Live Talks Playback : NUS Graduate School (NUSGS)

Replay sessions from the 2021 NUS Graduate Education Virtual Open House

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STEM Auditorium

Science, Engineering, Medicine, Computing, Dentistry, Duke-NUS, Integrative Sciences & Engineering

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Non-STEM Auditorium

Arts & Social Sciences, Business, Design & Environment, Law, Public Policy, Public Health

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Keynote: Accelerating the discovery of next-generation medicines for human disease

Professor Ashok Venkitaraman

Director, Cancer Science Institute of Singapore
Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS
Director, NUS Center for Cancer Research
Programme Director, Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR)

Biography

Professor Ashok Venkitaraman is the Director of the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, and a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, a member of the National University Health System (NUHS). He holds a joint appointment at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Prof Venkitaraman’s research has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of how cancer is suppressed by genes that maintain the integrity of DNA in the human genome. His laboratory is recognized for the discovery that mutations in the breast and ovarian cancer gene, BRCA2, provoke genome instability leading to carcinogenesis. Prof Venkitaraman now seeks to achieve a deeper understanding of the steps that underlie carcinogenesis, in order to find new strategies to intercept cancer development well before the disease reaches an advanced and hard-to- treat stage. He has developed new technologies to target previously ‘undruggable’ targets, and is a serial biotech entrepreneur, most recently as a founder of PhoreMost Ltd.
Prof. Venkitaraman has been elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, and as a member of EMBO.

Abstract

Our knowledge of the genetic and biochemical basis for many human diseases, ranging from cancer to new viral infections, has exploded in recent years. Alongside, innovative technologies that combine biological, chemical and mathematical methods are emerging, which promise to accelerate the translation of this new knowledge into next-generation medicines. Professor Ashok Venkitaraman will discuss his laboratory’s research on drug discovery, and explore the opportunities and promise of graduate studies (particularly PhD research) in this exciting area.

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The 2D Materials Adventure: A journey from basic scientific discovery to deep tech value capture

Professor Barbaros Özyilmaz

Head, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NUS

Biography

Professor Barbaros Özyilmaz is best known for his work on developing new device applications based on 2D materials such as graphene, black phosphorus, and monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC). He graduated in 1999 from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, with his Diplomarbeit in Physics at the European High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Max-Planck-Institute in Grenoble, France. He undertook his PhD studies (1999-2004) with Prof Andrew Kent at New York University. His PhD work in collaboration with IBM on spin transfer torque provided the foundational IP for one of the first STT-RAM start-up companies; Spin Memory, Inc., Fremont, California. He did his postdoctoral work (2004-2007) at Columbia University in Prof Philip Kim’s group pioneering graphene research in the USA. He joined the Physics Department at NUS in 2007 as an Assistant Professor and was instrumental in establishing Graphene Research in Singapore. He was promoted directly to full professor in 2013. As founding member and Deputy Director of the NUS Centre for Advanced 2D material (CA2DM) he has greatly contributed to establishing NUS as one of the globally leading Centre’s for 2D material research. More recently he has transformed the Office of Industry and Innovation at CA2DM into a 2D materials incubator with a focus on joint technology validation with industry. Since 2019 he is also the Department Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at NUS. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the NRF Fellowship and the NRF Investigator Award, NUS Young Investigator Award and the Institute of Physics Award, Singapore.

He is globally recognized as a highly prolific researcher and inventor in a wide range of material systems and device applications. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers and has close to 30 patents and is among the top cited researchers in the world. Both in 2018 & 2019 he was listed in the Clarivate Analytics – Global Highly Cited Researchers List for Cross-Field Research demonstrating significant scientific influence through publication of multiple papers that are ranked in the top 1 per cent by citations for their field and year of publication. His current focus is on accelerating the widespread adoption of graphene and other 2D materials into industry. His is the founder of GrapheneScale Pte. Ltd, a NUS spin-off commercializing graphene for the use in supercapacitors, semiconductors, heat assisted magnetic recording, IR sensors, and in biomedical applications.

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Wonder of low-dimensional materials

Associate Professor Eda Goki

Department of Physics and Chemistry, NUS

Member, Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM)

Biography

Dr. Eda is Associate Professor of Physics and Chemistry at the National University of Singapore, and a member of the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials (CA2DM). Before joining NUS in 20211, he was a Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society of the UK and worked at Imperial College London. Dr. Eda received his M.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2006 and Ph.D. in the same discipline from Rutgers University in 2009. He is a recipient of the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Research Fellowship and many awards including the Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS) Young Scientist Award and University Young Researcher Award.

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Harnessing Digital Medicine to Transform N-of-1 Healthcare

Professor Dean Ho

Provost’s Chair Professor
Director, The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1)
Director, The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM)
Head, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
National University of Singapore

Biography

Professor Dean Ho is currently Provost’s Chair Professor, Director of The N.1 Institute for Health (N.1), Director of The Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) and Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore.

Prof. Ho and collaborators successfully developed and validated CURATE.AI, a powerful digital medicine platform that has optimized human treatment for broad indications ranging from oncology to infectious diseases. He co-led the first inhuman clinical trials that have resulted in completely halted disease progression and durable patient responses that substantially outperformed standard of care approaches.

Prof. Ho is a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was also recently named to the HIMSS Future50 Class of 2021 for his internationally-recognised leadership in digital health. His discoveries have been featured on CNN, The Economist, National Geographic, Forbes, Washington Post, NPR and other international news outlets. Prof. Ho is also a Subgroup Lead in the World Health Organization (WHO)-ITU AI for Health Working Group for Regulatory Considerations.

Prof. Ho is a recipient of the Tech Heroes from Crisis Pathfinder Award from the Singapore Computer Society, NSF CAREER Award, Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Translational Research Award, and V Foundation for Cancer Research Scholar Award, among others. He has also served as the President of the Board of Directors of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS), a 26,000+ member global drug development organization.

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Biological variabilities of blood metabolites

Professor Markus Wenk

Provost’s Chair, Professor and Head, Department of Biochemistry
Director, Precision Medicine Translational Research Program
Director, Singapore Lipidomics Incubator (SLING)

National University of Singapore

Biography

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).

Abstract

The inventory of metabolites found in blood plasma offers insights into individual metabolism associated with health and disease. Plasma metabolite analysis based on mass spectrometry is a rapidly developing area in clinical diagnostics and disease management. However, the translation of laboratory-style methods towards robust, quantitative tests that deliver comparable results across different analytical sites, with appropriate turn-around times, will require extra interdisciplinary efforts. Here, I will highlight state-of the art capabilities for monitoring blood lipid metabolites via mass spectrometry and provide a perspective for translation of such technologies towards precision health and medicine. Examples of between-person and within-person variabilities will be presented.

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Breakthrough discovery of novel macrophage population through lymphatic research

Associate Professor Veronique Angeli

Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology

Assistant Dean (Academic Strategy), NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

Director, Immunology Translational Research Programme, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

Biography

Dr ANGELI Veronique received her PhD in 2001 from University of Lille in France. She did her post-doctoral training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York city, USA from July 2002 to July 2005 in the laboratory of Prof Gwendalyn Randolph before being recruited as an Instructor (July 2005 to August 2006). In October 2006, she was recruited as assistant Professor at National University of Singapore in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and promoted as associated professor in 2014. She is currently the leader of the Immunology Programme at Life Sciences Institute, NUS since July 2018 and the director of Immunology Translational Research programme at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS since 2020. In 2011 and 2015, Dr Angeli received the Faculty young investigator award and the Mochtar Riady Pinnacle Young Achiever Award from National University of Singapore, respectively.

Research interests: biology and functions of the lymphatic system. Tissue resident macrophage functions in health and disease.

Abstract

During my talk, I first would share some of our work that unravels the crosstalk between lymphatic vessel and cholesterol and its relevance to diseases including atherosclerosis and lymphedema. Then, I would discuss how our lymphatic research led to the discovery of a population of tissue resident macrophage with novel homeostatic functions.

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Small fish models for complex human diseases

Associate Professor Christoph Winkler

Associate Professor and Assistant Head of Department, Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore

Biography

Associate Professor Christoph Winkler graduated from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany with a Diplom in Biology and a Diploma thesis at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Munich-Martinsried. He received his Dr. rer. nat. degree from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany in 1994. He did his postdoctoral studies as a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle from 1996 to 1998. After this, he became an independent group leader at the University of Wuerzburg. In 2007, he joined the National University of Singapore (NUS) as an associate professor and is a principal investigator at the Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) and the NUS Centre for Bioimaging Centre (CBIS). His current research areas are developmental biology, neurogenetics and molecular cell biology. His research lab uses zebrafish and medaka as models for biomedical research to investigate fundamental mechanisms underlying motor neuron degeneration in spinal muscular atrophy as well as bone diseases, such as osteoporosis. Christoph Winkler is also an Assistant Head at the Department of Biological Sciences.

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Computers Looking at People: Computer Vision for Human Motion and Activity Understanding

Assistant Professor Yingjie Angela Yao

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, School of Computing

National University of Singapore

Biography

A/Prof Angela Yao is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the School of Computing since 2018, where she leads the Computer Vision and Machine Learning group. She and her students develop algorithms for automated interpretation of images and video. Her group works on topics ranging from segmentation, pose estimation, to video understanding. Before coming to NUS, she was a junior professor at the University of Bonn, Germany. She received her PhD in 2012 from ETH Zurich.

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Make an Impact: How Computer Architecture Researchers Design Novel AI Accelerators, Processors and Improved Security Techniques

Assistant Professor Trevor Erik Carlson

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science, School of Computing

National University of Singapore

Biography

Trevor E. Carlson is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002 and 2003, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science Engineering from Ghent University in 2014.

His research interests include highly-efficient microarchitectures, hardware/software co-design, performance modeling and fast and scalable simulation methodologies. Through the use of fast bottleneck analysis and simulation, his goal is to improve both performance and efficiency of next-generation processors. Dr. Carlson has over a decade of computer architecture experience covering both industry and academia. While a staff engineer at IBM from 2003 and 2007, he helped to author 4 issued patents. During his PhD, in collaboration with the Intel ExaScience Lab, he co-developed the Sniper Multi-core Simulator which is being used by hundreds of researchers to evaluate the performance and power-efficiency of next generation systems. As a researcher at imec, Belgium, and as a postdoctoral researcher at Uppsala University, Sweden, he investigated processor architectures to more efficiently handle long-latency memory accesses. Dr. Carlson’s research has been published at leading journals and conferences in computer architecture and simulation such as the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, the International Symposium on Microarchitecture, the International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture and the International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software.

Dr. Carlson has received a number of awards for his research into simulation, sampling and modeling. He is a recipient of the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Embedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling and Simulation in 2016, and the Best Paper Award at the International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software in 2013. In addition, he has received two Best Paper Award nominations, one from the International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software in 2015 and one from the International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software in 2014. He was selected to attend the Heidelberg Laureate Forum as an outstanding young researcher with Turing, Fields and Abel Award winners in 2015, and his work with the Sniper Multi-Core Simulator received the HiPEAC Technology Transfer Award in 2013.

Abstract

Computer architecture is the design and evaluation of computer systems. In this talk, I will provide an introduction into Computer Architecture research, detailing results that we have been able to produce when working with great researchers at all levels, from undergraduate, to graduate and PhD. Computer architecture is one of the factors that have led to the the huge jumps in computer performance over the past few years, and I hope to be able to give some insight into the research process that could be a model for how things can work for your future research endeavors. For example, a number of our recent undergrad students have helped to build our new AI accelerator, and I will also describe results from our PhD students, who have developed a new processor type to achieve energy-efficient performance, as well as processors that are more secure against side-channel attacks.

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Eminent Alumni Insights – Proud to be an NUS Graduate

Professor Liu Bin

Vice President, Research and Technology
Head, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Engineering

Biography

Liu Bin obtained her BSc degree from Nanjing University, PhD degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She joined NUS in late 2005, and is now Provost’s Chair Professor, Vice President for Research and Technology. She is interested in the design and synthesis of organic molecules and organic nanomaterials with optimized structure and functions for biomedical and energy applications. She is passionate about nurturing the next generation research leaders and encouraging more women to pursue careers in science and engineering.

Abstract

Title: Proud to be an NUS Graduate

In this talk, Liu Bin will share with you her journey of PhD studies in NUS. She will also speak on her research about materials innovation and how new materials can make a difference in biomedical research and translation. She will further highlight the exciting research programs in her department and the university.

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Discussion Forum with Deanery

Professor Shen Zuowei

Vice Provost, Graduate Education

Dean, NUS Graduate School

Biography

Professor Shen Zuowei is Vice Provost (Graduate Education & Special Duties) at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Prof Shen was Deputy Head of the NUS Department of Mathematics from 2006 to 2012, Head from 2012 to 2014, and Dean of the Faculty of Science from 2014 to 2020.

Prof Shen received his PhD in 1991 from the University of Alberta, Canada and completed his postdoctoral training at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined NUS in 1993, was promoted to full professor in 2002, and Distinguished Professor in 2009. Since 2013, Prof Shen has been Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor.

A renowned mathematician, Professor Shen is well-known for his fundamental contributions in mathematical foundations of data science, especially in the areas of approximation and wavelet theory, image processing and compressed sensing, computer vision and machine learning. Together with his collaborators, he has several signature theorems and algorithms that include developing a duality analysis that leads to three mathematical principles: the duality principle, the unitary extension principle and the oblique extension principle in approximation and wavelet theory; sparsity based balanced model and algorithms by using redundant systems in image processing; and the singular value thresholding algorithm in compressed sensing. His recent research interests focus on approximation theory of deep neural networks.

Prof Shen is a prominent researcher in his various fields of research. He sits on several editorial boards of top journals and has been invited to speak at many international conferences and congresses, including the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2010 and the International Congress of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) in 2015. Both ICM and ICIAM, which are held every four years, are the most reputable congresses in mathematics and applied mathematics, and being an invited speaker at these events is testament to his expertise and leadership in these fields.

Prof Shen has received numerous awards and honours, including the NUS Outstanding University Researcher Award (2008 and 1997), Wavelet Pioneer Award from the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, US (2012), and the National Science Award of Singapore (1998). He has been elected as Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences (2020), Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, US (2019), Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, US (2017), and inaugural Fellow of the Singapore National Academy of Science (2011).

Chair

Professor Wong Limsoon

Deputy Dean, NUS Graduate School

Kwan-Im-Thong-Hood-Cho-Temple Professor, School of Computing

Programme Director, Integrative Science and Engineering Programme

Biography

Wong Limsoon is Deputy Dean of the NUS Graduate School and Kwan-Im-Thong-Hood-Cho-Temple Professor in the School of Computing. He currently works mostly on knowledge discovery technologies and their application to biomedicine. He is a Fellow of the ACM, inducted in 2013 for his contributions to database theory and computational biology. He is a recipient of the 2003 Asian Innovation Gold Award for his work on treatment optimization of childhood leukemias and the 2014 ICDT Test of Time Award for his work on naturally embedded query languages.

Panellists

Professor Bao Weizhu

Vice-Dean, Faculty of Science

Biography

Professor Bao Weizhu is currently a Professor at Department of
Mathematics and is Vice Dean for Graduate Matters and Academic Affairs at Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore (NUS).
He got his PhD from Tsinghua University in 1995. He joined NUS as
an Assistant Professor in 2000 and was promoted to Professor in 2009.
He had been appointed as the Provost’s Chair Professorship at NUS during
2013 — 2016. His research interests include numerical methods for partial
differential equations, scientific computing/numerical analysis,
analysis and computation for problems from physics, chemistry,
biology and engineering sciences. He was awarded the Feng Kang
Prize in Scientific Computing by the Chinese Computational Mathematics Society in 2013. He has been invited to give plenary and/or invited talks in many international conferences including the Invited Speaker at
the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2014.

Associate Professor Biplab Sikdar

Vice-Dean, Graduate Programmes, Faculty of Engineering

Biography

Biplab Sikdar is a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore, where he also serves as a Vice Dean in charge of graduate programs in the Faculty of Engineering. His research focuses on issues related to security and privacy issues in Internet of Things and Cyber Physical Systems. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award (USA), the Tan Chin Tuan fellowship from NTU Singapore, the Japan Society for Promotion of Science fellowship, and the Leiv Eiriksson fellowship from the Research Council of Norway. Dr. Sikdar is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, an ACM Distinguished Speaker, and member of Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi.

Associate Professor Saxena Prateek

Dean’s Chair Associate Professor
Assistant Dean, Graduate Studies
Co-Director, CRYSTAL Centre, School of Computing

Biography

A/Prof Saxena Prateek is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at National University of Singapore. He works on computer security. His present research projects are on machine learning security, decentralized systems, privacy and harware architectures for security. He receievd his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012 and visited Microsoft Research Redmond during the summer of 2015.

Associate Professor Heng Chew Kiat

Assistant Dean (Graduate Studies), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS

Biography

A/Prof Heng Chew Kiat is Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, NUS. The graduate programme in the school awards Master of Science (MSc) and doctoral degrees (PhD) by research. A/Prof Heng believes every graduate student has the potential to blossom into a successful biomedical scientist in their chosen field of specialization. The role of the school is therefore to provide the most nurturing and supporting environment as they undergo a very demanding training phase. His research interest is in cardiovascular genomics and he is also the Research Director of the Department of Paediatrics.

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Discussion Forum with Deanery

Chair

Associate Professor Jessica Pan

Vice Dean, NUS Graduate School

Dean’s Chair, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Biography

Jessica Pan is an Associate Professor and Dean’s Chair in the Department of Economics at the National University of Singapore. She is currently Vice Dean of Academic Programmes at the NUS Graduate School. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Jessica is a labour economist with research interests in understanding gender differences in the labour market and educational outcomes. Her work has been published in several leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economic Studies, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. She received a Bachelor’s in economics from the University of Chicago, followed by an MBA and PhD from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business.

Panellists

Associate Professor Bruce Lockhart

Vice Dean, FASS

Biography

Associate Professor Bruce Lockhart is now in his 24th year of teaching in the History Dept. at NUS. His own research interests focus on the political and diplomatic history of mainland Southeast Asia during the 19th and 20th centuries. He has supervised MA and PhD students writing theses on 7 different Southeast Asian countries and China.

Professor David Mitchell Reeb

Mr. and Mrs. Lin Jo Yan Professor of Finance
Head of Department: Accounting, NUS Business School

Biography

David Reeb serves as a Senior Fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER) and a fellow of the Academy of International Business. Dr. Reeb’s academic research centers on organizational structure and firm financing. His articles appear in a wide variety of outlets, including the Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Finance, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Management Science, and the American Economic Review. This research generates numerous citations (19,000+ Google Scholar and 6,000+ on Web of Science), including one of the most highly cited finance papers of all time.

Associate Professor Rudi Stouffs

Deputy Head (Research), Department of Architecture

Biography

Rudi Stouffs is Dean’s Chair Associate Professor and Deputy Head (Research). He leads the Architectural and Urban Prototyping lab, is Research Thrust Leader for Parametric BIM in the NUS Centre of Excellence in BIM Integration, and Principal Investigator in the Future Cities Lab Global and Future Resilient Systems II research programme (Singapore ETH Centre).
He received his PhD in Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University, an MSC in Computational Design, also from CMU, and an MSc in Architectural Engineering from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has held previous appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, ETH Zurich, and TU Delft.
He is vice-president (elect) of eCAADe, the association for Education and research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe. He is an editorial board member for the International Journal of Architectural Computing, AI-EDAM, and Cogent Social Sciences. He acts as a reviewer for numerous international peer-reviewed journals and conferences, as well as national research foundations.
His research expertise and interests include computational issues of description, modelling, and representation for design, in the areas of shape recognition and design generation, building information modelling and analysis, virtual cities and digital twins.

Professor Damian John Chalmers

Vice Dean (Research), Faculty of Law

Biography

Professor Damian Chalmers is Vice Dean for Research in the Faculty of Law, and Professor of EU law and law of the Regional Integration at NUS. Prior to that he was Professor of EU Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he was also Head of the European Institute and its Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence for four years. He has held visiting appointments at NYU, Michigan, the Central European University, College of Europe, University of Copenhagen, University of Trento, European University Institute, Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Instituto de Empresa, Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, and Fudan. He was also co-editor of the European Law Review for six years. He has supervised 17 doctoral students to completion which have led, inter alia, to tenure track appointments in Law, Political Science, Media Studies and Architecture Faculties.

Associate Professor Suzaina Bte Abdul Kadir

Vice Dean (Academic Affairs), Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy

Biography

Associate Professor Suzaina Kadir is Vice Dean (Academic Affairs) at the
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Suzaina oversees all curriculum,
teaching and learning matters at the School. She leads a strong team to
manage the full student life cycle from admissions and recruitment,
graduation requirements, global partnerships and internationalization as
well as alumni relations.
Suzaina has a PhD in Political Science from the University of WisconsinMadison. Her teaching and research interests include ethnicity, religion,
and public policy, governance, state capacity and institution building in
Southeast Asia. She works specifically on the evolution of political Islam
in Muslim Southeast Asia, and its impact on governance capacity and
public policy. She has a keen interest on the administration and
management of religion in Indonesia and Singapore.
Suzaina is a recipient of three National Day Awards: 2016 Public Service
and Commendation Medals for her contributions to national-level
initiatives, and 2018 Long Service Medal for her contributions to higher
education.
Suzaina is a highly committed educator and has been a recipient of the
NUS Teaching Excellence and LKYSPP Teaching Excellence Awards.
She is an NUS Teaching Academy Fellow and serves on the University
Teaching Excellence Committee (UTEC).

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Eminent Alumni Insights – Seven Mantras for Thriving (Not Just Surviving) in the PhD program

Professor Shirish C. Srivastava

Professor and GS1 France Chair, HEC Paris, France

Biography

Dr. Shirish C. Srivastava is a tenured Full Professor and GS1 France Chair on Digital Content for Omni Channel at HEC, Paris. Prior to joining HEC, Dr. Srivastava has lectured at the School of Business, National University of Singapore and holds a Ph.D. from the same university. He is an alumnus of the International Teachers Program, (ITP) from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and is a certified senior Cultural Intelligence (CQ) facilitator from The Cultural Intelligence Centre, Michigan, USA. He has also completed his habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) from Université de Lorraine, France. At HEC, he teaches in the Grand Ecole, Masters, Doctoral, Executive MBA and Custom Executive Education Programs. His rich experience includes coaching senior executives on issues related to managing technology and cross-border business relationships.

His research has been published or accepted for publication in several international refereed journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Global Information Management, Information Resources Management Journal, and Electronic Government: An International Journal, among others. He has also authored several book chapters. He currently serves as a Senior Editor at the Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) and the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS). He also serves on the editorial board of several other prestigious international journals. Dr. Srivastava is widely traveled and has spoken at various forums in several countries across the globe including – Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Qatar, Spain, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, U.A.E., U.K., U.S.A. and Vietnam.

He has been thrice nominated for the prestigious Carolyn Dexter Award at the Academy of Management (AOM) Meetings 2005, 2007 and 2008 and was a finalist for the award at AOM 2007. He was nominated for the academy wide William H. Newman award at the AOM 2009, Chicago and is the winner of the Gerardine DeSanctis Dissertation Award for the best doctoral dissertation paper in organizational communication and information systems in the same year. He was again nominated for the William H. Newman award at AOM 2012, Boston by the international management division. He has also been a winner at the Society for Information Management (SIM) Paper Awards Competition, 2007. He has thrice been awarded Prix Académique de la Recherche en Management, 2013, 2015 and 2016 at Paris, France. His research interests include e-government, services sourcing, technology enabled innovation, artificial intelligence, opensource, and social media strategy.

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Discussion Forum with Graduate Students and Alumni

Chair

Shilpi Nanda

Graduate Student, NUS

Nationality: India

Undergraduate University: Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University;
LLM at Cambridge University, UK

Alumni Panellists

Siddharth Natarajan

Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Nationality: India

Undergraduate University: University of Pune, India

Graduated 2019 from NUS Business School

Kris Hartley

Assistant Professor, The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK)

Nationality: USA

Undergraduate University: University of Tennessee, United States

Graduated 2016 from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Cao Yin

Associate Professor, Tsinghua University

Nationality: China

Undergraduate University: Nanjing Normal University, China

Graduated 2016 from FASS

Chen Huijun, Cynthia

Assistant Professor, NUS School of Public Health

Nationality: Singapore

Undergraduate University: National University of Singapore

Graduated 2015 from School of Public Health

Student Panellists

Ma Houning

Nationality: China

Year 5, NUS Business School

Undergraduate University: Singapore Management University

Bhavya Gupta

Nationality: India

Year 3, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Undergraduate University: University of Delhi, India

Cera Tan Ying Jing

Nationality: Singapore

Year 3, FASS

Undergraduate University: National University of Singapore

Nabanita Islam

Nationality: Bangladesh

Year 5, School of Design and Engineering

Undergraduate University: Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology

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Conjunctions of Resilience and the COVID-19 Crisis of the Creative Cultural Industries

Professor Audrey Yue Ing-Sun

Department of Communications and New Media

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Biography

Audrey Yue is Professor of Media, Culture and Critical Theory, Head of Department of Communications and New Media, Deputy Director of the NUS Centre for Trusted Internet and Community and Convenor of the Cultural Studies in Asia PhD Programme at the National University of Singapore. She researches in urban communication, transnational Chinese media cultures, and; cultural policy and development. She has published 8 scholarly books and more than 100 refereed journal articles, book chapters and commissioned reports. She is the President of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society, and Editorial Board Member of Journal of Communication; Communication, Culture and Critique; Television and New Media; Sexualities, and; Feminist Media Studies. She has received international competitive research grants from research grant councils in Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and Singapore. A recipient of three international and university-wide teaching excellence awards, she has supervised to completion 25 PhD theses as Principle Supervisor.

Abstract

Keywords: the creative cultural industry, cultural crisis, the CCI crisis, emergency resilience, queer resilience, creative resilience, Pink Dot, Singapore

Abstract:

This paper examines the social construction of the CCI (creative cultural industries) crisis through crisis time, disaster discourse and emergency resilience, and shows how the CCI crisis has exposed the sector’s precarious cultural labour. It further evaluates how aesthetic digitalization and economic reductionism are produced by the emergency adaptation of creative resilience. It proposes ecological creative resilience as a more meaningful approach to planning for sector reopening, and demonstrates this using the queer resilience of a LGBT festival, Pink Dot and its digital iteration in 2020-21. Using original case studies from China and Singapore, and through critical cultural policy, resilience, queer Asian and urban communication studies, this paper exposes these conjunctions of resilience that shape the CCI crisis, and argues that sustainable creative cultural development must embrace a long-term commitment towards sector transition, one that nurtures an ethical cultural ecology that supports fair work, ameliorates digital exclusion, embeds place and engages community.

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Investigating Language Variation and Change in Singapore

Associate Professor Rebecca Lurie Starr

Department of English Language and Literature

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Biography

Rebecca Lurie Starr is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in Linguistics with a Designation in Cognitive Science from Stanford University in 2012. Her research focuses on children’s sociolinguistic development and language variation and change in multilingual settings.

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Climate Change Litigation in the Global South

Associate Professor Lin Shuwen Jolene

Director, Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law

Faculty of Law

Biography

Jolene Lin is associate professor at the Faculty of Law, NUS, and director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law. Her research on transnational environmental law currently focuses on climate change litigation. She is currently writing a book on climate litigation in developing countries, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2024. Jolene has published widely in, inter alia, the American Journal of International Law, the European Yearbook of International Law and Legal Studies. She is a member of the editorial boards of: Journal of Environmental Law, Chinese Journal of Environmental Law, and Climate Law. Before joining NUS, Jolene was associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong. She has served as consultant to the Hong Kong Department of Justice, NGOs, the United Nations Environment Programme, and global law firms. She has also served on the Hong Kong Appeal Tribunal Panel (Buildings Ordinance) and the Hong Kong Appeal Board Panel (Town Planning).

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The Role of Limited Attention in Choice

Professor Lorenz Goette

Provost’s Chair, Department of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Biography

Lorenz Goette is Professor and Provost’s Chair at the Department of Economics, National University of Singapore. He obtained his PhD from the University of Zurich in 2001. Prior to joining NUS, he was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and held faculty positions at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and the University of Bonn, Germany. His research interests are in behavioral economics, and most of his applications focus on field experiments. He works on interventions to help households conserve water and energy, and how to motivate individuals to contribute to public goods, such as blood donations or getting vaccinated. His research is published in leading journals in economics, such as the American Economic Review or Review of Economic Studies, and general-interest journals such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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How to Solve Super Wicked Problems

Professor Benjamin William Cashore

Li Ka Shing Professor in Public Management and Co-Director, Institute of Water Policy

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Biography

Ben Cashore specialises in global and multi-level environmental governance, comparative public policy and administration, and transnational business regulation/corporate social responsibility. His substantive research interests include climate policy, biodiversity conservation/land use change, and sustainable environmental management of forests and related agricultural sectors. His geographic focus includes Southeast Asia, North America, Latin America and Europe.

Ben’s theoretical interests include the legitimacy and authority requirements of non-state market driven (NSMD) global governance, the influence of economic globalisation on domestic environmental policies, and the potential of anticipatory policy design for identifying path dependent policy mixes capable of ameliorating “super wicked” environmental problems.

Ben joined LKYSPP after spending 18 years at Yale University as a professor of environmental governance and political science, where he also directed the Governance, Environment and Markets (GEM) initiative and, from 2014-2019, directed the Yale International Fox Fellows exchange program which awards promising graduate students in 18 partner universities. Ben was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. His PhD is from the University of Toronto and he undertook postdoctoral research at Harvard University and the University of British Columbia. He worked for three years in Ottawa, Canada as a policy advisor to the leader of the Canadian New Democratic Party.

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners of environmental and sustainability policy are increasingly recognizing that despite important successes, some of the world’s most critical policy challenges are accelerating, highlighted by the climate crisis, oceans degradation, and species extinctions.

My research is designed to help generate strategic insights for those cases in which there is a gap between what policy officials seek to achieve and outcomes “on the ground.” To do this, I engage in three related research efforts.

First, I study the development of environmental policy tools within global, transnational, private and domestic arenas. This project devotes particular attention to the way in which policy making authority emerges, and the sources of durable, rather than temporary, environmental policy innovations. Second, I spend considerable time conceptualizing particularly vexing policy challenges. This emphasis has led me, along with Levin, Auld and Bernstein, to identify, and address, “super wicked” problems denoted by four key features: time is running out; no central authority; those seeking the solve the problem are also causing it; and irrational discounting. Third, and as a result, I devote theoretical and empirical attention to uncovering policy designs capable of uncovering “easy to pull, but hard to reverse” policy levers that may uncover innovative ways to assist governments in meeting their long-term goals.

My presentation will review the integration of this basic and applied research orientation to show how we not only provide graduate students with cutting edge skills to conduct rigorous research, but also how to make a practical contribution to helping ameliorate some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

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Improving the Health of Entire Populations with Public Health Research

Professor Teo Yik Ying

Dean, NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health

Biography

Prof Yik-Ying Teo, or commonly known as YY, is the second Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. Trained as a mathematician at Imperial College and completed his MSc and DPhil at Oxford in statistical genetics, YY returned to Singapore in 2010 after working for four years as a Lecturer in Oxford and concurrently a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. Prior to his Deanship, he was the Founding Director for the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, and also the Director for the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research. He is presently a member on the Council of Scientists for the International Human Frontier Science Program, as well as a member governing board member of the Regional Centre for Tropical Medicine and Public Health Network for Southeast Asia.

Abstract

Public health research spans across multiple disciplines, ranging from generating and interpreting evidence to formulate policies, to understanding social, economic, and behavioural reasons for implementation success or failure. There is no single discipline that can claim to provide a comprehensive solution on its own to a public health problem, but yet it requires experts in different disciplines to produce the evidence through systematic and rigorous research before a sound public policy can be designed, implemented, and evaluated successfully. In this talk, I will introduce the research undertaken in NUS by PhD students that has helped advocate and implement health policies in Singapore and Southeast Asia, focusing on the economic and social evaluation of health strategies to tackle infectious and non-communicable diseases.

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Decisions, Decisions, and More Decisions – Embarking and Completing My PhD Journey in Solar Energy

Dr Tay En Rong, Stephen

Senior Lecturer, Dept of the Built Environment, School of Design and Environment

Biography

Dr. Stephen Tay is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of the Built Environment and an Adjunct Researcher at the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS). He obtained his PhD from Imperial College London under the National Research Foundation (Clean Energy) Overseas Scholarship. In recognition of his contributions in the solar PV industry, he was awarded the “Young Green Building Advocate Award” in 2019, which was jointly conferred by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore and the Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC). In addition, he was also awarded the NUS Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2021 for his contributions to teaching.

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Static and Dynamic Information Acquisition

Associate Professor Jussi Keppo

Associate Professor and Dean’s Chair
Research Director, Institute of Operations Research and Analytics

Biography

Professor Keppo teaches risk management and analytics courses, and directs analytics executive education programs at NUS Business School. He is also Research Director of the Institute of Operations Research and Analytics at NUS. Previously, he taught at the University of Michigan.

He has several publications in the top-tier journals such as Journal of Economic Theory, Review of Economic Studies, Management Science, Operations Research, and Journal of Business on topics such as investment analysis, banking regulation, learning, and strategic incentives. His research has been featured also in numerous business and popular publications, including the Wall Street Journal and Fortune.

Professor Keppo’s research has been supported by several Asian, European, and US agencies such as the National Science Foundation. He serves on the editorial boards of Management Science, Mathematics of Operations Research, and Journal of Risk. He has consulted several startups, Fortune 100 companies, and financial institutions.

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Discussion Forum with Graduate Students and Alumni

Chair

Oktoviano Gandhi

Co-founder, Alva Energi

Nationality: Indonesia

Undergraduate University: University of Oxford, UK

Graduated 2021 from Integrative Sciences and Engineering Programme

Alumni Panellists

Robin Chan

Vice President, Strategic Partnership, AliveX

Nationality: Singapore

Undergraduate University: National University of Singapore

Graduated 2009 from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

Anurag Anshu

Assistant Professor (Jan 2022), Harvard University

Nationality: India

Undergraduate University: Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India

Graduated 2018 from CQT/ISEP/Computing

Vera Jin

Senior Advisor to the Board of Sopra Steria Asia

Nationality: Singapore

Undergraduate University: Hohai University, China

Graduated 2000 from Faculty of Engineering

Loke Gar Goei

Assistant Professor, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

Nationality: Singapore

Undergraduate University: University of Cambridge, UK

Graduated 2019 from Faculty of Science

Student Panellists

Sarah Catherine Geiger

Nationality: USA

Year 4, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

Undergraduate University: Miami University of Ohio, USA

Wu Ji

Nationality: China

Year 4, Integrative Sciences and Engineering Programme

Undergraduate University: National University of Singapore

Tan Min Rong Samson

Nationality: Singapore

Year 3, School of Computing

Undergraduate University: National University of Singapore

Jonathan Schwinger

Nationality: Germany

Year 1, Faculty of Science/Centre for Quantum Technologies

Undergraduate University: Ruhr University Bochum (RUB)