Mama Jeannel

Jeannel Mah is a fourth year Information Systems student and a proud Singaporean. She thinks Crocs are the best and worst fashion trend and hates it when people don’t reply to text messages. She loves snacking and reads all the [English] words on the packaging of everything she buys. Incidentally, thus far, Jeannel received more nominations to do SoC Bytes than any other student.

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

[My favourite thing about SoC is] the friendly atmosphere! SoC is like one big family! Students, Staff, Lecturers, we all know each other well enough to joke and confide in one another. [I think the thing that makes the SoC experience different is] the wonderful close‐knit feel of the faculty members! I'm not sure there is any other faculty where students and staff have such a close personal friendship, the active Facebook community, and alumni who are so willing to come back for events and help their juniors!

I have been blessed to be in the best faculty in the world, [with] so many people [who] have made good impressions on me. My fantastic seniors, who were so welcoming during my Freshmen Orientation Camps, who made me feel like I belong here, have given me, and are still giving me, support and advice up till now. It is because of them that I participate every year in the Freshmen Orientation Projects because I want to pass on a similar experience to my juniors.

[There are also] great lecturers who have given me great life advice, and have been so patient with me and any questions that I may have, no matter how stupid and simple they may be (shout out to Yang Zhenbin), [as well as] other SoC staff who have been so helpful and kind to me and have been really good friends. It is because of all these people that I love this school – it is the first school I've ever felt that I fit in. SoC is the only school I've been to that I love and would recommend others to go to.

I've just done so many silly things during my time here; I think I bring the insanity onto myself. I have once eaten 5 bowls of Jelly Tau Huey in one sitting because of a dare (it was a challenge started by Wai Tsun, we were helping to raise money for SoC's Freshmen Orientation Projects by selling Tau Huey), and I one-up-ed that dare by eating 6 at a later date (honestly those tiny bowls of jelly are more filling than they seem, and they also leave a chill in your bones). I also regularly dress oddly to go to school - Pikachu hats Cat Ears, Lolita Dresses, Wing hair clips - I have a whole assortment of strange clothes and accessories. Last Halloween I went to school in Lolita Dress and gave people sweets. For Valentines' Day last year, I folded about a hundred paper lotuses and gave them to everyone I knew. When running for a Vice President position for the Computing Club Management Committee, other than my posters, I put paper-craft Companion Cubes around the school filled with candy and refilled them throughout the day each day of the voting period.

[If I could change one thing,] I would place shower facilities in COM1, because year-round, so many of us stay over in school and I think it would be nice to not have to walk all the way to BIZ or ICube to shower! 

Besides academic work, what else do you do at SoC now?

I was a member of the Computing Club Management Committee (Comp Club MC) for two years in my first and second year, being the Vice Director of Communications and Media in the first, and then the Vice President (Human Resource & Development in my second). During these terms I've helped organise and oversee the organisation of many Comp Club events, namely, the Welfare, Sports and Academic events as well as provided support and manpower for events that aren't under my wing. I also went on the ground to ask various students about how they felt the Comp Club MC could do a better job at representing them and how we could better carry out our activities. During my Vice-Presidency, I was also one of the faculty representatives for the NUS Student Union, where we discussed and planned many aspects of NUS related to Student Life. I was also part of the committee for the Love NUS Campaign in that year, organising the photo booth, and creating the huge standee which stands today in the COM1 Lobby. In addition, I have been on the planning committee for a Freshmen Orientation Camp, as well as an Orientation Group Leader (OGL) in many others. Lastly, I am a member of the Student Network Associates (informal name: Sig Labs), where we help maintain certain servers in the school's network, as well as continue on with our own projects (the digital clocks in all the SRs and LTs, as well as the printer queue display were made by my seniors and mounted by us!).

Several of your fellow students nominated you (separately) to be interviewed and suggested we discuss your uniqueness, ‘motherliness’ and interests. Tell us about these.

I daresay I am a very caring person, maybe too much so, which is probably the cause of my "motherly" personality. I'm always worrying about other people and their welfare (which is a large reason for me running for my Vice President post). As an OGL I call my freshmen my "kids" and am constantly worrying about them, that they won't get sun‐burnt, won't be hungry, which leads me to buy a tonne of biscuits, snacks, instant noodles and sunblock before the camp to provide my "kids" with what they need. Although sometimes I go a little too far and go around to different groups asking if they need sunblock, and threatening to smack those who refuse sunblock if they get sun‐burnt (I have found that threat to be quite effective at making the males put on sunblock). I'm also always open and happy to give advice and help to those who ask me, at any time of the day.

Well [re: uniqueness], the most obvious one right now would be my hair colour. Last year I decided to bleach and dye my entire head of hair purple. And since then my hair has gone through various stages of purple, blue and pink.

Recently when most people look at me they immediately assume that I participate in Cosplay. Actually, I've barely done any Cosplay although I am quite interested in it. I have only Cosplayed three times, one as a character from my favourite anime "Elfen Lied", the second as a "Pikachu Maniac" and the third was a standard Lolita. While I am trying to get more into the Cosplay scene, I am not actually particularly active in it (mostly due to my laziness in making costumes).

I am however, a Video Game Child. I love video games, and have loved them ever since I can remember. I have an older brother who heavily influenced my likes and dislikes as a kid and my parents and relatives bought us plenty of video games and consoles on which we spent hours of every day of our life playing together. I practically grew up in a country club arcade and own at least one console from every (video game console) generation since 1990. My favourite game as a child was ‘Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun’, this is the reason why real‐time strategy games will always have a special place in my heart.

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

I was once on the National Youth Training Team of Singapore for Air Rifle Shooting. But I quit when I entered University because I wanted to focus on my studies.

What advice would you give a prospective SoC student?

Choose this course because you're interested in it, and not because you don't have any other choice. Also, go for the Freshmen Orientation Projects activities – you'll meet many people who will be an important part of your school life and working life in the future.

Quick‐Fire! If you had to eat only one item from one of the NUS canteen stalls for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Cheesecake from the Western Stall. I've got a weakness for desserts.

Best movie you’ve seen this year?

I don't watch many movies, but probably Guardians of the Galaxy. That movie got me wondering which characters were created with make‐up and which were computer generated.

Three ultimate dinner party guests (dead or alive)?

A musician/comic book writer: Gerard Way

An author: Neil Gaiman (or Patrick Rothfuss)

A Video Gaming YouTube Channel Celebrity: Hannah (or Kim) from the Yogscast

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

Atreyi

Associate Professor Atreyi Kankanhalli thinks ‘Oblivion’ is probably the worst film she’s seen recently (she couldn’t make out what it intended to convey!). Her pet peeve is messiness and she doesn’t like crowded or confined spaces (Ed: I sure hope she doesn’t have to use the MRT during rush hour!). And, for her, the best hawker food in Singapore is the roti prata at the Jalan Kayu Prata Stall.

Atreyi (centre, in all black) with her IS colleagues

Where did you grow up?

Not a lot of people may know that I spent a large part of my childhood in Turkey. Although I was born in India, I spent close to 11 years of my childhood in Ankara (capital of Turkey). My father was working at the State Planning Division and later as an academic at Hacettepe University (I guess pursuing an academic career runs in the family!). It was an interesting place to grow up. Turkey is quite a modern country and the people are very friendly – in fact they would invite you into their house for a meal at any time of day. Also, Turkey has a unique geographical position serving as a bridge between Asia and Europe. There is a rich history drawing from the early Greek civilization (there are interesting ruins to visit) to the more recent Ottoman empire (Istanbul has some of this rich heritage). So it was an interesting country to live in and to travel around. 

For my schooling though, it was quite challenging! I first studied at the British Embassy School for my primary school as there were very few options for education in English. For my middle school, I went to the Ankara Kolej and studied only English, Maths, and Science. This is because these were the only subjects taught in English and all the other subjects were in Turkish! Subsequently, I had another set of challenges when my family moved back to India when I was in Grade 9. I had to learn an Indian language (Hindi) at that level and adjust to a new education system – I suppose all these changes help to make one adaptable!

Describe your work and its significance.

My research work examines issues around knowledge work, collaboration, and innovation supported by information and communication technology. My early work during my PhD examined the core motivations and barriers behind employee’s knowledge sharing behaviours using knowledge management systems (KMS). This was at the time when organizations were starting to introduce KMS in order to facilitate knowledge sharing, storage, and reuse. My thesis work helped to shed light on the key drivers for KMS use, and was one of the pioneering works in this area. As a result, it produced a significant impact in the field and garnered a large number of citations – and continues to be well-cited currently as well.

Subsequently, I have studied knowledge contribution and participation behaviours in various forms of online communities and ICT mediated contexts such as virtual teams. Here, too, the underlying objective is to gain a better understanding of the antecedents and consequences of these behaviours. I typically use objective, survey, and interview data to test the theoretical models that I have developed with my collaborators and students. 

I believe that if one can do work that is theoretically novel i.e., brings a new perspective, to understanding a phenomenon that is of practical interest, then such work is meaningful and will have a lasting impact. That is what I strive to do in my research.

Describe your SoC experience.

I came to SoC after working for 9 years in R&D in I2R (then known as ISS). Fresh with a Masters in Electrical Eng. from the US, I had joined ISS and worked on image processing, computer vision, and multimedia projects (including some pioneering work in video processing). After that I had a change of heart to move to academics and also change my field to a more socio-technical one rather than a purely technical subject. That is why I ended up signing up for a PhD in Information Systems. 

Following my PhD, I was recruited in the Dept., which made it easy for me as the work environment was familiar. Though it was a bit strange that my previous professors now became colleagues! 

But even during my PhD I had found the Dept., SoC, and NUS in general to be a very conducive environment for doing research. So I was happy to be able to continue my academic career here. In terms of challenges, there is always the issue of being away from the US which is the perceived centre of cutting-edge research. But in the years I have been here, this has become less and less of a limitation with the increasing internationalization of research in my area and other areas as well.

My teaching experience has been quite smooth and pleasant so far. Students in Asia and NUS in general are quite motivated and respectful of their professors. If you prepare your materials well and are helpful in promptly answering their queries, then they are very appreciative of your efforts. I am particularly impressed by those conscientious students (we have quite a few) who take the initiative to find out more and ask questions to master the subject.

Probably, if at all there is something I would like to change about SoC/NUS is to streamline some of the processes around teaching e.g., moderation. While there is plenty of flexibility in doing research, possibly we can do a bit more in terms of teaching.

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

A couple of things probably:

• I studied Biomedical Engineering for a while and even had to cut up animals for my experiments
• I have recently started to learn Mandarin! I am not very proficient right now, but hopefully I will get there!

What do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

Travelling and watching movies are my hobbies. Other than travelling for work, I do enjoy visiting new places and finding out about the culture and history of those places.

With respect to movies, I enjoy both Hollywood and Bollywood films – particularly biopics. One of my favorite movies is ‘A Beautiful Mind’ about the American economist John Nash. I also enjoyed the ‘The Iron Lady’ that came out a few years ago.

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

Self-Driving vehicle technology that many companies including Google are researching. I am particularly interested as I’m not the biggest fan of city-driving.

Most annoying word?

“Whatever” – I get annoyed when my kids use this!

Three ultimate dinner party guests

• Agatha Christie.
• Any one of the Beatles
• Isaac Newton 

I grew up on Agatha Christie’s mystery novels and Beatles’ songs. Also, I’m amazed by the breadth and depth of Newton’s contributions – there’s hardly any branch of classical Physics that he hasn’t made significant contributions to.

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

Desmond

Desmond Ng, the 16th President of the Computing Club, is usually found at every school event with his team, promoting Computing Club activities and welcoming the uninitiated into the fold. His initial gruffness belies his helpful, genuine, and friendly nature, so don’t be afraid to approach him – he’s just a bit shy! 

What are you studying at SoC?

I am a Year 4 undergraduate, studying Electronic Commerce. 

Besides academic work, what else do you do at SoC? 

I am currently the President of the NUS Students’ Computing Club and my role is to manage to ensure the smooth operations of the activities initiated and executed by directors from the 16th Management Committee. Beyond that, I represent the voice of SoC undergraduates at the Union Level and engage discussions with Deanery on matters that affect the general NUS population, such as the ‘grade-less first semester for NUS’.

Within Computing Club, I am alike all other committee members who participate in activities and offer help whenever the call arises. I believe that a versatile hierarchy allows me to understand the concerns and challenges that are encountered by my members and ensure proper governance is in-place to abide to the rules and regulations. Just like the saying that there must be someone in the family, either the dad or mum, to be the “black-face”, and therefore, some of my members might feel that I am like a “black-face” that limits the actions of my members. As I embark on this journey as a President, I truly empathize how my predecessor, Yong Jie, felt back then when he was President of the 15th Management Committee. At times, I felt the sense of “loneliness” because the decision call is on me but I am very grateful that my committee members are supportive of my decisions. 

As a NUSSU representative, I would need to be the voice of my fellow computing undergraduates. In addition, I would also need to be the voice of my fellow NUS undergraduates and, at times, where the two positions have opposing viewpoints, I would need to “split” myself, to ensure the opinion and vote casted is aligned my personal cost-benefit trade-off. During focus group discussions with the school administration, I would bring up existing concerns that an undergraduate would have encountered so that such concerns would be taken into consideration by the school.

Describe your SoC experience.

Although I am currently doing my sixth semester in NUS, it feels as though my fourth semester. Not because of time flies, but because I “started” my university life in SoC only in my third Semester when I started joining the student life activities. In my first and second semesters, I was indifferent like many SoC undergraduates, studying at some corner of the school and the only activity that I attended then was welfare pack giveaway. Towards the end of the second semester, I saw a post on the list of student events and they were looking for a treasurer for the Game Development Competition (GDC) 2012. With my interest in accounting and finance, I applied for this position without much hesitation and I feel that this has been a turning point in my university experience and this marks the “start” of my university life.

After my initial role as treasurer for GDC, I was encouraged to run for the Director of Finance position in the 15th Management Committee. The process of interview is not unusual but campaigning and elections were relatively new to me. I still recall the days I went around pasting publicity materials around to garner votes. Giving my first election speech was a nervy moment where I had to pitch myself. After campaigning, it was the wait for the moment of truth to see if I will be elected the Director of Finance. Although I could foresee myself losing the election, I was thankful to everyone who stood by and supported me to continue as Deputy Director of Finance. The moment of truth was also the moment of realization of what elections really boil down to. It does not matter how capable you are, what matters is how popular you are. Back then, it was a tough call when I had to decide whether to accept the offer by my President, Yong Jie, as Deputy Director of Finance. So I questioned myself on the purpose of electing, which is to volunteer my services for my fellow SoC members, and that guided me to accept the offer. During the course of my term as Deputy Director of Finance, my passion for Computing Club grew to the point that I felt so devoted to Computing Club, and that was the moment I decided to continue to work hard and run for President of Computing Club, to allow me to serve at the next level. 

The turning point was a defining moment for me and it changed my university life. Thus, as a word of advice to my juniors, I urge them to spare some time for these leisure activities. Who knows if it might also be a turning point for them to realize more about what university life is all about too besides studies? SoC has been the great place that offered me countless leadership opportunities and they placed strong faith in their students in being the Voice of Computing and personally, the soft skills that the school had offered me are the greatest takeaway of my journey in SoC.

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

I am a homegrown Singaporean and neither of my parents are Malaysian despite the fact that I sound pretty much like a Malaysian when I speak in Chinese.

What advice would you give a prospective SoC student?

If [you think] university life encompass of solely academics, I personally feel that it might have alter the definition of “life” adversely. For most, this might be the last part of their student journey before embarking onto the next phase of life into work environment and if [you are] ever asked what your university experience is, take a deep thought into what constitutes to it….

If the first and last [thing] that strikes your mind is the academics, it is never too late to change it and be different. Each year, SoC has over 400 students graduating from the various majors and I believe that most seek differentiation and would like to have a different university story to share. If our story revolves solely around academics, how different can [it] be compared to others? In university, there are tons of opportunities available throughout the journey and I believe that the first step that one takes to participate in student life activities would result [in a] recurring occurrence of it and this will eventually forge a greater overall experience to one’s university experience. 

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. No matter how hard we work academically, we need to give ourselves some time to enjoy the activities that enhances our university experience. 

Speaking to some prospective students during Open Day and Computing Insights, they shared their concerns about job prospects in the IT Industry as many organizations have outsourced IT services. My experience so far is that SoC does not prepare you to compete on solely on that level, which will be prone to outsourcing - SoC prepares our undergraduates to be in a managerial role and the focus on soft skills would be the key to enabling our undergraduates to assume managerial positions.

What did you want to be when you were younger? 

Since young, I had the ambition to be policeman but sadly, the ambition was shown the door as I have a medical condition that does not allow me to overexert myself. 

What are your future plans?

Few years back when I was in polytechnic, one of my lecturers told me that there are three things that one would do:

• Things that you are good at;

• Things that you have a passion for; and

• Things that offers you the financial sustainability

I did a Diploma in Accountancy in Singapore Polytechnic because I feel comfortable with Accounting during my secondary school days and I feel that it is something I am good at it. However, during the course of study, my passion for IT grew and I went on to take a Certificate in Software Programming and Applications as an add-on to my core diploma. Failing to secure a position for Accountancy, I turned to my passion, which brings me to where I am today. I believe that everything in life happens for a reason and I never regretted the decision to [enter] SoC because it offers me tons of opportunity for me to learn and take up leadership appointments. Many asked if I would continue in this line after I graduate. It is definitely an interesting field that I would want myself to be in; however, the lack of technical expertise (i.e. programming) has led to the lack of confidence to pursue a career in the IT industry. The journey in SoC made me realized how much accounting had meant to me and that, I would continue to further my studies in the accounting line and hopefully be able to find a job that allows me to leverage on both my accounting and IT knowledge.

Quick-Fire. Favourite sport and team?

My favourite sport is soccer and my favourite team is Manchester United and that has never changed since the day I supported a football club.  

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

Tang Zhichao & STOB

Computer Engineering graduate Tang Zhichao was born in Nanjing, China, and moved to Singapore when he was 16 to do high school here, and eventually became Singaporean. He started his company STOB with a fellow SoC alumnus, Deddy Marzuki. Zhichao takes (guilty) pleasure in implementing things that he thinks are useful, but that others haven't considered. When he isn't working, he enjoys reading, travelling, watching movies, hanging out with friends and playing snooker.

What do you do now? 

I am the co-founder and the CEO of STOB Pte. Ltd. I enjoy my work very much - since we are start-up, there are very few employees, so I mainly take care of business planning, marketing, project management and coordinate the product development between customers and our engineering team. I travel quite often to meet customers, source factories for OEM and find partner companies to work together. It provides me wider vision of what we are doing.  

My first job inspired me to do this - I was a technical engineer in one of the control system, building automation company, I loved the products they had and wanted to make it better.  

I am working on developing a new concept smart home system. It allows me to learn more skills and also apply more skills I learnt. [With this type of technology,] people can live a more efficient, safer and greener world.

Describe your SoC experience.

It was very busy and competitive when studied in SoC, but it gave me a very solid foundation in both computing and non-computing skill sets. Furthermore, I met many talented students and nice professors during the study in SoC - two of my partners of the startup company I am working with were SoC mates.

Which faculty members made impressions on you? 

A/P Wong Weng Fai, who was my HYP adviser - he encouraged me during the research work of my HYP projects and most importantly, he inspired me on the choices in my life and career. 

What do you think made your student experience different than that of any other student?

I already set my goal in my life when I was studying in SoC, and I am still following my goal now.

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

I designed and programmed the control systems for the hotel and EXPO in Marina Bay. That inspired me to set up a company 5 years later. 

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

Nest learning thermostat - simply smart. 

Favourite sport?

I like to play snooker and pool.

Pet peeve?

People calling my phone while I am sleeping.

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

Tenacious A

Adrian Tan specialised in E-Commerce with Information Security and graduated in 2013. If he could have done one thing differently during his time here however, he would have taken fewer management modules, which required too much writing for his liking. He even went as far as skipping a 20-mark question in a mid-term test because he couldn’t be bothered typing an answer. Two years ago, he conducted a field study in a remote village in Indonesia, as a member of the Centre for Social Media Innovations for Communities (COSMIC), and considers this experience one of his most significant achievements. When he isn’t working, Adrian likes to travel and spend time with family. 

Adrian, his nephew Jason, and Mr. Bean

What do you do now?

I am a Research Engineer in the Institute for Infocomm Research, Sense and Sense-abilities (S&S) programme. S&S is a national initiative which aims to create a unified architecture for an end-to-end platform for sustainable large scale and heterogeneous 'sensing' and 'making-sense' of our living environment in real time. Since this is a national initiative, the primary users are the various government agencies.

My primary responsibility is in the visualization service where I implement various visualization techniques to represent data that make sense to the users, i.e. displaying a set of locations on a map is better than displaying a list of latitude and longitude to the users. I am also responsible for the analytic toolkit. One of the products I have in the toolkit is ‘heatmap’. One application of heatmap can be for making sense of noise data collected by sensor nodes. One can visualize how noisy a location is based on the colour of the heatmap region. There is no point collecting large dataset if one cannot make sense of it.

This role allows me to gain hands on experience data analytics which is one of the cool things and it is cool that products that I build are used by government agencies. Singapore will become a better place to live in. For example, the authorities will be alerted when noise exceeds a certain threshold. The noise may be caused by construction works, or maybe, riots.

Describe your SoC experience.

It was challenging as I aimed to graduate well (with good honours). Aiming to graduate is a completely different ballgame from aiming to graduate well. As a freshman, I really suffered from cultural shock. I did not know that a professor could speak at a speed where I asked myself what I have learnt during the 2 hours. My grades were poor in the first semester, in fact, the first two semesters. Memorization work is not applicable in NUS as exam questions were to test students’ understanding. It is the ability to summarize profound concepts and share your views that will bring you the grades.

[What I enjoyed most was getting to] take modules outside of computing. From law to philosophy, we can choose them so long they interest us. Of course, we need to have the capital to fight it out in CORS. Also, I got the opportunity to make very good friends and learn from professors on stuff beyond academics. [The one thing I would change about NUS, though, would be to] make it clearer to students on graduation requirements. Till now, I can still be confused about the module requirements to graduate.

The toughest period in NUS was during my final year project (FYP) period. I lacked the research experience and strong theoretical foundations. Before embarking on my FYP, I always assumed that those Chinese dramas having actors falling asleep in front of the computer was a mere act, rather a blatant lie. But, the FYP experience has rejected my claims.

I received many critiques from my supervisor. I remembered vividly that I once skipped class to develop a mobile game for my experiment and showed it to my supervisor the next day. She asked whether my target subjects will be interested to play the game. Eventually, the game resides in my cold storage. 

Which faculty members made impressions on you?

Prof. Hon Wai Leong was my personal mentor. He has been very inspiring where he always share insights whenever I approached him for advice. Even when he's busy, he does not chase me away when I knocked on his door.

Dr. Klarissa Chang taught me how to think critically. My grades drastically improved after I have taken her course for one semester (She is also my FYP supervisor). I will say that she imparts a great deal to students, but whether one can absorb is another story.  

Mr. TK Teo, a part-time lecturer where he taught IS Strategic Planning. He is from the industry and he taught us things that is beyond academics.I pretty much enjoyed his class as it takes us away from those boring theories. One lesson I always keep in mind and I share with people - value-add and not be a cost centre. 

What do you think made your student experience different than that of any other student?

I do not deny that I took a more difficult route to be where I am today. I did not get to attend mainstream school till I completed the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). I attended a special school, a school that that caters to children with Cerebral Palsy. Apart from academic lesson, we received therapies to train our motor skills and speech. It was just 4 hours a day we spend in school so lessons were slow. Special education was only in focus in recent years. In the 1990s, it was not common. Computers were very expensive – I typed my schoolwork using typewriters. I spent a decade there and I was then 14 years old, the youngest candidate to take PSLE. I fought to leave as I find it crazy to sit for PSLE at a later age. 14 is a good age as I need not serve the nation, I wasn't ready as I was only Primary 5 at that time.

My teachers disagreed but my parents supported my decision. I tried and I make it to Normal Academic stream at a Bishan neighborhood school, not Raffles Institution. After secondary school, I enrolled into a Polytechnic.         

After polytechnic, I was lucky to secure a scholarship to study at NUS. I am no different from other students. Rush projects, burn midnight oil, skip lectures were all part of my uni life. I pursued a degree like most of my peers, wanting to get a well-paying job and lead a better life. I chose to enroll into NUS for her prestige; I do not want to enroll into a university where its degree can be simply obtained through dollars and cents. The mere difference is that I have to spend more time and effort as compared to others. One thing I insist is to type my answer on my own and present for my projects. Given my condition, a scribe may be an easy way out. But, scribe will never be available in the workplace. It will also be weird that a computing graduate doesn't code independently.

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

I participated in horse riding classes.

Quick-fire. Most annoying word?

Scared 

Guilty pleasure? 

Slacking

Three ultimate dinner party guests?

Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, and Kevin Rudd

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