Singapore’s First Location Based Service
on Mobile (Dec 2008)
Taking the lead and designing tools to improve
the way we live, computer science undergraduates
Chua Khim Teck and Rajamoorthy s/o Karapaya together
with Low Hang Wei from the Nanyang Business School
have created a unique location based social networking
tool that allows mobile users to locate friends
in their vicinity, attain up-to-the minute information
and receive updates on discounts. Designed to revolutionise
the social networking scene as well as bridge the
gap between the virtual world and reality, MyWobile will
also serve as a cost efficient and effective platform
for developers to build and deploy applications
for location based services. Together with key
industry partners Azione Capital and Microsoft
the students look to improve on the capabilities
of MyWobile, where they intend to include
other features such as gaming. Presently, the MyWobile is
free for download and is able to run on Symbian
Series 60, 3rd edition phones and will
soon be available for Windows Mobile.
For more information on MyWobile please
visit: www.myWobile.com
SCE
Lauded for Best Paper at GCC2008 Conference (Oct
2008)
 |
Front
Row (from left to right): Assoc Prof Lee Bu
Sung, Zhang Junwei
Back Row (from left to right): Assoc Prof
Yeo Chai Kiat, Asst Prof Tang Xueyan |
The International Conference on Grid and Cooperative
Computing (GCC), looks to address the rapid advances
in various grid-related technologies, grid middleware
and grid applications. As such, it has earned great
popularity as the world’s largest scientific
event in the area of grid and cooperative computing.
Participating at the 7th GCC 2008 held in Shenzhen,
China was PhD student Zhang Junwei. Junwei’s
paper titled, Impact of Parallel Download on
Job Scheduling in Data Grid Environment, co-authored
by SCE Professors Lee Bu Sung, Yeo Chai Kiat and
Tang Xueyan, had managed to clinch the title of
Best Paper and was lauded at this prestigious conference.
SCE
Team Wins Inaugural Yahoo! Mobile Developers
Contest (Oct
2008)
 |
From left to right: Matthias Kunze, Managing Director for Yahoo! Connected Life in Asia , James, Gwee Xue Qian, Tan Zhong Xing, Lim Jing-Yi |
A total of 24 teams from six local tertiary institutes pitted their wits against each other to engineer the best mobile widgets (mini applications for mobile phones) for four corporate brands, DBS Bank, Kellogg Asia, Malaysia Airlines and UEEEU.com at the inaugural contest, hosted by Yahoo!. Picking up the challenge were SCE students James, Gwee Xue Qian, Lim Jing-Yi and Tan Zhong Xing who formed winning team, Simple. Using Yahoo!’s Blueprint ™ platform, the three Business and Computing undergraduates impressed the panel of distinguished judges with their creative presentation skills and simple-to-use widget. Designed for DBS Bank, the mobile widget helps customers conveniently locate branches and ATMs, and access information on bank products and credit card privileges. At the awards ceremony held yesterday, at Zouk, our winning team walked away with a cash prize and the title - Best in Show mobile widget.
“The widget interface is simple to use and makes it easy for consumers to access and request information from their mobile phone. The creation of mobile widgets fits perfectly with DBS' strategy of providing convenient access to our customers across a multi-channel distribution platform," said Jowena Liang, SVP & Head of Consumer Marketing & Internet Banking, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Bank on our students’ submission.
SCE
Congratulates Winners Of Mash-It-Up Competition (Oct
2008)
 |
 |
Second Prize - Team “Work Life Balance”
From left to right: Huang Sile, Han Jiong Siew Dobson, Long Jiren, Ms Jessica Tan, Managing Director, Microsoft Singapore and John Fernandes, Director, Developer Platform Evangelism Group. |
Third Prize - Team “Inviting Me”
From left to right: Toh Eryi, Tan Bang Yan Ian-louis, Goh Kai Wei, Ms Jessica Tan, Managing Director, Microsoft Singapore and John Fernandes, Director, Developer Platform Evangelism Group. |
SCE dominated Microsoft’s Mash-It-Up Competition with two winning entries, from teams: Work-Life-Balance and Inviting Me who took second and third place respectively. In this competition, the 35 participating teams were required to create the most compelling mash-up in 24 hours, using Microsoft’s Popfly technology. Popfly Mashups allow participants to combine data and media from different sources to create websites according to the users’ preference. The teams were tested on their technical know-how as well as their ability to think creatively. Points were given to those whose blocks were used or mashed-up with other teams.
Congratulations to the above winning teams from SCE.
For more information on the competition, please view:
http://www.microsoft.com/singapore/msdn/mashitup/default.mspx
Microsoft
Research Asia 2008-2009 Fellowship Award (Sep
2008)
 |
2008-2009
MSRA Fellow – Huang Yi |
PhD student Huang Yi has been shortlisted by Microsoft
Research Asia (MSRA) lab as one of the ‘best
and the brightest in Asia and the Pacific Area’,
for her outstanding research work. Rewarding her
for her contributions and diligence in the scientific
field, she was among the 32 students that had been
awarded with the Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship
(2008-2009). This year, 99 distinguished PhD candidates
from 48 leading research institutions were nominated
for fellowships, where each had their credentials
and research projects thoroughly evaluated by a
reviewing committee. The MSRA Fellowship Program
started ten years ago of which, two hundred and
fifty PhD candidates from fifty institutions have
served as fellows. The program has been highly
successful in fostering advances and collaboration
in computer science and research.
Two
SCE Proposals Awarded Funding under the MOE,
NRF R&D Programme (Sep
2008)
A total of 23 proposals
were submitted to the Ministry of Education (MOE)
for the NRF’s R&D programme on IDM in
Education. Each proposal was carefully evaluated
by the Ministry’s International Expert Panel
in June 2008. Among the proposals shortlisted,
two belonged to SCE.
The School would like
to congratulate Associate Professor Goh Wooi Boon and
Assistant Professor Miao Chun Yan for being awarded
funding for their respective projects!
Principal Investigator |
Project Title |
Associate Professor
Goh Wooi Boon |
Using embedded technology
support (i-Cube) for children’s concept
development through play |
Assistant Professor
Miao Chun Yan |
Intelligent Agent-Augmented
Multi-User Virtual Environments: Research
into Designs for Learning Environments of
the Future |
For full report please view:
https://rita.nrf.gov.sg/Lists/Announcements/DispForm.aspx?ID=48&Source=https://rita.nrf.gov.sg/Lists/
Announcements/AllItems.aspx
The First Location Based Film in the World (Sep 2008)
 |
From left to right: Assistant Professor Scott Hessels, Aswath Krishnan and Neha Chachra
|
SCE students Neha Chachra (CSC/4) and Aswath Krishnan (CE/4), together with fellow counterparts from the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) have discovered a revolutionary new way of viewing movies. The GPS Film combines entertainment with technology to generate a unique movie experience. Designed and implemented by our students, this novel software application uses real time GPS data of the viewer’s location and movement, to reveal a story. This project is funded by the Ministry of Education and has already gained rave reviews from the press, after its premier on 5 September 2008. It has also been showcased at the prestigious ISEA 2008 exhibition. A paper titled, GPS Film-Location Based Cinema has been co-authored by Aswath Krishnan and Neha Chachra to explain the design, possible future expansions and uses of this application. The paper has been selected for presentation at the International Symposium on GPS/GNSS 2008, to be hosted on 11-14 November 2008, in Tokyo.
For more details please visit: www.gpsfilm.com
SCE
selected as HP Labs Innovation Research Award
Recipient (Aug 2008)
More than 450 proposals discussing a multitude
of topics from 200 universities in 28 countries
were reviewed by HP for the 2008 HP Labs Innovation
Research Awards. From among the many proposals,
one belonged to SCE’s very own, Assistant
Professor Anwitaman Datta for his winning proposal
titled, “Understanding and Exploiting
the Dynamics of Collaboration Ecosystems”. This
global scale award is designed to encourage open
cooperation with HP Labs, HP’s central research
arm, in aims of producing mutually beneficial and
impactful research.
Assistant Professor Anwitaman Datta will be joined by SCE counterpart, Assistant
Professor Sun Aixin in this research initiative, focused on exploiting the dynamics
in collaboration social networks to enhance productivity in the workplace. The
magnitude of this global competition has further propelled the School’s
standing in the global research arena.
For more on award please view:
Best
Student Paper Award at JCDL’08 (Jun
2008)
PhD student Huang Yi won the Best Student Paper
Award at the recent Joint Conference in Digital
Libraries (JCDL) 2008. Her paper titled User-Assisted
Ink Bleed Correction for Handwritten Documents,
co-written with former supervisor Michael S Brown,
took centre-stage at this conference. The event
was hosted from 16-20 June at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
and serves as a major international forum focused
on digital libraries and associated technical,
practical, and social issues.
The paper describes a user-assisted framework for correcting ink-bleed found
in old handwritten documents. The goal is to provide a semi-automated approach
that strives to provide good results while minimising user involvement. This
user-assisted approach helps bridge the gap between full automation and manual
editing to provide a practical tool for removing ink-bleed in hand written documents.
Ultimately, “Our solution provides a user friendly interface with some
intelligent tools to facilitate users to process ancient documents from scratch,” said
Huang Yi.
SCE
Makes a Splash at the Splash Awards 2008! (Jun
2008)
 |
| The NTUCoders, from left to right: Vu Minh Tan, Sun Zhong Yinan and Pham Chau Khoa |
SCE’s very own NTUCoders made a splash at
this year’s Splash Awards 2008 – XChallenge,
jointly organised by the Singapore Computer Society,
IDA (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore)
and Microsoft. Our students, Sun Zhong Yinan, Pham
Chau Khoa and Vu Minh Tan emerged champions at
this 12 hour iron-coder competition.
This year’s event saw our students in search
of solutions for one of the world’s toughest
challenges – Creating a Sustainable Environment.
The idea was for the students to apply state-of-the-art
technology, with greater emphasis on Web 2.0 technologies,
to help solve a series of questions pertaining to
environmental issues.
Even with the competition being around the same
time as their exams, the students were able to muster
their wits and put their best foot forward. From
all at SCE, we would like to extend our congratulations
to the NTUCoders, who have done the School proud!
Apple
Student Scholarship Awarded to SCE Students (9-13
June 08)
 |
| SCE
students in San Francisco: Pictured second to
fifth (left to right), Yangfan, Husein William,
Firdaus Fajar Maulana , Alimin Adi |
Ten SCE students were given a golden ticket
each to travel to San Francisco for the Worldwide
Developers Conference (WWDC) 2008, to attend a five
day event hosted by Apple, Inc. This event is reputed
to be one of the most important annual events for
software and hardware developers.
Through their technical ability, creativity of
ideas in products and projects, together with their
prior technical work and experience, our capable
students were able to rule out the competition to
clinch ten out of the 400 coveted Apple Student
Scholarships offered worldwide.
Through the 150 informative sessions hosted, our
students were given full access to the in-depth
mechanics of technologies such as iPhone OS, Leopard
and Leopard Server. Above all, this event gave them
the opportunity to learn directly from Apple engineers,
developers and user interface designers, providing
them with a platform to propel their careers.
Congratulations to all ten students: Vuong Nhu
Khue, Husein William, Lin Dewei, Yangfan, Alimin
Adi, Thuy Diem Nguyen, Huang Zhenghao, Vu Vinh An,
Firdaus Fajar Maulana and Soenaryo Edwin Boaz!
SCE
Staff Awarded Merit Grant from EADS (Jun
2008)
Assistant Professor Vinod Achutavarrier Prasad
and Associate Professor A S Madhukumar were awarded
a $111,330 research grant from the European Aeronautic
Defence and Space Company (EADS), for their project
titled, Advanced Baseband Algorithms and Low Power
Implementations for Wireless Communications”.
This project aims to develop signal processing
architectures for multi-standard wireless communication
transceivers, with opportunistic spectrum access.
It is said to be potentially applicable to in-flight
cellular communication.
The project was jointly reviewed by EADS and the
Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB).
Outstanding
SCE Professor Receives Top Teaching Accolade
at
Nanyang Awards 2007 (Mar
2008)
 |
| Prof
A S Madhukumar (right) with his family at
Nanyang Awards 2008 |
Associate Professor A S Madhukumar has been teaching
at NTU since 2003. His dedication to his profession
has certainly not gone unnoticed. His fervor for
the school and his students was duly recognised
at the recent Nanyang Awards ceremony, held on
19 March 2008.
The award ceremony is a special occasion to recognise
and celebrate the outstanding achievements and
contributions of NTU faculty, staff and students. Naturally,
this devoted professor received nothing less than
the coveted Teaching Excellence Award.
Though delighted with his win, Prof Madhukumar
feels he derives even greater satisfaction when
students gain knowledge from his lectures. Prof
Madhukumar finds great importance in creating an
interactive learning environment where he masterfully
juggles theory with doses of classroom humour. "He
makes an effort to articulate clearly and raise
students' interest by telling us Mathematics-related
jokes," affirmed his student, Lim Kim Seah.
His ability to maintain such balance in the classroom makes every lesson refreshing.
Indeed, he has set a fine example for others in his ability to impart knowledge
to his students through a creative and supportive learning environment.
From all at SCE, congratulations to Prof Madhukumar!
USC
Provost's Ph.D. Fellowship Program for SCE Student
(Feb 2008)
 |
| Xu Kaijian
received his prize for the poster competition
from NTU Provost at the URECA Orientation /
Prize Presentation 2007 |
Congratulations to computer engineering student,
Xu Kaijian, for being among 100 students to clinch
the Provost's Ph.D. Fellowship Program, from the
University of Southern California (USC). With an
annual stipend of $30,000, this fellowship will
see him through four years of Ph.D. studies at USC.
These exceptional, highly sought-after students,
were meticulously reviewed by a board of global scholars
at USC. The students were evaluated on their potential
to lead various disciplines into new worlds
of knowledge.
A well-rounded student, Kaijian, an NTU President
Research Scholar, feels that the Computer Engineering
programme has provided him with a solid foundation.
The practical hands-on experience from the Undergraduate
Research Experience on Campus (URECA) has provided
him with the tools to catapult himself further in
his studies and career.
When asked about his Fellowship, he replied, “I
wish to express special thanks to my URECA supervisor,
Prof Chang Kuiyu and academic advisor, Prof Zhang
Jun for all their guidance and advice!”
Lua Rui Ping Winner of IT Youth Award (Feb 2008)
 |
 |
| Rui Ping receiving IT Youth Award from Mr Wilson Tan, President of the Singapore Computer Society |
On stage, proud winners at IT Leader Awards 2008 together with Mr Wilson Tan, President of the Singapore Computer Society and Guest of Honour, Dr Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts |
A second year student at the School of Computer Engineering, Lua Rui Ping has clinched this year’s prestigious IT Youth Award - a category in the IT Leader Awards 2008, organized by the Singapore Computer Society. This accolade aims to recognize outstanding youths in the field of IT below the age of 26, who have distinguished themselves through their achievements and contributions to the development of the industry.
Rui Ping is the proud winner of more than 25 informatics and robotics competitions, and is also a recipient of the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award. Since 2006, he has worked on research and projects for local start-ups in the outsourcing industry. In 2007 with a scholarship awarded by Apple, Rui Ping represented Singapore at the World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
A dynamic student, Rui Ping has been a catalyst for the burgeoning interest in computer technology at NTU where he takes on these roles: NTU-Singapore Computer Society’s Student Representative, Microsoft Student Partner and SUN Campus Ambassador. In his stewardship, he has organized various technology programmes, road shows and student workshops.
Adding to his illustrious portfolio, Rui Ping is the founder of CODEX (Collaborative Developers Ecosystem Experiment) - an augmented virtual collaboration environment that serves as a platform for students to develop their own ideas and products. He is also part of the SCE team, led by Assistant Professor Alex Tay that has taken up the TechX Challenge – which seeks to defy conventional thinking and stretch the boundary of science and technology, for defence and national security.
Victory
at the Undergraduate National Case Competition (UNCC)
(Jan 2008)
 |
 |
| From left:
Neo Shun Xiang Daryl,
Zhang Peifei,
Arthur Lee Gilbert (coach)
Pham Phuong Dung
and
Quek Hong Soon |
From left:
Shaun McDonell (president of UNCC committee),
Neo Shun Xiang Daryl, Pham Phuong Dung and
Zhang Peifei
Quek Hong Soon |
Second year Business & Computing student, Zhang Peifei was among the four that formed the NBS team who traveled to Montreal and claimed top spot at this year’s UNCC. Held at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, this event saw 17 schools worldwide competing for the coveted title. Even with notable contenders such as University of South Carolina and Babson College, University of Washington and University of Southern California - all of which are well-known for their knack at case competitions - the NBS team did not falter instead, they impressed the judges with their unique presentation style.
The grueling three day competition saw the students participating in group stages the first two days, and the grand finals on the third. The final challenge required the students to juggle both their composure and wit as they made their presentation to an extended judging panel from the business world. They were also required to answer a myriad of questions on the spot. Preparation time for each day was only three hours however, under the supervision of advisor, Dr Arthur Lee Gilbert, from ITOM (Information Technology & Operations Management) Division, the team performed consistently well throughout the competition.
The NBS team certainly rose above its competition, thwarting University of Alberta, University of McMaster, University of Corvinus and University of South Carolina from claiming top spot of overall champion. According to Daryl Neo, NBS team leader, “Our win in Montreal shows us that NBS students can go out and stand on our own two feet against the North American schools and do well. I am glad that the support we received from the school in terms of training and funding has also been vindicated through this win!”
SCE
Professors Honoured at Minister’s Innovation
Awards Ceremony 2007 (Nov
2007)
 |
| On
stage, the proud winners at MOT Awards Award
Ceremony 2007 include: Prof Hsu Wen Jing and
Prof Huang Shell Ying (first and fourth respectively
from the left). |
Associate Professors Hsu Wen Jing and Huang Shell
Ying, together with their industrial partners -
Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and
Simplus colleagues were the proud recipients of
the Merit Award at the Minister's Innovation Award
2007, held at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront.
Launched by the Ministry of Transport in 2002,
this award recognises creative projects which have
made an impact on Singapore’s transport infrastructure,
where it aims to promote innovation and creativity
in the Ministry and its statutory boards.
Both Prof Hsu and Prof Huang were applauded for
their research and development efforts on container
terminals. The product, a simulation software tool,
is used to set up and model operations rapidly in
a container terminal. This software takes careful
consideration of spatial configurations, and operational
policies to simulate the container operations in
a realistic manner. It also produces animation and
statistics that help users analyse efficiencies
and identify bottlenecks in operations.
Looking back on the experience, Prof Huang commented,
“The nature of our work can be classified
as applied research (problem driven). It is an interesting
experience because we need to use and adopt the
knowledge obtained from basic research to see its
benefits. At the same time, there are situations
which are beneficial to and further inspire basic
research. In addition, it is enriching to have industry
insiders and leaders sharing their perspectives
with us.”.
When asked about their achievement, Prof Hsu replied,
“We wish to express our special thanks to
NTU and SCE administration, as well as the MPA and
Simplus colleagues”.
PhD
student recognised at ICCV (Oct
2007)
Pham Minh Tri, a SCE PhD student based in the Centre
for Multimedia & Network Technology (CeMNet),
received a prestigious travel grant award from organizers
of the International Conference on Computer Vision
(ICCV). ICCV, the top and most competitive conference
in computer vision, was held in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil, from 14 to 20 October 2007. Minh Tri’s
ICCV paper was granted podium presentation status
at a highly competitive acceptance rate of 3.9%.
His paper “Fast training and selection of
Haar features using statistics in boosting-based
face detection”, co-authored with A/P Cham
Tat Jen, presented a method for rapidly speeding
up the training time for machine learned face detectors
by cleverly exploiting statistics of classifier-projected
exemplars. Face detectors, such as those used in
many cameras today, required an extended offline
training time at an order of weeks up until 2006,
with a recent dramatic improvement to 13 hours that
was reported in 2007. Minh Tri’s method not
only further reduces this training time to only
3 hours, but the computation time is also strongly
sublinear to the number of features used. This means
that many more features can be used with little
increases in training time, yielding a significant
improvement in accuracy at low cost. Minh Tri was
approached by many researchers requesting for source
code after his talk; a free release is planned for
early next year.
SCE
faculty & PhD student awarded MERLION Grant
2007 (Aug 2007)
| Félicitations!
(Congratulations in French) |
 |
| Navin (left) with his
PhD supervisor Ast/P Prasad. |
In promoting and fostering greater collaboration
between research institutes in Singapore and France,
the Science and Higher Education Section of the
Embassy of France in Singapore started the MERLION
programme in December 2005 to give support to joint
scientific and technological projects.
This year, there were a total of 49 proposals
contesting for the MERLION project grant, worth
15,000 Euros each. The projects “3D Video-based
Human Motion Capture” and “An architectural
framework for dynamically reconfigurable low power
software defined radio handset” submitted
respectively by SCE Chair A/P Seah Hock Soon and
Ast/P Vinod Prasad were among the 15 successful
projects. These projects were stringently selected
based on their scientific quality, originality and
methodology of the project, expertise of both the
French and Singaporean partners, scientific and
economic impact and applications, amongst the many
other criteria.
Ast/P Prasad’s PhD student Navin Michael
who works with him on the same project was also
awarded one of the 6 MERLION PhD grants. Their project
partner, France’s institute Supélec,
is a leading institute in the field of electrical
engineering and computer science. Navin will be
fully sponsored to spend almost half of his PhD
duration in Supélec.
The award ceremony was held on 3 August at the
French Embassy.
SCE
Congratulates its Graduates of Class 2007 (July
2007)
 |
| Proud
graduates of SCE. |
525 graduates marched joyously out of SCE this
year as promising young men and women. Significant
was that the group included our pioneer batch of
Computer Science students celebrating the completion
of a rigorous and enriching progamme which started
in 2004.
The convocation ceremony for the Class of 2007
was held on 27 July 2007. As the graduates sang
along to the tune of “Friends Forever”,
it closes a memorable chapter of their lives in
SCE, but at the same time a new passageway is opened.
We are confident our graduates will find many opportunities
and successes on this new path.
 |
 |
| University
scholar Tran Bao Duy (centre) with SCE’s
A/P Hui Siu Cheung (left) and his senior
high school teacher Mr Hoang Ngoc Hung. |
University
scholar Ding Ling (centre) with SCE's A/P Man
Zhihong (left) and her high school teacher Ms
Chen Yi. |
To recognize outstanding students and teaching
excellence, NTU launches the University Scholars
Award. Students who win this award will honour
a NTU faculty member and a teacher from his/her
junior college, polytechnic, or equivalent institution.
Among the 18 winners are SCE’s Ding Ling
and Tran Bao Duy. The NTU faculty members acknowledged
by them are A/P Man Zhihong and A/P Hui Siu Cheung
respectively. Both Ding Ling and Tran Bao Duy are
grateful for their inspirational teaching and unfaltering
mentorship to bring them to where they are now.
Indeed,
students and faculty members are at the heart
of SCE, they are the ones who break the trails
and set the tracks. To the graduates: Go on
and take on the world. In your pursuit of
success, do remember your alma mater and stay
in touch with us.
Best
Paper Award at ICDCS 2007 (Jun
2007)
Asst Prof Anwitaman Datta and collaborators, Professors
Ion Stoica and Mike Franklin from UC Berkeley,
won the best paper award at the International Conference
on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2007) in
June 2007 at Ontario, Canada. ICDCS is an IEEE
Computer Society sponsored premier conference with
a wide coverage of topics in Distributed Computing
and has a long history of significant achievements
and worldwide visibility.
The team commenced work in 2005 on a new genre
of overlay based multicast network for disseminating
information from popular but resource constrained
content/information sources. This communication
primitive called Latency Gradated Overlay (LagOver)
considers scenarios where information consumers
self-organise themselves according to their individual
resource constraints – for example, bandwidth
which individual participants can and are willing
to contribute; and the latency they are willing
to tolerate based on their personal needs and requirements
in receiving the information from the source.
Such a communication primitive finds immediate
use in applications such as Really Simple Syndication
(RSS) feeds aggregation in a peer-to-peer (P2P)
manner.
The
Credibles took 2nd place in ThinkQuest (Jun
2007)
Sponsored by the Oracle Education Foundation, ThinkQuest
is a web design competition that offers a unique
project-based learning experience for students across
the globe to work in teams to build innovative and
educational websites.
Taking the 2nd place for the under 19 category,
The Credibles comprises 3 SCE students, namely Sparsh
Agarwal, Devayan Mallick, and Pranav Ramkumar, as
well as students from Nanyang Business School, Georgia
Tech, USA, IIT Madras, India, and Institute of Technology,
Indonesia. The team built a website that deals with
the credibility of information on the Internet and
combines leading-edge design with useful content.
http://library.thinkquest.org/06aug/00446/home.html
The award ceremony will be held in San Francisco
on 14 November 2007.
Two-time
Champ at ACM International Collegiate Programming
Regional Contest (Dec
2006)
The
team comprises (L-R) Bramandia, Ardian,
and Ainun.
|
Mr
Kevin Jones led the SCE team to the top in
the ACM International Collegiate Programming
Regional Contest. But the glory while great
is only a repeat performance of SCE’s
triumph in 2005, when it also emerged tops
in the same regional competition, earning
it its 29th place world ranking. The glory
for this year is really our team managing
to crack all nine problems in the competition,
a first for the championships, never achieved
before. The worldwide championships are competitive
and demanding. Not for nothing are they described
as the Olympics of Programming. Only eighty-eight
teams out of 6,099 teams have advanced to
the World Finals. Our SCE team will be the
sole Singapore representative at the finals
in March 2007 in Tokyo – another glory?
|
Winner
at Vietnamese Intellect 2006 (Dec
2006)
Vuong Ba Quy
|
The
term mathematical expressions may be Greek
to many but not to final year SCE student
Vuong Ba Quy because it was his final year
project subject which won the top prize in
Vietnamese Intellect 2006, an annual prestigious
software contest for youth. Vuong can enjoy
a cash prize of $4,350, and a laptop.
Media Coverage
Thanh
Nien News.com
|
Best
Paper Award at VIP 2006 (Nov
2006)
 |
| From left: A/P Chan Syin, Wang Huan, Liu Song and A/P Clement Chia. |
The paper “Does Ontology help in Image Retrieval?”
won the Best Paper Award (sponsored by Nokia) at
the Asia-Pacific Workshop on Visual Information
Processing (VIP 2006) held in Beijing in November.
Authored by PhD student Wang Huan and Liu Song,
with supervisors A/P Clement Chia and A/P Chan Syin,
the paper presented several approaches for image
retrieval. They experimented with text vector approach,
moved on to text description ontology approach,
and finally to multi-modality ontology approach.
They then compared the results with Google Image
Retrieval and the observations have helped to answer
the question “Does ontology help in image retrieval?”.
Budding SCE Engineers at MotoDev Competition (Oct 2006)
 |
 |
| (L-R): Hui Ling, Gabriel and Sek Boon walked away with $1000 cash and a plaque. |
A group shot for the 2nd runner-up and category winner. |
2 groups of SCE students took part in Motorola’s MotoDev J2ME Developers Competition 2006 and displayed commendable performance. This was a 3-month long competition for all tertiary students, receiving more than 100 entries.
One of the teams that comprised third year students Gabriel Tay Jiawen, Peh Sek Boon and Tan Hui Ling clinched the 2nd runner-up position with their project BuSmart. BuSmart is a public bus directory mobile application that provides user with current public bus service information in Singapore, as well as online news and traffic updates, and advertisements. This useful application is easily accessible to anyone who has a mobile phone.
The other team consisting of first year students Eugene Tan Jie Ming and Teo Wen Qiang was the winner for the New Economy Application category. They developed iNmap (interactive NTU map) which supersedes the limitations of conventional maps by providing more detailed information such as the location of each tutorial room, or the shortest route to the user’s destination.
Gabriel is planning to set up a SCE Mobile Application Developer Club to serve as a platform for like-minded course mates to exchange and share experience in the area of mobile application development.
Dr Tay – Excellent in Teaching (Oct 2006)
 |
| President Su (left) presenting the award to Dr Tay at the Faculty & Staff Dinner. |
In October, Dr Alex Tay was awarded the prestigious Nanyang Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest accolade given by the university to faculty who are passionate and committed towards teaching.
Winning the award for the first time since Dr Tay started teaching in 2001, he said, “When I was young, I was a weak student who had difficulty understanding lessons. It was not until university days when I met professors who provided the knowledge, passion and motivation to extend my horizons. This motivated me to learn, explore and finally doing exceptionally well for my first degree. Through that experience, I understand the need to provide the sparks to ignite a student’s passion for learning.”
Dr Tay is also in the SCE Career Guidance Committee. His enthusiasm is clearly displayed when he relentlessly explains and counsels students on what path they should take in their course of study and/or career choice.
Kudos to Dr Tay! May more SCE students be inspired by you.
SCE
Women grace prestigious women’s conference
(Oct 2006)
 |
| Neha
and Ding Ling at the conference: Sharing knowledge
with about 1300 women from academia, industry
and government |
The prestigious Grace Hopper Conference 2006 in
San Diego, California, had direct contact with the
talents and brilliance of SCE, in particular, its
women, when Neha Chachra, Ding Ling and Priyanka
Gupta hit its shores. These three outstanding students
were awarded the Global Community Scholarship sponsored
by Google and the Anita Borg Institute for Women
and Technology. They were among 83 scholarship recipients
selected from a pool of 550 applicants worldwide.
An exhilarated Neha highlighted the scoop of such
an award: “It was a remarkable experience
coming in touch with some of the most established
women in computing and to know about the on-going
research in some of the finest institutions in the
world. I am very proud to have represented my university.”
The Grace Hopper Conference is the world’s
premier gathering of women in computing and is designed
to propel the research and career interests of women
in computing to the frontline. The Anita Borg Institute
is an international organisation that aims to increase
the impact of women on all aspects of technology,
and in turn to ensure the positive impact of technology
on women.
Runner-up
for Best Student Paper Award at ICONIP 2006
(Oct 2006)
In the recent 13th International Conference on
Neural Information Processing held in Hong Kong,
PhD student Arun Kumar nabbed the runner-up position
for Best Student Paper Award. The winning paper
“Detection of brain activation from functional
MR images using power spectral density” was
written together with supervisor A/P Jagath Rajapakse.
In the paper, Arun & A/P Rajapakse presented
an efficient method for detecting activation on
single and multiple cycle functional MRI (fMRI)
data based on a hidden Markov model using power
spectral density vectors. Their method demonstrated
the efficacy to detect brain activations by using
both synthetic and real fMRI data.
Most
Cited Scientist (Oct
2006)
 |
| A/P
Jagath Rajapakse |
SCE’s A/P Jagath Rajapakse is among the most
cited scientists of all fields for the period 1996
– 2006. So says Thomson ISI Web of Science.
The Web of Science is a platform that provides seamless
access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary
information from approximately 8,700 of the most
prestigious, high impact research journals in the
world.
A visiting professor at the Biological Engineering
Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), USA, A/P Rajapakse’s research investigates
human brain function, using imaging techniques and
bioinformatics, leading to new drugs and behavioral
or stem cell therapies for brain disease. He has
authored over 200 research publications in refereed
journals, books, and conference proceedings, in
the fields of brain imaging, computational biology,
and machine learning.
8th
Hitachi Youth Leadership Initiative (Sept
2006)
 |
| Vincent
Chow |
SCE is proud of final year student Vincent Chow
whom with three others will be representing Singapore
in the 8th Hitachi Youth Leadership Initiative (HYLI),
an annual Asian student leaders conference. Hitachi
organises this major regional community programme
to contribute to the development of next generation
leaders in Asia. Student leaders enjoy different
country venues every year as the backdrop to key
discussion of regional or global issues, while also
enjoying interaction among themselves and with the
local community.
Vincent is working on his paper “What China
and India's Development Can Bring to Asia”.
He will be presenting his views in Hanoi, Vietnam
in January 2007. The HYLI originated in 1996.
Microsoft
Research Asia 2006 Fellowship Award (Aug
2006)
A SCE student has scooped the Microsoft Research
Asia (MSRA) Award, making it the 2nd consecutive
year SCE has made a strong impression with its research
quality. PhD student He Qi was backed up by good
publication records, writing and presentation skills,
with an intriguing research area of Multi-lingual
Anticipatory Event Detection.
14 researchers and research managers reviewed a
total of 63 applications, making this year’s
event the stiffest competition so far. With guidance
from A/P Lim Ee Peng and Ast/P Chang Kuiyu, He Qi
hopes to use his award on an internship with Microsoft
Research Asia sometime early next year.
The annual Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship Program
began in 1999 to support talented PhD students such
as He Qi, who demonstrate potential for research
leadership. Besides the honour of the award, there
is also a cash prize, a plaque and an attachment
with Microsoft Research Asia Lab in Beijing for
a period of 3 to 6 months.
SCE’s
research recognised at US SIGKDD 2006 (Aug
2006)
The ACM SIGKDD is respected as the most prestigious
conference in the arena of data mining research,
and at the recent 12th ACM SIGKDD International
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining
(SIGKDD 2006), in Philadelphia, USA, A/P Sourav
S Bhowmick with his PhD student Zhao Qiankun, gained
distinction with their paper, “Event Detection
from the Evolution of Click-Through Data”
by winning the ACM Student Travel Award. A collaborative
effort with Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, A/P
Bhowmick, Zhao, along with T-Y Liu and W-Y Ma (from
Microsoft Research Asia) investigated a novel approach
that would detect events from search engine log
data by analysing the evolution pattern of the data.
Such knowledge of events finds use in several applications
such as event-based advertisement, event directory,
event-based search results, and web-based event
alert system.
Speaking about the award, A/P Bhowmick noted that
“To the best of our knowledge, this is the
first time a full research paper from NTU is accepted
in SIGKDD. The acceptance rate of full research
papers in SIGKDD is 11% this year. The Student Travel
Award is presented to selected papers whose first
author is a student.”
Congratulations to Zhao who received a certificate,
a sum of 500 USD, and free registration with the
SIGKDD.
National
Day Honours for SCE Faculty (Aug
2006)
Two SCE faculty received national recognition for
their outstanding contributions to Singapore education
by being awarded the National Day Awards, the Public
Administration Medal.
Congratulations to Professor Angela Goh and Professor
Thambipillai Srikanthan! Both have excelled in teaching,
research, and administration, bringing honor to
SCE in many ways, besides being respected and loved
by students and peers. Prof Goh was awarded the
Silver Medal and Prof Sri received the Bronze Medal.
Prof Goh is SCE’s Vice-Dean (Academic) who
also teaches. She wants to bring attention to the
“many others in NTU who are dedicated and
have worked hard”, and conveys her appreciation
and gratitude to everyone who has given her help.
She states “the award belongs to all my colleagues
who have assisted me in one way or another.”
Heading the Centre for High Performance Embedded
Systems and the Intelligent Devices & Systems
Cluster, Prof Sri has dedicated more than 15 years
to education in Singapore, and has also made significant
contributions towards advancing research in embedded
systems.
UK-Singapore
Partners in Science Collaboration Awards
(July 2006)
Some lucky SCE faculty staff will soon be able
to enjoy Merry England through overseas travel grants
awarded by the British High Commission, as part
of the UK-Singapore Partners in Science Collaboration
initiative. The lucky seven are A/P Francis Lee,
A/P Alvis Fong, A/P Alexei Sourin, Ast/P Malcolm
Low, Ast/P Ong Yew Soon, Ast/P Vinod A Prasad and
Ast/P Miao Chunyan. They will spend time with potential
overseas partner institutions to explore and share
research visions, obtain insights into existing
research studies, from which might emerge future
collaborative research.
JAL
Scholarships for SCE students (July
2006)
| |
| Zhi Yong
(left) and King Sen (right) with classmate Yu
Ru whom also won the JAL scholarship. |
Tan Zhi Yong and Chan King Sen Year 2 computer
engineering students have bagged two out of three
JAL Foundation scholarships.
They now are on the route to future leadership
together with other university students from the
Asia/Oceania region, enhanced by immersion in Japan,
which will help them gain understanding and knowledge
of this fascinating culture. This will come about
from a 21-day all-expenses-covered stint in Japan,
including courses for global citizenship, a research
field trip, an Asia Forum in Ishikawa and homestays
in Tokyo and Kanazawa.
For the lucky pair, interests in the language started
with Japanese dramas. Zhi Yong had started learning
Japanese since secondary school days and continued
pursuing his interest in NTU by taking it as a general
elective. King Sen started learning Japanese in
NTU and now has a good grasp of the language. They
both intend advancing their studies in Japanese.
PADS
2006 gets SCE Best Paper Award (May
2006)
The 20th ACM/IEEE/SCS Workshop on Principles of
Advanced and Distributed Simulation (PADS) was the
scene of triumph for Chen Dan, A/P Stephen J Turner
and A/P Cai Wentong when out of 21 other papers,
they won the coveted Best Paper Award with “A
Framework for Robust HLA-based Distributed Simulations”.
This paper introduced a framework for robust HLA-based
distributed simulations using a “Decoupled
Federate Architecture”. What this framework
does is exploit the architecture to provide a generic
fault-tolerant model that uses a “dynamic
substitution” approach to deal with failure.
It supports reusability of legacy federate code,
and is platform-neutral and independent of federate
modeling approaches.
Agent
‘Neil’ clinches 2nd place at ART Competition
(May 2006)
| |
| Weng Jianshu
at the ART Competition in Future University-Hakodate. |
This agent is no spy but the project developed
by SCE PhD student Weng Jianshu and his team members
won them second prize at the International Joint
Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent
Systems (AAMAS) in Hokodate Japan in May this year.
Agent ‘Neil’ outdid 19 other research
teams from different universities and institutes
in the Agent Reputation and Trust (ART) Competition.
The team was Jianshu, supervisors Prof Angela Goh
and Asst Prof Miao Chun Yan from SCE, with Dr. Shen
Zhiqi and Prof Robert Gay from Information Communication
Institute of Singapore at NTU School of Electrical
& Electronic Engineering. The trust and reputation
evaluation metrics used by ‘Neil’ will
be further applied to a A*Star-funded national research
project.
Data
Mining Gets Competitive at PAKDD 2006 (Apr
2006)
 |
| From left
to right: IDA Assistant Chief Executive Mr Khoong
Hock Yun, Mr Hanny Yulius Limanto and Dr Tay
Joc Cing. |
The 10th PAKDD 2006 (Pacific-Asia Conference on
Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining) together with
SAS (Singapore Institute of Statistics and the Pattern
Recognition & Machine Intelligence Association
of Singapore) opened data mining to the field of
champions when they hosted a data mining competition
in the first quarter of the year.
Participating teams had to solve a classification
problem with the objective to accurately predict
some customer data for a telco operator. SCE 4th
year student Hanny Yulius Limanto together with
Dr Tay Joc Cing, an SCE staff, and Dr Andrew Watkins
from Mississippi State University emerged as the
Champions in the University Category. The team made
use of an immune-system-inspired data mining algorithm
to predict the data.
Ardian
– A Champ again at Google India Code Jam 2006 (Apr
2006)
 |
 |
| Ardian
– The Google Champ. |
Ardian
(centre) with 2nd and 3rd prize winners. |
The 2006 Google India Code Jam competition attracted
more than 14,000 programmers from India and South
East Asia. After an initial rigorous qualifying
round, 500 proceeded to round two. The top 50 scorers
from this flew to Bangalore for the Grand Finals.
Ardian Kristanto Poernomo, SCE Year 4 undergraduate,
repeated his glorious win as Champion last year,
when he was crowned the Champion again this year.
He humbly states ‘Indeed I am very happy!
This year’s competition is much tougher than
last year as many participants have become better.
Even until the last minute I wasn’t sure if
I could win… I was very lucky.’
Also from SCE, Nguyen Phuong Ngoc and Prima Chairunnanda
came in fourth and fifth respectively in this competition.
Ardian received a cash prize of Rs 122,000, while
Phuong Ngoc and Prima received Rs 56,000 each.
SCE
at Discover Engineering@NTU 2006 (Mar
2006)
 |
 |
| Event committee chairman, A/P Lee Keok Kee, (left) explaining a project to a visitor. |
Hands-on
experience helps in understanding computing. |
Held on 11 March 2006 at the Nanyang Auditorium, Discover Engineering@NTU called on all engineering
schools in NTU to display interesting exhibits and
showcase research projects to the public, especially
to budding A-level and polytechnic students who
would like to explore engineering studies.
A friendly competition was conducted between the
engineering schools on that day. Visitors were asked
to vote for the Most Popular Research Project, Most
Popular Undergraduate Project, and Most Popular
Nanyang Research Program Project.
SCE won the first and second prizes in the
Most
Popular Undergraduate Project category
- 1st: Ast/P Miao Chun Yan, Abhinav
Agrawal and Weng Jianshu (Project title: Multi
Agent System for Interactive Lab)
- 2nd: Ast/P Franklin Fu, Cheok Meeau
Chin, Lee Ri Kang Kelvin, Lin Jiating Justin, Koh
Hong Hui, Nguyen Hoang Anh and Ong Sze Wee Francis
(Project title: Faculty Mining via SIMPLICITY)
For Most Popular Nanyang Research Program
Project, SCE teams came in first and third
- 1st: Li Fang, Choon Kean Fatt,
Tejas Shikhare and Victor Chan
(Project title: Palmprint
Classification)
- 3rd: Ast/P Vivekanand Gopalkrishnan,
Swati Gupta and Zhiren Yang
(Project title: OLAP
Reporting Tool for Mobile Clients)
The Discover Engineering@NTU 2006 committee was
chaired by SCE’s A/P Lee Keok Kee who, together
with his committee members, contributed greatly
to the success of this event.
