Gao, Xiang

I have read a blog (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/) when I was an undergraduate student. The author of this blog represents the knowledge of humans a circle. With a bachelor’s degree, you can become a specialty. A master’s degree deepens that specialty. Then, you can reach the edge of human knowledge by reading research papers. As a PhD, you will be on the way to break the boundary. I choose to do a PhD because I want to be the one that creates new knowledge.

My bachelor thesis supervisor gets his PhD from NUS. He also recommended me to pursue my PhD at NUS because of the good academic environment, the professional management, the great supervisors, and, of course, the high ranking. I would like to say being a PhD student at NUS is one of the best decisions in my life.

I am majoring in computer science, especially software engineering. My research focuses on helping people to efficiently write high-quality programs. I mainly use program analysis, test generation and formal method to aid users in fixing software bugs and writing programs.

The biggest challenge I have faced during my study is the academic writing. How to share your ideas with others is very important. Graduate students have to improve their writing skills.