Success Stories

Year 2012 - Current 
December 2012

November 2012

August 2012
July 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012

Paper Recognition in the esteemed IEEE FCCM20

SCE Assistant Professor Nachiket Kapre’s paper Packet Switched vs Time Multiplexed FPGA Overlay Networks was recognised as one of the 25 most significant papers from the first 20 years of the International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA20). The 21st IEEE International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines opens in Seattle, Washington and the list was compiled in commemoration of their 20th Anniversary celebration.
 
The papers were nominated and put through a rigid selection process. The selected papers represent the top 5% of papers that haveappeared in the FCCM Symposium throughout the years.
 
The papers were recognised for capturing pioneering work that has sinceshaped the landscape of the field. In essence, these papers capture the birthand growth of reconfigurable computing, providing a background for research inthe field.
 
FCCM20 | http://tcfpga.org/fccm20/fccm20.html
Packet Switched vs. Time multiplexed FPGA Overlay Networks | http://tcfpga.org/fccm20/p290.pdf

Abstract
Packet Switched vs. TimeMultiplexed FPGA Overlay Networks
Nachiket Kapre, Nikil Mehta, Michael deLorimier, Raphael Rubin, HenryBarnor, Michael Wilson, Michael Wrighton, Andre DeHon

Dedicated, spatially configured FPGA interconnect is efficient for applicationsthat require high throughput connections between processing elements (PEs) butwith a limited degree of PE interconnectivity (e.g. wiring up gates anddatapaths). Applications which virtualize PEs may require a large number ofdistinct PE-to-PE connections (e.g. using one PE to simulate 100s of operators,each requiring input data from thousands of other operators), but with eachconnection having low throughput compared with the PE's operating cycle time.

In these highly interconnected conditions, dedicating spatialinterconnect resources for all possible connections is costly and inefficient.Alternatively, we can time share physical network resources by virtualizinginterconnect links, either by statically scheduling the sharing of resourcesprior to runtime or by dynamically negotiating resources at runtime. We explorethe tradeoffs (e.g. area, route latency, route quality) betweentime-multiplexed and packet-switched networks overlayed on top of commodityFPGAs.

We demonstrate modular and scalable networks which operate on a XilinxXC2V6000-4 at 166MHz. For our applications, time-multiplexed, offline schedulingoffers up to a 63% performance increase over online, packet-switched schedulingfor equivalent topologies. When applying designs to equivalent area,packet-switching is up to 2times faster for small area designs whiletime-multiplexing is up to 5times faster for larger area designs. When limitedto the capacity of a XC2V6000, if all communication is known, time-multiplexedrouting outperforms packet-switching; however when the active set of linksdrops below 40% of the potential links, packet-switched routing can outperformtime-multiplexing.

SCE Undergraduates NTU’s Top Earners for 3 Years

SCE’s undergraduate Class of 2012, 2011 & 2010 graduates have been ranked as the top earners in NTU for 3 years consecutively, based on Singapore's Ministry of Education's (MOE) Survey Graduate Employment Survey (GES).
 
Graduates of SCE and Nanyang Business School's Double Degree in Business and Computing were ranked NTU’s top earners in 2012, with a mean gross monthly salary of $3,651 per month. Computer Science graduates were placed 2nd overall at S$3,371 for single degree programmes while Computer Engineering graduates came in 5th at S$3,336.
 
SCE’s Computer Engineering graduates recorded the highest jump in overall employment rate of 97%, from 95.7% in 2011. The demand for more computer engineering graduates saw the pay for our Computer Engineering graduates reflect a slight drop from S$3,577 in 2011 to S$3,336 in 2012.
 
The Graduate Employment Survey is released annually by the MOE and publishes results of the key employment indicators to provide prospective students with timely and comparable data, to assist them in making informed course decisions. 

Top Place and $10,000 in EADS International Contest

SCE’s PhD student Nguyen Thuy Diem, Kristin and Project Officer Pham Chau Khoa, Ben, beat 158 teams in a High-Performance Computing competition, Join the Spirit, organised by the EADS Group. Representing SCE, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), team Kota emerged the champions against graduates and PhD engineering students from 30 different countries. Aside from bragging rights, the team even gets to take home $10,000 cash.
 
The main goal of the competition was to contribute to the fastest solver in the world by proposing the implementation of a simplified solver, designed to use multiple GPUs on a single computing node with 22 GB of memory, 33.5 Amazon EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, architecture quad-core "Nehalem"), 2 GPU NVIDIA Tesla "Fermi" M2050 and 1690 GB of local disk. After an intense 3 months of competition, team Kota found the fastest code with a score close to 263 GFlops!
 
Ben and Kristin were inspired to participate in the competition as it was related to their research work and they are extremely grateful to their research advisors, who have shown great encouragement and always spared the extra time when needed. The duo first met as classmates and their friendship evolved into love. Now as a couple, they look forward to prize money will be for a trip to either Japan or Europe.
 
The EADS Group is a global leader in aerospace, defence and related services, consisting of four business units which include the global industry leaders such as the Airbus, Astrium, Cassidian and Eurocopter. EADS employs around 133,000 people in over 170 locations internationally.


Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology 2012

SCE’s PhD student Cheah Hui Yan along with her PhD supervisors Assistant Professor Suhaib A Fahmy and Associate Professor Douglas Maskell snapped up the IEEE International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (ICFPT) 2012 Best Paper Award.
 
ICFPT is the premier conference in the Asia-Pacific region on field-programmable technologies including reconfigurable computing devices and systems containing such components. Field programmable systems have a wide variety of applications and the topic has become an important field of research. Field-programmable devices combine the flexibility of software with the performance of hardware. Their regular structure facilitates rapid improvement in density, capability and speed. Such systems can help to accelerate computations in molecular biology and medical imaging, low-power control and data processing for palm-size computers, and emulate novel electronic products before the manufacturing process. 

SCE’s Professor Awarded IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Asia Pacific Young Researcher Award

Assistant Professor Dusit Niyato is the 7th researcher in Asia Pacific to be awarded the prestigious IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Young Researcher Award. The award is sponsored by IEEE Asia Pacific Board (APB) and honors researchers under the age of 35 as the best candidate from the Asia Pacific region, specifically those who have been actively participating in ComSoc publication and conference activities over the last 3 years.
 
An Assistant Professor with SCE, Dusit Niyato has been recognised by his undergraduate students as the most popular lecturer in 2010 and 2011.  More recently, he has clinched several prestigious awards including the IEEE Communications Conference (ICC) 2011 Best Paper Award, the 2011 IEEE Communications Society Fred W Ellersick Prize, the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2012 Best Paper Award, and the 7th IEEE Communications Society Asia Pacific Best Young Researcher Award for 2012.
 
He has contributed to several publications in various IEEE journals and magazines and published numerous conference papers and participated as Chair and Co-Chair in IEEE Conferences. He serves as the editor for IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (WCL) and IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and as the guest editor in other journals.
 
His research interests include Wireless Communications, and Networking. His current work projects include Design and Analysis of Cloud Computing for Data Value Chain: Operation Research Approach, Heterogeneous Wireless Network: Optimization Model and Applications, Large Scale Hybrid Storage System, Protocol Design and Application of IEEE 802.22-Based Wireless Regional Area Network (WRAN) and Radio Resource Management over Cognitive Radio Networks.



Team NTU Third in IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge

A team consisting three NTU undergraduates won third place in the esteemed The IBM/IEEE Smarter Planet Challenge. Team Social Cops was made up of SCE undergraduates Harjoben Singh and Varun Banka along with SCBE undergraduate Prukalpa Sankar. Organised by IBM and IEEE, the objective of the competition was for students to solve real-world problems by applying engineering, science, and other disciplines. Notably, these NTU undergraduates were the only Asian team in the top five, with the other four teams from the USA.
 
The team observed that in this day and age, different stakeholders within a community lack a common platform that allows them to unify their individual efforts so as to create a lasting change. To address this, the team aims to create platforms which can help drive social change through collaborative efforts of community members. Their winning entry is an Open Web and Mobile platform where Citizens, NGOs and City Councils can conveniently log onto, to solve civic problems ranging from uncleared garbage to potholes on the road to clogged and leaking drainages to dangerous electric poles and more. Ease of use was also a priority for the team as the target audience involves users from all walks of life and varying age groups. 

Citizens, Councils, Public Authorities, Universities, NGOs & corporate collaborate via the platform to create and catalyze change in communities. The SocialCops@Citizens platform will allow citizens to easily report issues they face in their communities – uploading it onto a common platform and transforming their individual problem into a community issue. These social complaints will then be forwarded to relevant authorities via the simple and easy to use SocialCops@Councils platform. The relevant authorities can easily connect and communicate with their citizens while tracking and monitoring problems in the locality. SocialCops@Corporate can choose to “Adopt Locations” and “Support Causes,” channeling funds to our collaborating NGOs, who carry out educational programs & awareness drives in the local community inspiring long lasting change in communities.


Best Paper Award at APSIPA 2012

Zhi-Zheng Wu, SCE’s PhD student cum Project Officer at SCE's Emerging Research Lab has been awarded the Best Paper Award in the Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC) 2012. Zhi-Zheng’s research focuses on voice conversion and his winning paper titled A Study on Spoofing Attack in State-of-The-Art Speaker Verification: the Telephone Speech Case is co-written together with Tomi Kinnunen, Eng Siong Chng, Haizhou Li and Eliathamby Ambikairajah.
 
The APSIPA ASC 2012 is the fourth annual conference organised by the APSIPA aiming to promote research and education in the field of signal processing, information technology and communications. The association covers all aspects of signals and information including processing, recognition, classification, communications, networking, computing, system design, security, implementation, and technology with applications to scientific, engineering, and social areas.
 
Spurred by the dynamic growth of technology and economy of the Asia Pacific region, the APSIPA was set up in 2009 to facilitate educational, research and industry collaboration and interaction.


Best Student Paper at IEEE BTAS 2012

SCE PhD students Hengyi Zhang and Chaoying Tang were awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Fifth International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS 2012). Their paper Matching Vein Patterns from Color Images for Forensic Investigation was co-written by their PhD supervisor, SCE’s Assistant Professor Adams Wai-Kin Kong along with his research partner Dr Noah Craft, Chief Medical Officer at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.
 

The BTAS is recognised by industry leaders as the premier research conference which focuses on all aspects of biometrics; including advances in fundamental signal processing, image processing, pattern recognition and statistical and mathematical techniques relevant to biometrics, new algorithms and/or technologies for biometrics, analysis of specific applications, and analysis of the social impacts of biometrics technology.
 
Professor Kong's research has garnered much attention and he is currently working with the Singapore Police Force on enhancing his Vein Pattern Recoginition technique which proves to be especially useful when other biometric traits of the perpetrator are not recovered at the scene of crime, except digital pictures e.g. in cases involving paedophiles – where the suspects’ faces are usually obscured, masked POI, terrorists, etc. More recently, his paper, A Survey of Palmprint Recognition, (A Kong, D Zhang, M. Kamel  Pattern Recognition Volume 42, Issue 7, July 2009, Pages 1408-1418) was recognised as a Spotlight Paper for the March 2012 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.



4 SCE students awarded the Google Anita Borg Scholarship 2012

Undergraduates Kimisha Piyush Mody and Hilda Ng along with PhD students Fang Hui and Arfika Nurhudatiana were amongst the four handpicked from a pool of top female students within Asia. They were awarded based on the strength of their academic background and demonstration of leadership. Competing with students from Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam, they were amongst the 14 selected to receive a financial award for the academic year.
 
The Google Anita Borg Scholarship was set up by Google to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders in the field. The late Dr Borg was well respected in the industry and was a true activist for the use of technology, believing that it had great impact in all aspects of our lives; economic, political, social and personal. In 1997, she founded The Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology where they work towards developing tools and programmes that are designed to help industry, academic institutions and government bodies recruit, retain and develop female technology leaders.


SCE’s ‘Wonderboy’ Pan Zhengxiang leads Singapore’s First iOutreach Initiative
 
Celebrating Singapore’s 47 years of independence, SCE’s ‘Wonderboy’ Pan Zhengxiang, along with a group of dedicated youth volunteers created Singapore’s first community-based technological innovation, iOutreach. The youths made iOutreach into a reality as they sought to find a way to innovate and improve community penetration and engagement. iOutreach allows residents to “check-in” at community events, promotes inter-generation learning, triggers heightened alertness in Emergency sitations and at the same time, it is also an eco-friendly initiative. 

iOutreach looks to strengthening the emotional connection amongst residents in Woodlands and breaks new boundaries by helping to create an inclusive and extensive community. Grassroots Advisor Ms Ellen Lee commented, “Woodlands is the first constituency in Singapore to leverage on iOutreach innovation to build, bond and bridge communities in an All C.A.R.E way. It is heart-warming to note that this innovation is a ground-up initiative by a team of dedicated youth volunteers led by Pan Zhengxiang. iOutreach strives to use all Channels to reach residents, bringing together different Age groups and Races and encouraging interaction among residents in their Estates. It is extremely commendable that iOutreach initiative is an astounding success as it attracted more than 20,000 residents to sign up in less than 3 months!”.
 
In conjunction with the Singapore’s Woodlands National Day Dinner, more than 3,000 constituency residents witnessed the launch of iOutreach. iOutreach Singapore’s first community-based initiation and marks the birth of a new platform in such a community landscape. Singapore’s first community-based iOutreach was launched by Minister for National Development Mr Khaw Boon Wan, along with Grassroots Adviser Ms Ellen Lee Geck Hoon PBM (MP for Sembawang GRC (Woodlands)), Grassroots Adviser Mr Hawazi Daipi (Senior Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Manpower MP for Sembawang GRC (Marsiling)), Grassroots Adviser Mr Vikram Nair (MP for Sembawang GRC, (Admiralty)), Mr Han Tan Juan (Group Director, People’s Association) and Mr David Sim BBM (Chairman, Woodlands CCC).
 
The initiative spearheaded by Zhengxiang, NTU's undergraduate majoring Computer Science and minoring Public Administration, has been serving as a Grassroots leader for more than 8 years to-date. Despite young age, Zhengxiang has achieved notable achievements and accolades such as conferment of Singapore’s IT Youth leader (Youth) and voted Most Favourite Nominee of Stars of Shine Award 2011 organised by MCYS and NYC. With Zhengxiang’s belief of creatively using technology as a platform to bridge the community, the launch of Singapore’s first community-based “Point, Shoot and Explore” last year was a springboard for the iOutreach launch.

The launch signified a rejuvenation of community bonding and engagement as the youth team leverages on new innovation to enable residents to check-in to community events. This ground-up initiative was executed by the youth passionate about making a difference in the community. Their efforts are supported by Woodlands Grassroots organisations, Sony, Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) School of Computer Engineering and NTU Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

SCE wishes Zhengxiang and his team all the very best in rolling out more changes!

View the Launch Photos

First Place in ACM SIGPATIAL Cup 2012

SCE emerged first place ACM SIGPATIAL Cup 2012 is an algorithm competition held along with the ACM SIGSPTIAL GIS 2012 conference. Represented by SCE’s PhD students, Youze Tang and Diwen Zhu along with SCE’s Nanyang Assistant Professor Xiaokui Xiao, the team beat 31 international teams with their proposed simple algorithm for baseline comparison with further non-trivial algorithms.  

The competition solicited algorithms for mapping noisy vehicle trajectories into correct locations on a road network. Each algorithm is evaluated with a metric that takes into account both efficiency and matching accuracy. The team expressed that their key challenge was to reduce the running time of the programme. To prepare for the competition, they spent a good amount of time in group discussions and research. They felt that communication was a crucial factor for their success as they were able to combine the best ideas from the group. 

The ACM SIGSPTIAL GIS is the premier annual event of the ACM Special Interest Group on Spatial Information. It is a highly acclaimed international forum which provides a platform for industry experts to get together to review original research contributions which cover all conceptual, design, and implementation aspects of GIS ranging from applications, user interfaces, and visualisation to data storage and query processing and indexing.

Read about their experience

Outside Air Cooling and Energy-Efficient ICT Operations for Modular Data Centre in Singapore

SCE along with Toshiba and the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N) will soon start their research and lead a new pilot which aims to generate close to 77 million kWh (kilowatt per hour) of energy reduction in the next three years. This is equivalent to over 19 million in dollar savings!

Funded by Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the project has been awarded as part of the Singapore government’s Green Data Centre Innovation Challenge where their objective was to seek innovative and effective ways to raise overall data centre energy efficiency and boost competitiveness of the Data Centre industry. 

As a major Information and Communications Technology (ICT) hub, Singapore is host to a major data centre cluster, in which 10 of the largest data centres consume as much energy as 130,000 typical households. BroadGroup, an international consulting firm which provides professional advice, research, publishing and events, predicts that this industry will grow by 50% by year 2015 and hence will trigger a major surge in electricity demand. 

SCE Professors, Assistant Professor Wen Yonggang along with Associate Professor Ng Wee Keong, will lead this pilot project as Principle Investigator and Co-Principle Investigator respectively and will soon start research into demonstrating the practicality and cost-effectiveness of the proposed solution. The key technology thrusts for this research include Modular Data Center, Outside Air cool and Energy-Efficient ICT Operations; of which, the centre’s ICT operations and optimisations comprise of HTTP Video Streaming as well as Big-Data Analytics. 


2 Best Paper Awards in 3 months

Fan Hongfei, SCE’s PhD student, bagged two Best Paper Awards in a span of three months! He was presented with the best paper award at the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing 2012 (ACM SAC 2012) in March and at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design 2012 (IEEE CSCWD 2012) in May. 

Hongfei’s PhD research focuses on innovative techniques for supporting collaborative software development, which lies at the intersection of distributed computing, computer supported cooperative work, and software engineering. He finds that this area of research suits him best, as it requires strong practical skills and knowledge in system design and software development, which matches the skillsets he developed at Tongji University where he pursued his undergraduate degree. 

The ACM SAC is organised by ACM’s Special Interest Group of Applied Computing and their goal is to further the interests of the computing professional engaged in the development of new computing applications and application areas and the transfer of computing technology to new problem domains. 

The IEEE CSCWD attracts acclaimed industry researchers and practitioners to come together to deliberate the research and development fields of collaboration technologies and their applications to the design of processes, products, systems, and services in industries and societies.

Hongfei shares his experience and learnings.   

I regard my PhD research work in SCE as a continuation and a significant extension based on my past experience in the School of Software Engineering (SSE), Tongji University, China, while more research-oriented capabilities and skills are being developed within the current stage. The Parallel and Distributed Computing Centre (PDCC) in SCE is equipped with good facilities for my work, and the centre technicians never fail to provide me with great support!

The award-winning papers are the first two papers published based on my PhD research, and it is really a great honor to receive two Best Paper Awards in a span of a few months. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Sun Chengzheng, as the Awards would not be possible without his supervision and support. For the past four years, he has made every effort to provide me with guidance in several aspects, including the selection of research topic and direction, explorations of various research issues, discussions and debates on numerous technical details, and practical skills in writing research papers, as well as general principles and methods in conducting research work. Professor Sun has been very encouraging throughout my course of research. 

This PhD project has initiated a new direction for supporting collaborative software development. Following the current achievements, I wish to continue my work in this particular domain in the future, by means of the research capabilities developed in SCE.

Read the abstract of his winning papers.

Top 13 in the World at ACM ICPC

NTU StarLight emerged 13th place in the world ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC). After a series of local and regional contests, members of NTU StarLight found themselves one of the 300,000 over students selected worldwide from the computing field. Consisting of three SCE undergraduates, Pham Quang Vu, Nguyen Thanh Trung and Risan competed against the other 111 world finalists who participated in the World Finals. 

Hosted by the University of Warsaw and held in Poland, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest is a multitier, team-based, programming competition. The contest involves a global network of universities which host regional competitions that then advances to the ACM-ICPC World Finals. Over the years, participation has grown significantly, attracting thousands of the finest students and faculty in computing disciplines. Students of 2,000 universities from 80 countries compete in this annual contest which fosters creativity, teamwork, and innovation in building new software programs. The oldest, largest and most prestigious programming contest in the world, the students get to hone their skills and pit themselves against the best of the best and test their ability to perform under pressure. 


SCE Professor Elected Chair of Governors of Trans-Eurasia Information Network-star Corporation Center

SCE’s Associate Professor Francis Lee Bu Sung of Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) was elected Chair of Governors of Trans-Eurasia Information Network-star Corporation Center (TEIN*CC). TEIN*CC is a partnership between National research and education networks (NRENs) from 15 Asian countries, known as the Trans Eurasia Information Network (TEIN) partners. The TEIN programme connects the research and education community and supports researchers across Asia-Pacific and offers a gateway for global collaboration. Through this gateway, they enable over 45 million users from over 8,000 research and academic centres to participate in joint projects with their peers in Europe and other parts of the world.

TEIN*CC was established in 2011 in Seoul, South Korea and funded by the Korea Communications Commission. It was established by the Korean government with TEIN partner support, to take responsibility for the 4th phase of the TEIN programme. The TEIN4 network builds on the success of the TEIN3’s high speed link to GÉANT the pan-European network which links 50 million users in 16 countries in the region to each other. Applications already running on this network include climate research and meteorology, food security and health programmes. TEIN*CC plans to catalyse collaborative applications that use the TEIN network and foster human capacity building and international collaborations.

SingAREN is Singapore's national research and education network (REN) which advocates and champions advanced network applications and technology in Singapore. It also aims to be the platform of collective representation of the community of research and education networks (REN) in Singapore and facilitate cost-competitive adoption of advanced Internet technologies for Singapore RENs.


Best Paper Award from the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC) 2012

Assistant Professor Dusit Niyato and Assistant Professor Wang Ping of SCE along with their collaborators won the Best Paper Award from the IEEE WCNC 2012 (Services, Applications, and Business Track). WCNC is the global premier wireless event that brings together industry professionals, academics, and individuals from government agencies and other institutions to exchange information and ideas on the advancement of wireless communications andnetworking technology.

Read an abstract of their winning paper.

1st Runners Up in Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2012, Singapore

Team Social Cops emerged 1st Runner Up in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup 2012, Singapore. The team consisting of four NTU undergraduates beat 83 other teams in this competition. SCE students Varun Banka, Harjoben Singh and Bhavdeep Singh along with Wee Kim Wee’s communication studies student Sneha Gururaj came together to devise a civic engagement application that would be compatible with both mobile and web technology.

The objective of this app is to bring transparency to citizens in developing nations, facing corruption and other administrative problems. The team aims to further develop and refine this project and seek ways to engage and encourage collaboration between the citizens, NGOs and authorities in these countries. Ultimately, these students aspire to empower these individuals and create a more transparent society which could help change their lives for the better.

Like any other undergraduate, the team members balance student life, quizzes, and exams. To prepare for this competition, they put in hours a day for several months, trying to create a technically-strong yet socially-appropriate solution that not only helps the common man but also reaches out to him in a feasible and relevant manner.

Imagine Cup is a premier student technology competition that challenges students from around the world to create technological solutions for the world's toughest problems. Their application, Social Cops, has also been selected to qualify for another segment of the Imagine Cup 2012; Round 2 of the Windows Phone 7 Category.


SCE's Undergraduates, the Highest Earning Graduates of NTU, 2 Years in a Row!

Based on Singapore's Ministry of Education's (MOE) Survey, the Graduate Employment Survey (GES), SCE’s Class of 2011 graduates ranked as the top earners in NTU! 

The GES survey is released annually by the Ministry of Education and publishes results of the key employment indicators to provide prospective students with timely and comparable data, to assist them in making informed course decisions. For 2011, 12,998 graduates from the three publicly-funded universities, Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore, and Singapore Management University were surveyed with an overall response rate of 75%.

SCE’s Computer Engineering graduates surveyed took home an average monthly pay of $3,577 while SCE’s Computer Science graduates came in a close 3rd with a mean pay of $3,425.

The SCE’s Class of 2010, Computer Science graduates ranked 1st with a mean monthly pay of S$3,385. SCE’s Computer Engineering graduates make 3rd place at S$3,272, excluding NIE.  

MOE Survey Results | 2011 NTU Survey Results | 2010 NTU Survey Results


SCE's Assistant Professor Steven Wong Kai Juan Awarded NTU's 2012 Nanyang Award for Excellence in Teaching! 

Assistant Professor Steven Wong was presented him with the prestigious Nanyang Excellence in Teaching Award in 2012's Nanyang Awards Ceremony. Professor Wong, affectionately nicknamed by his students as "Mr A-Ha", is familiar face to SCE's year 2 students and many vouch that his lessons are very enjoyable. He has also been nominated the Most Popular Year 2 Lecturer by SCE students for two consecutive years! 

The highest recognition conferred by NTU to individual faculty, the Nanyang Award for Excellence in Teaching is presented to faculty who have exhibited excellent teaching practice & enriched the learning experiences of their students through their enthusiasm, care & close rapport.


SCE Student, Singapore Delegate to Harvard’s National Model United Nations
& Senior VP on Google's Executive Board!

Hailed by his peers as NTU School of Computer Engineering's (SCE) “Wonder Boy” and “Champion Student”, Zhengxiang has done SCE and Singapore proud once again!

Pan Zhengxiang, Computer Science (Honours) student had completed his Engineering Degree with SCE and decided to take a different path in education by extending his student life in NTU to further his interest minoring in Public Administration. Despite numerous accolades such as being conferred the prestigious IT Youth Leader Award (Youth), JCI The Outstanding Young Persons of the World (2nd in Science and Technology), National Youth Council Most Favourite Star Of SHINE nominee and the first to receive NTU SCE’s Best Outstanding Student Award, Zhengxiang is also one of Singapore's youngest  Grassroots Leader who has actively served the community since a tender age of 17.

Recently, he had the opportunity to experience Harvard Kennedy Government School, greatly widening his exposure and network. We wish Zhengxiang all the best as he continue the quest to make a difference to our country and community!  

He wrote a personal note to share his experience and learning. 

Recognised as one of the largest, oldest, and most prestigious conferences of its kind: the fifty-eighth year of Harvard’s attempt to model the United Nations bring forth the prospect of bringing change makers throughout the world in order to engage in enlightening debate over the most pressing issues that face the international community today.

The Harvard University’s National Model United Nations shows me the multitude of global diversity and hunger of youths wanting to make the change! This is my very first solo trip to USA, making wonderful delegates friends from all over the globe and great exposure in the inter-cultural context. Majoring in Computer Science (Honours), I’m grateful for my professor mentors such as Prof Quek Hiok Chai, Prof Yeo Chai Kiat, Prof Wenxuan Yu, Prof Hallam Stevens, Prof Goh Geok Yian, Mdm Mahaini A. Hamid, Prof Lijun, Prof Miao Chunyan, Prof Ong Yew Soon, Prof Steven Wong, and many more awe-inspiring professors at NTU. NTU has an incredible T-shape education structure that allows me to minor in Public Administration as well as pursue my interest such as History of Science, Malay Language, Foreign Policy and Communications so that I can contribute more effectively to our community at-large.  

 As the only Singaporean and Asian to be selected in the Special Select Committee/Specialised Agencies, Google’s Executive Board, assuming the role of Senior Vice President, Publicity and Outreach – I’m grateful for the mentorship guidance from Ms Ellen Lee PBM (Member of Parliament for Sembawang GRC (Woodlands), Mr Yam Ah Mee (PA Chief Executive Director), lawyer Ms Devi Haridas, community leaders at Woodlands and NTU professors that has equipped me well for making the speech and debate on global humanitarian stage, facing over 3000 delegates from around 35 nations. Their guidance has equipped me well to maximise the rare opportunity at Harvard University. It has been an useful lifetime worth of experience.

 As leaders of tomorrow, we have to be packed with courage and innovative mindset; remind ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and explore resolutions to make our world a better place.

Pan Zhengxiang,
Singapore Delegate to Harvard’s National Model United Nations

Best Student Paper Award from PREMIA & ICTAI 2011 Best Paper Award

PhD student Li Shukai was granted the Best Student Paper Award (Gold Prize) from the Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence Association (PREMIA) for his notable work Maximum Margin/Volume Outlier Detection published in the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence (ICTAI 2011). This work also clinched the Best Paper Award at ICTAI 2011. 

PREMIA, which is an affiliated member of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), aims to provide a forum for scientists and engineers in Singapore who are interested in pattern recognition and machine intelligence research. Every year PREMIA chooses the best from its student members’ papers, published in top journals and conferences on relevant topics in the previous year. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, pattern recognition and machine intelligence in applied domains including computer vision, image processing, speech analysis, robotics, multimedia, document analysis, character recognition, knowledge engineering, fractal analysis and intelligent control. These involve using methods such as statistical techniques, neural networks, evolutionary programming, fuzzy logic, machine learning and hardware implementation. The final decision is judged by the award committee based on the novelty and impact of the papers. 

Shukai would like to take this opportunity to express his heartfelt appreciation to his mentor Professor Ivor W. Tsang, "Thank you for your long term support and guidance. As a member of SCE, I feel the research of our school has made significant progress in recent years, and our researchers gain more and more prizes worldwide."

Read the Abstract of his paper.



BAE Systems Best Student Paper Award at the 2012 IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging Conference

The BAE Systems Best Student Paper Award was given out to Ramya Hebbalaguppe in January at the 2012 Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and SPIE Electronic Imaging Conference. An SCE visiting researcher, Ramya joined SCE from October 2009 to January 2011. Her interests in Digital Photography and Image Processing, this led her to SCE’s Associate Professor Ramakrishna Kakarala, whose expertise was in the field of Computational Photography.

Co-authored by Professor Kakarala, her winning paper, An efficient multiple exposure image fusion in JPEG domain was published in SPIE Proceedings Vol 8299 and received much interest from the engineers at Sony and Rambus in the testing method used. 

Held in San Francisco, the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging Conference attracted industry experts and professionals. The IS&T as well as the SPIE hold major conferences, educational programs, and technical exhibitions globally. IS&T is an international society related to all aspects in the field of imaging, in particular, digital printing, electronic imaging, color science, photofinishing, image preservation, silver halide, pre-press technology, and hybrid imaging systems. The SPIE is an international society advancing an interdisciplinary approach to the science and application of light. 

Read the paper Abstract & her Personal Thank You Note.


Best Paper Award at the 2012 International MultiMedia Modeling Conference (MMM)

Wan Kong Wah, SCE’s PhD student, received the Best Paper Award at the 2012 International MultiMedia Modeling Conference (MMM), held in Klagenfurt, Austria. The MMM is a leading global conference where researchers and industry professionals come together to share their new ideas, original research results and practical development experiences for all Multimedia Moldelling related areas.

The MMM conference calls for research papers which report original investigation results and industrial track papers with real multimedia applications and system development experience. The conference also solicits proposals for tutorials on crucial technologies of multimedia modeling and calls for special sessions proposals that focus specifically on new challenges in the multimedia field.

Kong Wah’s paper studies the practical video search system. In a typical video search process, the system attempts to predict search intent and automatically completes ones query after typing your search in the query box. Kong Wah observed that the suggested queries seem ad-hoc and disorganised, appearing more like results from a simple spell corrector and lexicographical matching. He was inspired to seek a method to derive better topics and groups for suggested queries in video collections.

For such search queries, if search collection comprises of text articles, there are available text processing tools to achieve this groupings. However, if the search collection consists of video materials, then there needs to be additional processing to derive meaning groups. It dawned on him that it would be a good idea to organise these queries into meaning semantic groups.

Together with his supervisors Associate Professor Tan Ah Hwee, Associate Professor Clement Chia and Adjunct Professor Lim Joo Hwee, he produced his winning paper Topic Based Query Suggestions for Video Search. Under their mentorship, he learned to be focused in his thought process, develop precision in his technical writing skills and improve his presentations by being more concise.

Kong Wah expresses his heartfelt thanks to his supervisors for their patience and understanding, as he is working full time while pursuing his PhD.

Read his Abstract.


4th in 2011 HEEACT University Ranking

Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) came in 4th in the world for their Computer Science department in the recent Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan’s (HEEACT) 2011 university ranking. NTU ranked behind Massachusetts University, University of California – Berkley and Stanford University.

Incepted in 2005, the HEEACT measures the performance of scientific papers on their research productivity, research impact and research excellence. In collaboration with HEEACT, the Scientific Business arm of Thomson Reuters helps to monitor the research output of universities in an impartial manner and aims to provide an informed and balanced viewpoint in the evaluation system.

The School of Computer Engineering is a research intensive School in the fields of Computer Engineering (CE) and Computer Science (CS), providing Undergraduate and Graduate Programmes. 

In the latest Graduate Employment Survey (GES) SCE’s CS Undergraduates emerged the top earners in NTU. Conducted annually by Singapore's Ministry of Education (MOE), the survey accesses the employment conditions of graduates 6 months after graduation. The GES provides prospective students with timely and comparable data that they need in making informed course decisions. 

SCE’s Class of 2010's CS graduates ranked 1st with a mean monthly pay of S$3,385, with National University of Singapore's (NUS) CS graduates drawing S$3,289 monthly. SCE's CE graduates make 4th place in the NTU ranking coming in at S$3,272, while NUS's CE graduates were surveyed to draw S$3,163 per month.

HEEACT Ranking | MOE Survey Results
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