Cutting-Edge Research By NUS PhD and Master's by Research Supervisors
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Computing
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Professor Peh Li Shiuan
Provost’s Chair Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS
Professor Peh Li-Shiuan returned home to join National University of Singapore as Provost’s Chair Professor in the Department of Computer Science, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in September 2016. Previously, she was Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and was on the faculty of MIT since 2009. She was also the Associate Director for Outreach of the Singapore-MIT Alliance of Research & Technology (SMART) from 2015-2016. Prior to MIT, she was on the faculty of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University from 2002. She graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 2001, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore in 1995. Her research focuses on networked computing, from chips to systems. Several of her papers received test-of-time, best paper and top picks awards at computer architecture, design automation and systems conferences. She is an IEEE Fellow.
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Professor Ooi Beng Chin
Distinguished Professor, Department of Computer Science, NUS
Director, Smart Systems Institute, NUS
Professor Ooi Beng Chin is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, NGS faculty member and Director of Smart Systems Institute (SSI@NUS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also an adjunct Chang Jiang Professor at Zhejiang University, China, and the Director of NUS AI Innovation and Commercialization Centre at Suzhou, China.
Beng Chin’s research interests include database systems, distributed and blockchain systems and large scale analytics, in the aspects of system architectures, performance issues, security, accuracy and correctness. He works closely with the industry (eg. NUHS, JurongHealth, SGH and Tan Tock Seng Hospital on healthcare analytics and prediabetes prevention), and exploits IT for efficiency in various application domains, including healthcare, finance and smart cities.
He is the initiator of Apache SINGA, an Apache top level project (TLP) — the first Apache Software Foundation (ASF) distributed platform for deep learning. He has his team released the first blockchain benchmarking system, called Blockbench, and enhanced Hyperledger Fabric called FabricSharp. He has released numerous other open sources (https://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~dbsystem/).
He is a co-founder of yzBigData (2012) for Big Data Management and analytics, and Shentilium Technologies (2016) for AI- and data-driven financial data analytics, MZH Technologies (2018) for blockchain based healthcare data management and analytics. He serves as an independent director of ComfortDelgro. Beng Chin serves as a member of Hangzhou Government AI Development Committee (AI TOP 30). He was an advisor to Huobi on its Huobi Chain and Cynopsis Solutions.
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A/Professor He Bingsheng
Associate Professor and Vice Dean (Research), Department of Computer Science, NUS
Dr. He Bingsheng is currently an Associate Professor at Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore. Before joining NUS in May 2016, he held a research position in the System Research group of Microsoft Research Asia (2008-2010) and a faculty position in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He got the Bachelor degree in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (1999-2003), and the Ph.D. degree in Hong Kong University of Science & Technology (2003-2008).
Bingsheng has served as a PC member for international conferences in databases (e.g.,ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, IEEE ICDE), cloud computing (e.g., ACM SoCC) and parallel and distributed systems (e.g., SC, HPDC and IPDPS), and as a demo co-Chair in VLDB 2017, PC co-Chair in IEEE CloudCom 2014/2015 , HardBD2016 and IEEE BigData Congress 2018. He has served in editor board of international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (IEEE TCC), IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (IEEE TPDS).
His current research interests include Big data management systems (with special interests in cloud computing and emerging hardware systems), Parallel and distributed systems and Cloud Computing. His papers are published in prestigious international journals (such as ACM TODS and IEEE TKDE/TPDS/TC) and proceedings (such as ACM SIGMOD, VLDB/PVLDB, ACM/IEEE SuperComputing, ACM HPDC, and ACM SoCC). He is affiliated with both the Systems and Networking group and the Database group at NUS.
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A/Professor Stefan Winkler
Associate Professor (Practice), Department of Computer Science, NUS
Senior Deputy Director, AI Singapore
Professor Stefan Winkler is Senior Deputy Director at AI Singapore and Associate Professor (Practice) at the National University of Singapore. Prior to that he was Distinguished Scientist and Director of the Video & Analytics Program at the University of Illinois’ Advanced Digital Sciences Center (ADSC) in Singapore. He also co-founded two start-ups and worked for a Silicon Valley company.
Dr. Winkler has a Ph.D. degree from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, and a Dipl.-Ing. (M.Eng./B.Eng.) degree from the University of Technology Vienna, Austria. He is an IEEE Fellow and has published over 150 papers. He has also contributed to international standards in VQEG, ITU, ATIS, VSF, and SCTE.
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A/Professor Roland Yap
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, NUS
Assistant Director, The Logistics Institute Asia Pacific, NUS
A/Prof Roland Yap obtained his PhD from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, National University of Singapore (NUS). He has also served an assistant director at The Logistics Institute Asia Pacific (TLI-AP) at NUS. He is well known for pioneering research in CLP(R) and the CLP(R) system which has been influential in the development of the field of Constraint Programming (CP).
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Assistant Professor Reza Shokri
NUS Presidential Young Professor, Department of Computer Science, NUS
Assistant Professor Reza Shokri is a NUS Presidential Young Professor of Computer Science. His research focuses on data privacy and trustworthy machine learning. He is the recipient of the NUS early career research award in 2019 for his work on trustworthy machine learning for high-dimensional models. He received the Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies in 2018, for his work on analyzing the privacy risks of machine learning models, and was a runner-up in 2012, for his work on quantifying location privacy. He obtained his PhD from EPFL.
Design & Environment
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Dr. Clayton Miller
Assistant Professor, School of Design and Environment, NUS
Dr. Clayton Miller is an Asst. Professor at NUS in the School of Design and Environment, the Co-Leader of Theme D – Data Analytics at the UC Berkeley SinBerBEST2 Lab and the Co-Leader of Subtask 4 of the IEA Annex 79 Centric Building Design and Operation. He holds a Doctor of Sciences (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich) from the ETH Zürich, an MSc. (Building) from the National University of Singapore (NUS), and a BSc./Masters of Architectural Engineering (MAE) from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln (UNL). He is the former CTO of Optiras Pte. Ltd, a Singapore NRF-funded start-up, a former Fulbright Scholar to Singapore at NUS and a Walter Scott Jr. Scholar at UNL.
Engineering
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A/Professor Aaron Danner
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NUS
Aaron Danner is an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. Prior to joining NUS, he worked in industry where his research projects included efficient LED structures and development of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a U.S. National Science Foundation fellowship holder and now a Senior Member of IEEE Photonics Society, the Optical Society of America (OSA), and SPIE. He holds several patents and has published over 100 journal articles and 100 conference papers in his career. A passionate teacher, Dr. Danner was the winner of the Engineering Educator Award from the Faculty of Engineering and has been awarded the NUS Annual Teaching Excellence Award multiple times.
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Dr. Andy Tay Kah Ping
Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, NUS
Dr Andy Tay graduated in 2014 from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a First-Class Honors in Biomedical Engineering and the Global Engineering Programme. He later graduated with his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2017 with support from the NUS-Overseas Graduate Scholarship. His thesis on non-invasive neural modulation won the Springer Thesis Award. With support from the NUS-Overseas Postdoctoral Fellowship, Andy then headed to Stanford University and Imperial College London for his postdoctoral training. He is an Assistant Professor in biomedical engineering and his research focuses on creating materials and technologies to engineer the immune system.
Andy has received multiple international awards including the prestigious Helmsley Fellowship (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Bavaria California Technology Center grant, Toshihiko Tokizane Memorial Award for Excellent Graduate Study in Neuroscience, Endeavour Research Fellowship and 1851 Royal Commission Brunel Fellowship. He is a 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 (US/Canada, Science) and World Economic Forum Young Scientist Class of 2020.
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Dr. Benjamin C.K. Tee
Assistant Professor, Department of Materials Science and Engineering Department, NUS
The hyper-connected environment where humans, smart devices and robots live in synergy together is rapidly being realized within our lifetimes. Flexible, wearable sensors and systems are required to generate greater amounts of data for AI algorithms to understand. Exciting development of bio-integrable and even neuro-integrable sensory systems will augment human abilities and aid in applications as health diagnostics, surgery and predictive analytics. We will talk about how our group’s research is facilitating robotic learning towards greater autonomy, especially as remote work and human-free operations becomes of critical importance in pandemics such as the COVID-19.
Dr. Benjamin C.K. Tee is appointed President’s Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering Department at the National University of Singapore and recipient of the National Research Foundation Fellowship. He obtained his PhD at Stanford University, and was a Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Global Innovation Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014. He has developed and patented several award-winning electronic skin sensor technologies. He is an MIT TR35 Innovator (Global) in 2015 and listed as World Economic Forum’s Young Scientist of the year in 2019. He was featured by CNN International as one of their Tomorrow’s Hero series and by Channel News Asia International in the ASEAN’s Next Generation Leaders documentary series. His leads his research group: Sensors.AI to develop technologies at the cutting edge of materials science, mechanics, electronics and biology, with a focus on sensitive electronic skins that has tremendous potential to advance global healthcare technologies in an increasingly Artificial Intelligence (AI) era. He can be found on www.benjamintee.com
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Dr. Ong Ghim Ping Raymond
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, NUS
Dr Raymond Ong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He obtained his Bachelor in Civil Engineering (First Class Honours) with a minor in Business and his PhD in Civil Engineering from NUS in 2003 and 2007 respectively. Dr Ong’s research interests include pavement engineering, and multimodal transport infrastructures and operations, with emphasis on future mega-transport infrastructures and operations (such as car-lite/car-free towns, next generation seaports and airports). He has received several scientific awards for his achievements in transportation research, including the Alfred Noble Prize (ASCE), the Hanjin Prize (IAME), the inaugural Takeuchi Yoshio Award (OCDI) and the inaugural iSMARTi Early Career Award. He also serves as consultant to agencies and companies such as Changi Airport Group, Defence Science and Technology Agency, and Surbana Jurong Infrastructures Pte Ltd. Dr. Ong has frequently appeared in the media providing thought leadership on transport issues in Singapore.
Medicine
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Professor Markus Wenk
Provost’s Chair, Professor and Head, Department of Biochemistry, NUS
Director, Singapore Lipidomics Incubator (SLING)
Professor Markus Wenk has been interested in membrane lipids, their structure and function since his undergraduate years at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. At Yale he introduced and established novel techniques for analysis of phospholipid metabolism at the neurological nerve terminal. His work resulted in scientific publications which have major impact on conceptual advancements in the field of lipid metabolism. He is now spearheading novel approaches in systems scale analysis of lipids and their interactors (lipidomics) and is recognized as one of the thought leading investigators worldwide in his field. He established SLING, the Singapore lipidomics incubator, an interdisciplinary program at NUS dedicated to innovation, education and partnership in lipidomics research. Markus Wenk is Provost’s Chair, Professor and Head of the Department of Biochemistry at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also founder and organizer of the biennial International Singapore Lipid Symposium (ISLS) and Executive Editor of Progress in Lipid Research (Elsevier).
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A/Professor Christopher Chen
Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology, NUS
Senior Consultant, Department of Psychological Medicine, National University Hospital
After completing his pre-university education in Singapore, Dr. Christopher Chen studied at Cambridge University where his interest in neuroscience and research was stimulated by an intercalated year immersed in Physiology and Psychology. He then competed medical school at the University of Oxford and was later elected the Janssen Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Neurology, London.
Since returning to Singapore, Dr. Chen has developed multi-disciplinary research programmes with extensive international collaborations. His major research and clinical interests are in neuroimaging, molecular biology and treatment of stroke and dementia. He has published over 380 peer reviewed papers, and is the Principal Investigator for several clinical trials and observational studies.
Currently, Dr. Chen is a Senior Clinician-Scientist, Associate Professor and Director of the Memory Aging and Cognition Centre, Departments of Pharmacology and Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.
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Dr. Chen John Yu-Shen
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, NUS
Research in the Chen lab focuses on the bacteriophages and pathogenicity islands of the bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. Recently, his laboratory has identified and characterized several novel and powerful mechanisms of gene transfer that are proposed to be the major means by which S. aureus evolves and acquires the antibiotic resistance and virulence factors that accelerate the emergence of new and progressively more pathogenic strains.
Dr. Chen received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his PhD from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine in the New York University School of Medicine before joining the National University of Singapore faculty in 2015.
NGS
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A/Professor Kan Min-Yen
Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Studies
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, NUS
A/Prof Min-Yen Kan is an associate professor at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include digital libraries and applied natural language processing. Specific projects include work in the areas of scientific discourse analysis, full-text literature mining, machine translation and applied text summarization. More information about him and his group can be found at the WING homepage.
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A/Professor Swaine Lin Chen
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, NUS
A/Prof Swaine Chen received an A.B. in Chemistry and Mathematics from Harvard University in 1996 and an M.D./Ph.D. in Developmental Biology from Stanford University in 2004. He then did a postdoc at Washington University in St. Louis prior to receiving the Singapore National Research Foundation Fellowship and moving to Singapore in 2010. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at the National University of Singapore and a Group Leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore. His research combines his training in medicine, biology, chemistry, and mathematics to understand how and why bacteria are able to cause infections in humans, using both computational and experimental approaches. In particular, his lab studies urinary tract infections caused by E. coli and foodborne illness caused by Group B Streptococcus, as happened in the yu sheng outbreak in Singapore in 2015; these topics also touch on antibiotic resistance and synthetic biology. He is a strong advocate for general science education and science communication through traditional and social media platforms, and he is committed to ensuring the intellectual training of all who join his lab.
Public Health
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A/Professor Alex Cook
Vice Dean (Research) and Domain Leader (Biostatistics & Modelling), NUS
Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, NUS
Dr Alex Cook is an Associate Professor in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) where he is also the Vice Dean (Research). He works on infectious disease modelling and statistics, including dengue, influenza and other respiratory pathogens, and on population modelling to assess the effect of evolving demographics on non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. His multidisciplinary team brings together researchers from the fields of statistics, computational biology, computer engineering, mathematics, geography and environmental sciences.
Research by the Cook lab is often in close collaboration with government agencies. Examples of the contribution of his work to national policy making include:
(1) His team’s projections of the future burden of diabetes in Singapore was cited in the Committee of Supply as the Minister of Health declared ‘war’ on diabetes;
(2) His team’s evaluation of the impact of school closure on hand, foot and mouth disease transmission support’s the government’s relaxation of the policy;
(3) His close collaboration with the National Environment Agency has led to the development of a realtime dengue forecasting algorithm that is routinely used as part of Singapore’s vector control programme.
During the COVID-19 pandemic he has been working closely with Singapore’s MOH on analytics for the outbreak.
Science
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Professor Christina Chai
Head of Department, Department of Pharmacy, NUS
Professor Christina Chai obtained her BSc (Hons) from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand and her PhD in synthetic organic chemistry from the Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University, Canberra under the mentorship of the late Professor Athel Beckwith, FRS. Following her PhD, she was awarded a Samuel and Violette Glasstone Research fellowship at the University of Oxford, UK where she studied bioorganic reaction mechanisms. This was followed by positions in the Department of Chemistry, Victoria University of Wellington, NZ; Department and Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University; Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences, Agency for Science Technology and Research, Singapore and Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore. Prof Chai is currently Head of Department of Pharmacy. Her research interests are in bioactive molecules, including natural products as well as in biomimetic materials.
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A/Professor Prof Matthias G. Wacker
Associate Professor and Pharmacist, Department of Pharmacy, NUS
Matthias G. Wacker is Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy of the National University of Singapore (NUS). Initially, he studied Pharmacy at Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany) where he obtained his doctoral degree in pharmaceutical technology.
As a post-doc and group leader he has joined Jennifer Dressman and Jörg Kreuter in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology, Goethe University. There he accomplished his habilitation exploring the rational design of nanocarriers and was awarded the venia legendi in pharmaceutical technology. Prior to joining NUS, he was heading the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Nanosciences of the Fraunhofer-Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Frankfurt. Currently, he serves the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics and the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as an editorial board member. Further, he was a guest editor for the Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology and is a scientific advisor to the editors of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
His research areas include advanced characterization methods for nanomedicines and model-informed carrier design. In recognition of his research excellence, he was honored with the Eudragit® Best Paper Award (2014) and the Phoenix Pharmaceutics Science Award (2017). From 2020-2025, he chairing the nanomaterial working group within the expert panel on New Advancements in In-Vitro Product Performance Testing of the United States Pharmacopeia.
Sharing By Alumni & Graduate Students
Learn more about the NUS Graduate School Journey
Alumni Sharing
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Samson Ali
Nationality: Ghana
Current Job: Assistant Professor, Okayama University, Japan
Graduation: Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Year 2019
Undergraduate: University of Ghana, Ghana
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Maulana Bachtiar
Nationality: Indonesia
Current Job: Data Scientist, IBM, Singapore
Graduation: Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Year 2014
Undergraduate: National University of Singapore, Singapore
Maulana is currently a Lead Data Scientist at IBM, covering its Quote-to-Cash Operations for APAC and Japan regions. He is leading a team in developing award-winning solutions using AI and cloud technologies, transforming IDM into a premier cognitive enterprise. Prior to joining IDM, Maulana was a Research Fellow at NUS and National Cancer Centre (NCCS), where he worked on development of precision medicine algorithms and exploration of business potentials of the resulting IPs. He is interested in generating impact through entrepreneurship and research, particularly involving AI and its applications, precision health and internet of things (IoT). Maulana obtained his PhD from NUS Medicine in 2014 and B.Sc (Hons.) from NUS Science in 2009.
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Nileshkumar Dubey
Nationality: India
Current Job: Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Michigan, United States
Graduation: Faculty of Dentistry, Year 2018
Undergraduate: Maharashtra University of Health Sciences, India
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Viveka Kalidasan
Nationality: India
Current Job: Research Fellow, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Graduation: Faculty of Engineering, Year 2016
Undergraduate: Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India
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Zhang Shipin
Nationality: China
Current Job: Research Fellow, NUS, Singapore
Graduation: Faculty of Dentistry, Year 2019
Undergraduate: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Graduate Student Sharing
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Chen Lianwei
Nationality: China
Faculty & Year of Study: NUS Graduate School of Integrative Sciences & Engineering (NGS), Year 4
Undergraduate: National University of Singapore, Singapore
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Shin Jieun
Nationality: South Korea
Faculty & Year of Study: School of Computing, Year 5
Undergraduate: Korea University, South Korea
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Alex Fergnani
Nationality: Italy
Faculty & Year of Study: Business School, Year 4
Undergraduate: Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy
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Angelina Frank
Nationality: Germany
Faculty & Year of Study: Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT), Year 2
Undergraduate: Jacobs University Bremen, Germany
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Claudia Carrera Bravo
Nationality: Peru
Faculty & Year of Study: Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Year 2
Undergraduate: Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru
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Muhammad Avicenna Naradipa
Nationality: Indonesia
Faculty & Year of Study: Faculty of Science, Year 2
Undergraduate: University of Indonesia (UI), Indonesia
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Hanaé Carrié
Nationality: France
Faculty & Year of Study: School of Computing, Year 1
Undergraduate: Paris-Saclay University – CentraleSupélec, France
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Joline Lim
Nationality: Singapore
Faculty & Year of Study: Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Year 1
Undergraduate: National University of Singapore, Singapore