did not have the address of the hostel I had booked and asked my parents to send it to me over SMS. They sent a wrong address, and after climbing up and down the stairs of two wrong hostels I checked the emails and arrived to the right place, which was at Geylang area, and I did not know a single thing about it! In few days, I had to move to the Campus and a nice taxi driver did not how to get to College Avenue East and have never heard about University Town. Over time, I’ve learned how to get around with mobile apps for everything, and a Singlish dictionary book made my life much easier. Highly recommended to new students!

Anyway, this year I am a graduate student representative for the Information Systems department. Apart from the Welcome tea, which was held on January 8th, my task is to serve as an intermediary between students and the department, and I am willing to take questions, comments and suggestions from students and translate them as summarized opinion to the department. Privacy is guaranteed, as a researcher of privacy and security, I know it is important. So you can find me at Information Systems Research Lab 3, Facebook or drop me an email at kristina@comp.nus.edu.sg - please don’t be shy!

Outside of School of Computing, I love travelling (I actively participate at Couchsurfing and once hiked down the Grand Canyon), sending and receiving paper postcards (using www.postcrossing.com) and Brazilian martial art of Capoeira and social dancing.

I would like to use this opportunity to invite everyone for 2 dancing classes of Brazilian Forro, which I and dancing partner will be teaching this 2nd & 9th February at the PGPR Multipurpose Hall as part of the 100MIN Enrichment series of workshops.

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

Night at Museum 3

Worst experience with public transportation?

Public Bus ride from Probolingo to Surabaya – 4 hours in smoking (!) non-aircon bus with friendly curious locals, some random people selling food and playing guitar for money

Best hawker stall in Singapore?

Al Amaan @Clementi Road

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

Young Tau Fou Laksa, Malay Cofta and Laban

Three ultimate dinner party guests? 

Dan Ariely, Heng Swee Keat and James Hetfield

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

Nutty Tay

Tay Yang Shun is a 土生土长 Singaporean. If he had to eat one thing from an NUS food stall for the rest of his life, it’d be the Mee Pok from the Flavours@UTown chicken rice stall. Last year, he and his friends built Nutty Ninjas for their class project, and to won first prize for that module at the 3rd SoC Term Project Showcase (STePS). When he isn’t working or studying, he’s reading random tech, design or start-up related stuff on the web to keep up with the latest trends in technology and entrepreneurship. If you want to freak him out, dump him in a deep body of water – he finds the thought of not knowing what’s beneath him absolutely thrilling. If you’re wronged him and would like to make amends, chocolate and coke are your best bets. If all else fails, show up to Yang Shun’s dinner party with Prof Ben Leong, Jay Chou and Mark Zuckerberg, and you’ll be sweet. 

What are you studying at SoC? 

I'm a final year Computer Science with specializations in Interactive Media and Visual Computing (maybe). I'm actually in my fifth year because I started school in NUS as a Mechanical Engineering student. However, in my second year, I found myself spending most of my time on a CS module I was teaching (CS1020E) rather than on my own core Mechanical engineering modules. It was then that I realized that I should probably be in a course that I'm truly interested in. With the help of Dr Ang Chuan Heng who was my CS1020E lecturer, who wrote a recommendation letter for me, I managed to change course, yet still retaining my NUS scholarship! I was extremely grateful and thankful to Dr Ang and the school. 

Describe your SoC experience. 

I enjoy creating applications and websites as I like to build things and solve problems. There are many aspects involved: Software design, interface design, user experience design, etc. Being able to work on all these different aspects simultaneously is a challenge and the experience is very interesting and dynamic. 

Solving problems through technology: This was the main reason I changed course to Computer Science: I get to build stuff and solve problems. Many SoC modules are very hands-on and require students to code and create programs. I'm prefer hands-on activities over studying theories, hence I enjoy the way many of the CS modules are taught. Programming is a really powerful skill. After learning programming, I feel that I am empowered to solve problems that I wasn't able to if I didn't know programming. Among the useful things that I have built, there's a cleanliness records app for teachers to keep track of the cleanliness of their students' rooms, and also, NUSMods, which is used by NUS students to plan their timetables and look up module information. 

Teaching: I have tutored/will tutor the modules CS1010S, CS1020E, CS3216, CS3217, CP3101B, and these are modules that I am passionate about. I hope to influence my students with my passion and encourage them to explore beyond what is taught in class. In my opinion, teaching has multiple benefits: (i) In the tutorials that I teach, I code the solution on the spot and explain the thought process behind my approach. I have found this skill to be extremely relevant in technical interviews where I have to explain my approach of tackling a technical question to the interviewer as I code the solution out. (ii) Tutoring is a good way to meet other like-minded peers among the teaching team and collaborate on projects, be it school or external ones. (iii) A stable source of income to survive the semester. The renumeration isn't a lot, but it's sufficient. 

Working on NUSMods: Ever since Beng (founder of NUSMods) graduated in 2014, I have since taken over the responsibility of improving and working on NUSMods. Over the summer, Beng, Ashray Jain and I, worked on revamping NUSMods and added many more features to it. The most significant new feature was having dedicated module pages which served as wiki pages for NUS modules. Module-related information such as pre-requisites tree, module reviews, CORS bidding history, and timetable data can also be found. I enjoy building useful things that solves peoples’ problems, and NUSMods has given me an opportunity to do that, because it is being used by virtually the whole NUS student population. This keeps me motivated to keep working on it and making it better for the students of NUS. As part of my module project for CS3240, I have extended NUSMods to include friends' timetable saving and NUS venue directory features. Over the December break, I will be working with Chen Minqi on finalizing the features and testing them so that they can be pushed out by Jan 2015. 

Creating content for SoC modules: I'm currently preparing for CP3101B and CS3217 next semester, I'll be serving as a tutor for CP3101B and CS3217 under Dr Steven Halim and Prof Sim Khe Chai respectively. Soon, I'm currently in the midst of preparing materials for these two modules. I enjoy creating new materials for modules because it challenges me to design questions that are helpful towards students' learning. I also try to make the nature of the assignment interesting and relevant so that students will be motivated to work on them. 

Last semester, the 2048 game was extremely hot, and Prof Ben Leong had the idea of creating a programming assignment out of it. Hence I worked with Emmanuel Goh (who will be next semester's CS1010S Head Tutor) and we produced a 2048 problem set for students of CS1010FC and CS1010S. With some guidelines, CS1010FC and CS1010S students had to program the logic behind a 2048 game for their homework. Students were also encouraged to write a solver for the 2048 game as part of a contest. I recall my CS1010E days where I wrote a simple reversi game in C using an ASCII and command line interface and had a lot of fun doing it. I'm glad that there are such programming assignments these days that break the monotony of standard programming homework. 

This year alone, I went on 3 overseas trips and they were all sponsored by the overseas organizations. Facebook sponsored my trip to their HQ in Menlo Park for the Facebook Open Academy program, University of Pennsylvania sponsored part of my trip to Philadelphia for PennApps and NYU Shanghai sponsored by trip to Shanghai for HackShanghai. My respective module lecturers were understanding in allowing me to skip classes for these overseas pursuits. This semester, I spent two weeks overseas and as a result I had to rush to catch up on the work during and after my trips. I had a report for CS3240 due during my return flight from Doha, hence I was rushing to complete the report on the plane from Philadelphia to Doha. My MacBook's battery was running low but thankfully I managed to connect to the WiFi at Doha's airport and submitted my report on time before the battery went flat. It kind of felt like I was defusing a bomb >_< 

[Here are some of the things that I think make SoC different than other faculties.] I find that many students in SoC are innately passionate about their work, and willingly spend their weekends and free time exploring new technology and learning new things. I look forward to my classes as I’m innately interested in the content I’m being taught. 

We also have undergraduate tutors! I think this is something uniquely SoC (most other faculties require their tutors to be of at least Masters level). There was this semester where my friend was taking a module that I was tutoring and I was taking a module he was tutoring. It can get complicated sometimes, but at the same time, it makes life in SoC more interesting and fun. As tutors, we get to work with professors very closely to run the course. We also have post-exam chillax sessions with some drinks! (: 

And, I really think we have the best faculty staff around! Perhaps because of the nature of the course, many of the faculty staff are on Facebook where our profs share interesting posts (tech articles, Nala photos), and interact with the students. The faculty staff make an effort to know their students on a personal level - [these are a few] profs who made an impact on me and taught me some classes that I enjoyed: 

• Prof Ben Leong: I owe a lot of my achievements to Prof Ben; he gave me many opportunities to learn and I learnt a tremendous amount of skills (beyond CS) from him. Prof Ben is also extremely popular among the students – he even has a Fan Club!
• Dr Colin Tan: Dr Colin is very cool and personable, and has many interesting stories to share. He's very active on Facebook and shares many cat photos (only Nala). 
• Prof Ng Teck Khim: Extremely caring professor that takes the effort to know each and every of his students. He even goes the extra mile and specially gave make-up lessons to students who have missed his class. I have taken two modules (CS3218 and CS4243) under him. 
• Prof Zhao Shendong: Prof Zhao is very kind and has given me extensions for his assignments as I was overseas >_< 

Also, there's so much welfare for the students: interesting hacking contests, Halloween profile picture contests, and also Prof Gary Tan and Adele giving away meal vouchers during examination week. This makes us feel very taken care of (: 

What is the one thing you would change about NUS? 

I think more students should try programming! I would encourage everyone to take an introductory class (one of the CS1010-variants) and see if they enjoy it. Programming isn't something every student gets to try because Singapore's educational system doesn't include CS as one of the compulsory foundation subjects in secondary school. Many of my Science students from CS1010S who are extremely talented programmers, gained interested in CS after taking CS1010S. I think that if they got to try programming earlier, they might have chosen CS instead. Although, CS is not for everyone, but you won't know until you try it! Trying programming is extremely simple, all you need is your laptop! 

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

Prof Ben appointed me as Head Tutor for CS1010S in AY2013/14 Semester 1. In fact, it was my first time tutoring but he trusted me to take up such an important role. It was an eye-opening experience for me as I got to coordinate a course from start to the end. What made it "better" was that it was a new course, there were no materials to reuse and the teaching staff had to port the materials from Scheme to Python. There were also a lot of administrative issues to handle. 

People management has never been my forte but I got to hone those skills by being the Head Tutor. My approach was to get to know most of the people (staff and students) on a personal level outside the classroom. The motivation behind this was to better understand each individual's personality so that delegation of work could be more efficient and mismatch of interests could be prevented as much as possible. 

The process was painful and coupled with CS3216 (another painful module), I slept very little that semester. However, I was very glad with the outcome of the course and would deem it as a huge success. It left a deep impression in many students' hearts as the toughest, most painful, most time-consuming yet enjoyable freshmen module. In my teaching performance report, positive remarks from my students included: hardworking, responsible, approachable, caring, friendly, efficient, patient and nice. 

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

That I have been a student in 4 NUS faculties. In my first year of National Service, I was in Architecture, but I switched to Mech Engineering and Accountancy DDP in my second year of NS, and subsequently, CS. There is also an artistic side of me; I used to write Chinese Calligraphy and do some graphic designing. In 2012, my designs for the Welfare Diary and NUSSU Student Life Tee were selected to be used university-wide! 

Is there anything else you'd like to share? 

Recently I talked to a few people and found that they were in their course because their parents wanted them to study it because of the supposedly good prospects and not because they are interested in it. I think it's extremely pointless to study something that one has no interest in. In my opinion, extrinsic motivation such as money and prospects will fade off eventually. One has to be intrinsically motivated by what they are studying/doing. If you haven't found something that interests you, keep finding and trying new stuff! 

Quick-Fire! Pet peeves? 

So many! Where do I start…

• Chewing very loudly when eating. 
• Bad coding style. Students, please follow this Python style guide.
• Literally using acronyms in face-to-face conversations: “TBH”, “IMO”, “ASAP”. 
• Not pushing in chairs after leaving the seat. 
• "k", "kk" and "okok". These are common replies used by many people in instant messaging and it gets to my nerves. “Ok”, “okay”, “okie” sound much better as acknowledgement replies. "k" sounds rude and is a convo-killer, while "kk" and "okok" gives people the impression that they are getting impatient. 

All I want for Christmas is…? 

Time. Time is the only resource that money can’t buy. How nice would it be if I had 48 hours a day, I can sleep for 24 hours and still have 24 hours to do work.

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

Bodhi

Bodhisatta Roy always wanted to work with computers because he was attracted to computer games, but his father refused to let him shoot aliens or race around virtual worlds. Because of that, he’s never played any computer game – not even when he got his first tablet a couple of years ago. Bodhi was a Graduate Research Student here from Jan 2012 to July 2013, working with A/P Liang Zhenkai. He plays the guitar, loves the sunshine and beaches, has been going to Sentosa for a picnic at the end of every semester since he’s been here in Singapore, and can’t get enough of vanilla ice-cream.

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in a small town called Garifa on the eastern coast of India. The best way to describe it would be a half-way house between a “kampung” and a small-sized city, but with a “kampung” spirit. Cycle rickshaws are still a widely-used mode of transport, the social circle extends well beyond the immediate family to a long list of neighbors. [There are] mostly small houses with gardens in front. Apartment complexes have only sprung up in the last decade. There are also a lot of ponds (one in front of my house, to be exact!). Cricket is still considered a religion, though I prefer soccer.

I had a very disciplined upbringing; both at home and school. I remember crossing a river in a train via a bridge which is over a hundred and fifty years old. It has structurally degraded [to the extent] that the trains are restricted to go [a maximum of] 10 kilometres per hour on it. I did walk to-and-fro on that bridge several times and it was quite scary: watching the river flow over a hundred meters below and just pieces of wooden plank prevented me from swimming below.

Studying in a Catholic school has been quite instrumental in my life: the administration was not only insistent on providing quality education, but also taught me essential life skills. Though I had always managed to escape the cane, there were a few instances where I, along with my fellow friends, had to stand in the sun for a whole day. Ironically, I was innocent on those occasions, just caught in the wrong spot at the wrong time! It, however, made me realise that the best way to avoid punishment is to get good grades and be treated with more respect (the top-five students in my class always got off with no punishment). I studied harder, and I was treated leniently on several occasions after committing “crimes” henceforth. 

Undergraduate was crazier: I guess I was plain unlucky. My undergrad school was so strict that we were not allowed to leave the premises unless the lectures were over: and we had seven lectures, five days a week! If a lecturer was absent, some other lecturer would come over and teach the module. It was hilarious, and outright dictatorial, and completely ridiculous because nobody understood the logic behind forcing adults to sit and study for 6 hours in stuffy classrooms with more than a hundred students. Oh, we did not have air-conditioned classrooms as well. And the student attendance rate could not be less than 80%.

Masters was slightly better: we were no longer bothered with attendance percentages, the classes had air-conditioning, and the Professors were quite serious in ensuring that the coursework was rigorous. Despite getting an opportunity to do a 6-month internship for a IT MNC, I chose to do a Master’s thesis and it was a very insane decision I consider myself lucky enough to graduate. Ha ha!

What do you do now? 

I work as the sole IT Analyst at the Business Analytics Centre since October ’13 :-/. This is a joint setup between NUS Business School, NUS SoC and IBM. My primary responsibilities are teaching programming technologies to the MSBA students. I’ve only been here for close to a year and one of the few perks of academia is that you get paid to read and then read some more. I also work closely with the Director of the Centre, Prof. Jorge Sanz, on a few research ideas while I’m not doing something useful! I need to do so to keep my brain excited with new challenges.

As an instructor, I try to ensure that my students learn something useful for their professional career. However, it becomes slightly challenging as most of my students are in their mid-30s, and one is even in his 40s, while I’m still in my mid-20s! But I guess the feedback reports are quite good, so all hope is not lost yet! I’ve always enjoyed teaching. I [was] a Teaching Assistant during the entire senior year of my Masters back in India and it [was] a gratifying experience for me. After my Masters, I was associated with a university in India; working for a project to build virtual classrooms for university students with low-speed internet connections (< 256 Kbps; typical in India and other developing countries). Even in NUS, I was a Teaching Assistant in SoC for a semester. 

I’ve also always dealt with Graduate students as a Teaching Assistant. During my research candidature in NUS, I was a Senior Facilitator of Facilitators@NUS, teaching NUS team leaders and student cohort life skills via experiential learning. It has been an incredible experience for me, and I can safely say the same for the NUS students who’ve taken part in these camps and workshops. Some of these overnight camps were held in Pulau Ubin, and there was even one in Kota Tinggi, Malaysia! This is a completely different methodology of enriching student lives, and I try to incorporate some of them during my classroom sessions in the MSBA program as well.

What is the one thing you would change about SoC?

A few of my colleagues complain that they have to go to The Deck (FASS food court) to get decent coffee. And to accompany them, I’ve to make the long walk from the far end of COM2. Solely to avoid the 10-minute walk each way, can we please have a nice coffee machine in the staff room? Even if three staff members go to the Deck to get coffee, that’s one man-hour wasted. 

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

I think I’ve been lucky in enjoying what I do, mostly because my managers have never pestered me. Choosing the right manager and the right job, I think, is a significant achievement. This helps any employee explore a lot of ideas and translate them into viable projects, with a business goal in mind. Of course, sometimes you do a project without any specifically defined business values, but that is a perk solely enjoyed in academia.

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

That I read a lot of fiction: Tom Clancy happens to be my favorite. I’m currently reading “The Cobra” by Frederick Forsyth. I try to read 50-70 paperbacks every year. When I'm out of good books, I "steal" a few books on economics from Prof. Sanz's bookshelves.

Quick-Fire: Worst experience with public transportation?

My home was about two-and-a-half hours away from my undergraduate school. During my final semester exams, the mercury crossed 40 degrees Celsius every single day. It was a bit difficult to travel in public transport, because there are no air conditioners in local buses or trains back home.

Pet peeve?

Wasting food.

Three things you can’t live without?

They’d have to be the following, and not necessarily in that order:

• Holidays: the opportunity to see my family back home or backpack around

• A positive attitude: to make a difference to my professional and personal life

• Reading a few pages of fiction every night, or while I'm commuting. 

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

Renaissance Pete

Intrepid explorer Adjunct Professor Pete Kellock has been to many amazing places – Patagonia, Cuba, Guatemala, North Korea, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Svalbard (in the high arctic) and the highlands of New Guinea, to name a few. At the same time, he loves major cities like Rome, Manhattan and Sydney. He was once a freelance horn player who played in hundreds of live concerts, as well as founder and CEO of a successful company. Despite getting in front of audiences and classes countless times, and doing quite a few radio and TV interviews, Pete still gets nervous any time he has to stand up in public or face a mike and camera. He says that many professional musicians and performers confess the same and believes that the nerves aren’t all bad – they can help keep you on your toes and motivate you to prepare well. 

Pete (left), Terence Swee (middle) and Phil Morgan - the core of the team that built muvee - on their annual adventure. Here they were having loads of fun shooting video off the edge of the Grand Canyon using a camera-mounted, radio-controlled quadcopter.

Where did you grow up?

In the far north of Scotland. I spent my first 10 years in the Orkney Islands, off the north coast of the UK. Its climate is raw, wet and extremely windy, but it compensates with some impressive scenery: huge sea-cliffs with crashing waves and thousands of sea-birds. It also has perhaps the most amazing stone-age archaeology in Northern Europe. At an early age I had freedom that most kids can only dream of: by the age of about six I would sometimes wander off for hours, walking miles from home on my own or with friends.

What do you do now? 

At this point I have a few facets to my life. One is helping young entrepreneurs, through mentoring, giving talks and teaching. I do this part-time in NUS, SMU and ad-hoc engagements elsewhere. Another facet is writing weird electronic music. My PhD is in electronic music (I have undergrad degrees in physics/maths and in music) and writing music has been a passion in several periods of my life. Yet another facet is travel: I've always been passionate about seeing the world and I carve out chunks of time for trips to places I haven't visited before. 

I have the wonderful privilege that at this point in my life I don't need to do anything for the sake of money. I value the freedom that it gives me more than anything. It's not that I'm terribly rich - some of my friends have a lot more money - but I care far more about having "free" time, and control over my time, than I do about most of the stuff money buys or about having a high-status job. I never had much interest in the whole concept of career and have gone through my life pretty much following whatever I found interesting and fun at the time.

I'm also extremely lucky that my wife feels the same - neither of us cares much about stuff or status. She's a wonderful Singaporean woman I've been married to for 20 years.

Recently I've taken on a more intense mentorship role with a number of startups including some in SoC. That's fun because I get a chance to know the teams better and can give them more in-depth help.

I also recently completed 2 electronic music projects, one that I had been working on off and on for 4 years. I'm currently "clearing my feet" with various small personal projects and then plan to embark on another big electronic music project that will take me years. This one is going to involve coding, which I've done lots of in my life, but not much in the last decade. It'll be fun getting back into code!

As well as writing music, I see myself as a lifelong student of music. I sometimes get lost for half a day exploring some corner of music that I want to learn more about, often using a combination of Spotify and YouTube to find recordings, plus Wikipedia or other online sources to read up. Sometimes I download scores of music and pore over them or pick apart their harmonies at the piano. This week - in response to a comment made by a friend at a dinner party on Saturday - I spent a few hours exploring the music of the Renaissance composer, lutenist, nobleman and murderer(!), Carlos Gesualdo. But my tastes range across a very wide spectrum of music, from Rock to Indian Classical Music to Contemporary Experimental Music. Last week I was listening to and learning about an incredibly soulful wind instrument from Armenia called the duduk.  

Describe your SoC experience. 

It includes both mentoring and a bit of teaching. I enjoy both equally. I wouldn't like to be a full-time teacher (I did that for a few years of my life), but in small doses teaching is fun. The only thing that isn't much fun - I think most University staff anywhere in the world would agree - is marking assignments!

Mentoring is one of those things that involves a lot of chemistry between you and the mentees. There are ways in which all start-ups are very similar. But there are other ways in which every start-up is unique: different products, domains and technologies, different critical success factors, different types of people in the teams. Sometimes the fit is great and I can see I'm making a big difference to the team, other times I'm scratching my head wondering how best to help them (and sometimes how to get them to listen to me!)  When it's working well it's both valuable and great fun.

There are a few students I've met in the course of mentoring in SoC where, within the first couple of minutes of meeting them, I could see they have all the makings of a successful entrepreneur. And I'm seeing more and more young people like that in SoC, NUS and elsewhere in Singapore. It's quite a specific profile: great "EQ" (people skills), very smart in a down-to-earth practical way (not necessarily much of an academic achiever), confident and opinionated but not too cocky (i.e. willing to listen), unwilling to take "no" for an answer but charming and creative rather than aggressive in how they pursue the answer they want, and other such qualities. A specific example would be Krishanthan Surendran, the founder of one of our start-ups, Klinify which recently raised several hundred thousand dollars.

I think we still have some way to go to make the local student culture deeply entrepreneurial, akin to say Stanford in the US. I'd like to see that happen. But we're moving in that direction, and accelerating the progress: the SoC entrepreneurship team has grown a bit (it's now Juzar Motiwalla, Benjamin Lian, Francis Yeoh, Wong Weng Fai and myself), we're doing more in-depth hands-on work with our start-up incubatees, we’re offering more courses and funding schemes, etc... so we're getting there!

What is the craziest thing that has happened to you in your time at SoC? 

Last summer Prof Martin Henz and I rented a yacht in the Greek islands with an old school friend of mine as skipper and the three of us had some excellent adventures. 

The most acute one was when we had sudden engine failure in the middle of the harbor of the famous island Santorini. The whole point of a sailing yacht is to sail and we had a lot of amazing sailing, but normally you use the engine to navigate within harbors or when laying anchor. This engine failure happened in the worst possible place: lots of other boats around and strong unpredictable gusts of winds from all directions. Somehow we managed to avoid a collision or running into the rocks, but we realized we couldn't anchor or berth in Santorini, so we had to do a 3-hour sail back to another island where we could anchor. 

Thanks to the excellent skills of the two experienced yachtsmen - Martin and my other friend - we got the anchor down under sail in a significant swell just outside the area where it was breaking on the beach. Then, after another 3 hours or so crawling around the engine compartment we managed to replace a damaged impeller and carry on our trip. It’s slightly miraculous that we got through it unscathed. For example, if the anchor had drifted at the wrong moment we would have ended up in the crashing surf, perhaps writing off a yacht worth a half a million dollars or so. We just happened to have a spare impeller for the engine and I just happened to carry a little screwdriver when I travel which was essential to open the impeller casing: a whole series of lucky breaks.  

The culprit behind the whole adventure turned out to be a plastic bag that had got stuck in our cooling water intake causing the engine to overheat.

The only sad thing about this is that it means we didn't manage to land on Santorini, a place I've always wanted to visit. But we did spend time on another island called Amorgos which is perhaps just as gorgeous but gets far fewer visitors. Overall it was an amazing trip.

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

My biggest claim to fame so far is that I founded muvee Technologies. muvee started at the end of 1999 as a research team in Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL), the precursor of I2R. The founding team that spun off from KRDL consisted of 3 Singaporeans (Terence Swee, Lo Sheng & Mafrudy bin Rubani), 2 Indians (Sarat Venugopal & Sachin Jain), an Englishman (Phil Morgan) a Canadian (Gerry Beauregard) and a Scotsman (me). I led it as CEO for its first 6 years, taking it from start-up, through venture-capital funding to a profitable company generating over S$12m annual revenue. 

muvee has many "feathers in its cap": it pioneered automatic video editing which has become a whole new category of software, its software has been shipped globally in partnerships with Sony, HP, Nokia, Nikon, LG and other big players, it has generated close to $60 million in revenue for Singapore from overseas sources thus creating about 500 man-years of local employment... and many other fine things. I believe it may have shipped more copies than any other software developed in Singapore: literally hundreds of millions... which sounds like a wild claim until you realize that, for example, for a few years muvee's software engine was on the CD-ROM shipping with every Sony camcorder and many of their cameras worldwide. The deals with HP, Nokia, Nikon, LG were of similar scale. 

Creating a successful start-up is a 24x7 activity usually stretching over many years. The founding team put in plenty of 100-hour weeks; in our first couple of years if any of us left the office before about 7 or 8pm we'd say "Sorry guys - I'm having a half day". Like most start-up CEOs I was involved in numerous areas: business development, deal-making, marketing, fund-raising, hiring & inspiring, financial planning & control, corporate governance, general management, etc. And I was probably more involved than most CEOs in the product and technology, from product definition (settling feature sets, user experience, etc.) to core technology R&D and patenting. muvee has about 20 patents; I was involved at the invention stage in all of them and in many cases I led the work (with our patent attorney) of countering the objections of examiners until they were granted. It was an amazing adventure. Creating a revolutionary product and bringing it to market is one of life's toughest challenges, but also one of the most rewarding. You learn more about all sorts of things - including yourself - than from any other journey.

Unfortunately one thing muvee hasn't achieved so far is to make the founders or investors rich! It's now under the excellent leadership of my friend and co-founder Terence Swee, so with luck that might still happen. But even if it doesn't, I believe we have much to be proud of. In Steve Jobs's phrase, we made a ding in the Universe (albeit much smaller than the dings Steve made!). And I'm proud that most of the founding team have remained firm friends - rather unusual after the long, harsh, bumpy journey that is a start-up. A few of us including Terence and myself get together every year and climb a mountain or take a major trek together somewhere in the world: in Indonesia, Nepal and the US so far. 

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

Papadum, Crêpe Suzette and beer (it used to be considered a food in the UK). And we need protein so can I squeeze in fillet steak too?

Three things you can’t live without?

Music, wild deserted places, and my wonderful wife Pearl - not necessarily in that order. ;)

Three ultimate dinner party guests

Laurie Anderson (American singer, musician, story-teller, multi-media artist), Thucydides (ancient Greek writer, author of the History of the Peloponnesian War), and Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).

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

Pooja wants Wednesday-Talks back!

Fourth year PhD student Pooja Roy hails from the City of Joy, Kolkata, in East India. Pooja reckons that most people there are foodies. Apparently you’ll find sweet shops every 500 metres around the city and anyone visiting Kolkata must try ‘phuchhka’, a tiny hollow fried bun with hot potato filling, served with a sour tamarind dip. Pooja loves singing and once thought of making a career out of her love for music - she even learnt to play the piano to compose music. She has not given up on this wish yet.

Why are you doing a PhD?

In early days of school when we were asked to write an essay about our ambition in life, I always wrote that I would become an educator. The wish got stronger every passing year and thus here I am, pursuing PhD so that I can teach in an university in my country. Instead of working in a tier one institution which is overflowing with amazing talents, I really wish to work for universities that are not so famous. I feel that I can utilize my training received in a top university like NUS to provide and contribute to an institution that lacks good educators.

Describe your research and its significance.

I work in the area of compiler optimizations. Compiler is a piece of software that translates what a programmer writes, into binary codes that a machine can execute. A compiler can be visualized as a vertically oriented channel which starts from application layer that is the source code and ends in the hardware that run them. At every level of abstraction it needs information to optimize the program so that it works correctly as the programmer wants, runs faster, uses the memory devices very efficiently, does not interfere with other applications running at the same time etc. Lately, as power consumption is a big issue in computing, compilers also need to consider how much power the code will consume when it is run. This power consumption is due to all the hardware that will be needed to run the application. In any computer, memory devices are a main consumer of power. In my thesis, I am exploring how compilers can optimize programs so that it consumes lesser power while it runs. There is a new type of memory called Resistive memories. These memories have special power requirements and properties. As SRAM and DRAM, the most common memory technologies are failing to scale up for future computing devices, this class of Resistive memories are being explored to replace them. My thesis work, specially, considers these memories and tried to optimize programs so consume minimum energy while its execution.

I am working on the junction of software layer and hardware layer which makes my work very interesting. Each phenomenon that we observe in a particular problem can be explored or answered from two very different perspectives - one that is abstract and based on logic, the other is real hardware devices. This not only makes the work very interesting, also makes it a bit difficult at times. Personally, I like my area of research because I get opportunities to explore the very core of how computers work.

I remember reading from a famous professor's blog "it does not really matter which era you are born in, science always have uncharted spaces". Though my area of research is a very well-known and well-studied area for past many decades, still it is very active and has lot of opportunities for research. Every innovation in the field of electronic design or programming languages has impact on compilation techniques. With more and more complex and high performance systems and popularity of mobile devices, I think there will be a steady need for innovative compilation techniques in the coming years and further. 

Frankly speaking when I started as a PhD student I found research very daunting. Especially after clearing qualifiers I really felt the difference between reading for exams and research work where you are expected to create new knowledge. Fortunately I am working with an amazingly encouraging supervisor [A/P Wong Weng-Fai]. If not for his constant motivation and simple words of appreciation at every step, I would not have continued so far. As a PhD student we have to publish research manuscripts. Many students face a lot of difficulty in achieving good publications. I too faced this peril. However, I could stand up after every paper rejection mainly because of my supervisor's trust in me. I love research because I love asking "why”s. I am very curious by nature and that is why my favourite part of every project is the idea formation or the brainstorming where we explore all the "why"s that comes to our mind. For every "why", when I can find an answer, it is a joy that cannot be explained in words. It is somewhat like a treasure hunt game. :-)

Describe your SoC experience. What do you enjoy the most about studying at SoC?

I like the freedom given to all students that they can learn just by attending the lectures. This way, it is easier for students to learn what we really want to learn without worrying about GPAs. I love the facilities provided to research students. We all have our own comfortable desks to work. The exposure given to the PhD students, for example, regular workshops, research talks and seminar by eminent people, is also very encouraging.

I think many PhD students will agree with me - the most challenging aspect of my journey is SoC was my qualifier exams. Though for the new students it is differently designed now. I hope the new structure will prove to be more research friendly. 

How I am shaped as a researcher is mainly because of my supervisor’s constant encouragement. He inspired me the most. Apart from my supervisor, I am really inspired by Professor Mohan Kankanhalli and A/P Tulika Mitra. Prof Mohan's guidance has always helped me in taking decisions about my graduate studies. And Prof Tulika is always providing us with many opportunities to meet very eminent people from our area of research. She cares and includes not only her students but also the students of other professors in any event that can help PhD students gain more knowledge and awareness of our field.

[The one thing I would change about SoC is that the] Biz canteen must have new stalls! haha :P On a serious note, I think we should have more interactions between research labs. We used to have a Wednesday-talk series called "CS-Talks" where one person from any lab would present the basics of his/her research area and all other students from others labs could attend. I really hope that it could resume.

What is the funniest thing that you’ve done? 

In December 2013, I went on a trip to Vietnam. As I like to travel in the streets and markets in any new place, not only the typical tourist attractions, I discovered that almost no one speaks or understands English, the only language I know, in the street food or market places in Vietnam. Of course in the cities and tours organized for tourists every one speaks and understand English but not in the local streets. The only one thing that kept me from getting lost in translation was "Google Translate". I downloaded an offline language pack (Vietnamese - English and vice versa) in my phone and went around all over Vietnam typing to everyone and communicating happily about anything I wanted to! It was at times hilarious when many people gathered around me to see what exactly I am trying to do by showing my phone to the shop keeper and such like. But surely it was helpful and lifesaving at times. :P

Apparently you’re a movie-buff. Tell me about this. 

I like movies and especially war-time films or films with non-linear story lines! My favourite director is Quentin Tarantino, director of the famous movie "Kill Bill". My close friends are Film Studies graduates and film enthusiasts. I think it’s because of their company that I am also a film enthusiast. not only watching different genres of films, I love discussing them with my friends over a cup of coffee. I also read blogs and love to watch various documentaries on Nat Geo or BBC! One of my favourite show is Air Crash Investigations.

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

Highway 

Worst fashion trend?

"Moustache" lockets and prints!

Best hawker food in Singapore?

Jin De Lai Zhong Hua La Mian - a Chinese restaurant in Boat Quay (their speciality is chilli crab).

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

Ben's Inspiration

If you've been following the blog, you would have noticed that Ben Leong's name comes up a bit. There is even a Ben Leong Fan Club on Facebook. So here’s a bit more: Ben was born in Singapore and, except for nine years studying at MIT, has spent most of his life in Singapore. He counts marrying his wife of nine years as his most significant achievement to date. Not many know this, but Ben used to be a pistol shooter in his youth. Also, Ben claims that he fears boredom more than death although this Editor suspects that his fear of having to listen to his daughters play Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ over and over at home probably rivals that. 

Clearly, Mei-mei rules.

Describe your work and its significance.

I realized from a young age that I really liked computers and I liked to write programs. However, I thought that just writing programs that run on one machine was not sufficiently challenging. Instead, I became interested in learning about and exploring how we can write programs that will run on many computers, that then work together to do cool stuff. This is why my students and I work on Networking and Distributed Systems. We study and investigate how we can make networks run faster and more reliably and also develop new ways to use these networks to do interesting things. 

We are currently involved in two key projects. In one project, we are developing new algorithms that will allow cellular (3G/4G) data networks to run faster. In the other project, we are developing a new aerial wireless mesh network, where we will using flying quadrotors equipped with radios to rapidly set up a wireless network over places where there is no wired infrastructure. 

Mobile data is very important to modern life. We all want to upload our photos faster, and also have better experience surfing the web or checking email on our mobile devices. Our research on 3G/4G networks will improve performance. We will also be working on techniques that will allow us to build better, less buggy and more energy efficient mobile applications. We believe that our aerial wireless mesh network will have applications in disaster relief and civil defence operations. All in all, I think we believe that through our work, we will help make things better.

Describe your SoC experience.

I think the best thing about being a professor is the level of autonomy in deciding on what I want to work on. Literally, I get out of bed each day and ask myself, "So, what cool thing can I do today?"

The other really nice thing about working in SoC is really nice colleagues and students. Much of our happiness is derived from the people that we get to work with every day. I am grateful that it is a joy to go to work every day. 

My work is extremely challenging. Research is challenging because half the time we don't really know what we're doing exactly. We work in this space of uncertainty where we cannot really be sure that things will work and we will get results. Failure is common, though some will say that if we don’t fail often enough then we are not trying hard enough. But I guess the rewards on the rare occasions where we make a breakthrough somewhat make up for it. 

Teaching is also very challenging because students are all different. Even if we teach the same class across years, there are differences in the students and we need to accommodate those differences. Also, students have a variety of different problems and much of the work involves figuring out how to tackle them.  

Students ask questions all the time and most times, I am very fast and I always have answers for them. There was however one question that I got that "stunned" me for a while. One year, a student asked, "Prof, so what's the meaning of life?" I forget the exact circumstances under which that question was posed, but I remember being momentarily stumped. Even today, I really don't have an answer because I think each person needs to find his own meaning. What is meaningful to one person might not be meaningful to the next. But we all need to find meaning because if not, then we would be wandering aimlessly through life. 

If there's one thing that I have learnt in life though, it's that it is really difficult to say where we will be or what we will do in the future. I am not entirely sure that I will always be a professor at SoC. I don't really have plans for my life. Every day, I just ask myself "how can I create the most value today?", and I just do my best. My goal is to minimize regret and sleep well at night. So far, my algorithm seems to be working quite well.

What would you change at SoC?

I actually think that SoC is already a cool place with very cool people. We really don't want to break things that are already working well, so I'm not sure that we really need to change all that much. I do feel however that many of our students are very "lost". This could very well just be a function of age, since most students are young and still trying to figure out their place in the world. So, if there's anything that I think SoC or NUS should work towards, it is cultivating a culture of inspiration. I would like to see everyone come to work or school every day inspired. The students should be inspired. The professors should be inspired. Even the administrators should be inspired. I think the world at large needs more inspiration.

Which students have made impressions on you? 

I have had many students. It is probably too hard to list them all, so I guess I will just pick one.

I first taught Caleb Chao programming in his freshman year. Caleb is currently a software engineer at Google. He is quite memorable because among all my students over the years, he was the only one who submitted a blank file for his practical exam. Somehow he realized immediately after the exam and pleaded with me to accept a new file which he downloaded from the computer lab for me. He was clearly a good student and so I believed that it was an honest mistake and accepted his explanations. I did, however, take away all the bonus points that he would have gotten in the exam. Eventually, he did emerge as the top student for CS1101S that year, so it clearly didn’t hurt him.

The next year, Caleb became a tutor for the class. This time, instead of taking the practical exam, he served as an invigilator. However, he was bored along the way and decided that he would solve the exam and upload the answers. What he did not realized was that because he was a staff member, the solutions that he uploaded to IVLE during the exam could be read by all the students. Fortunately, this happened close to the end of the exam and I discovered it soon enough to delete the file before it caused a "leak". Nevertheless, Caleb gave me a heart attack that day.

My final impression of Caleb as a student was the speech he made as the SoC Valedictorian, where he extolled the importance of creating value and not just pursuing wealth and status. I guess that's a value that agrees with me.

Clearly, you are passionate about teaching and you care about your students. Tell me a bit about this.

I think the main thing about my teaching is that I believe in what I am doing and I believe that it makes a difference. The trouble with teaching, frankly, is that it is very hard to measure. We really cannot say for sure what we achieved, or not. However, I believe in inspiration. I believe that it is important for us to be inspired in our work -- and to be inspired, we need to believe that what we are doing actually makes a difference. I might be delusional, but if so, I think it's good delusion. It is not always easy for each of us to find our place in life. What I can share is that I believe I found my calling back in secondary school when we sang this song "If I can help somebody". The lyrics somehow spoke to me:

If I can do my duty, as a good man ought,
If I can bring back beauty, to a world up wrought,
If I can spread love's message, as the Master taught,
Then my living shall not be in vain. 

And I had this epiphany. I realized at the moment that I wanted to live my life by helping people -- but at the point in time, I didn't really know how exactly I would do it. I guess in my current job as a professor, I help students. It is not just about learning stuff and getting good grades. I believe that, more important than that, my duty is to see how I can help students live good lives when they grow up.

If there was only one piece of advice you could give a SoC student, what would it be?

I think it is important to come to terms with how small and insignificant we all are. I think people fear failure because they are worried about what others will think of them. The insight is that most people are typically too self-absorbed in their own lives and own problems to have the time and space to care about what really happens to others. This realization is very liberating because it makes failures so much less scary. The corollary is that it is actually okay to fail because when one succeeds just once, most people won't remember the failures. I would encourage SoC students to try new things, break new ground and to push themselves, and not be held back by the fear of failure. Many claim that there are no second chances. I believe that it is all in the head and that we never really fail, until we give up.

Quick-fire! Guilty pleasure?

I buy games off Steam whenever there are discounts and when I am not working I check out some of them. I can never actually find the time to finish a game, so what I am really trying to do is to try to find and appreciate new ideas. I think there is a lot of creativity in games and it is interesting to check out new game concepts and to try to appreciate the cleverness and concept. The other thing that I like to do is to get an appreciation for the state-of-art in computer graphics and animation.

Three ultimate dinner party guests

Lee Kuan Yew, Warren Buffett & Pope Francis.

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