Dear Alumni, Friends and Colleagues,
It's nice to see so many familiar faces tonight. When ISCS was first started in 1983, the class size for the initial few years was kept at around 200. You were then a very coherent group. I remember there were many social and sporting activities. I took part in many of them at that time because I was single then. I still vividly remember all the jogging sessions we had together, training for the marathon. Many of you still remember the logic design course that I conducted in year one, and the computer graphics course in year three. I still remember the assignment that I gave to your class in computer graphics -- a color table animation assignment on our modest IBM PCs. The assignment was tedious but many of you did extremely well.
All these happened more than 10 years ago. How things have changed. Many of you would have remembered the 4 Apollo workstations we had then. They cost us a bomb and were supposed to be the best graphics workstations at that time. But they became obsolete in less than 3 years. Now, even a PC costing less than $2,000 has more capability and functionality than those expensive workstations.
We are now in the age where computers are everywhere and are mostly interconnected. Networked information systems and world wide web are penetrating every aspects of our life, including the ways we communicate with one another, entertain ourselves, do our banking or business, learn and many others. Being computer science trained, and fortunately for most of us, the basic concepts of computer technologies have not changed. I am sure all of you have no problems in keeping up with the latest development. Otherwise, we would have failed in our primary education task.
What we see changed are the scale and pervasiveness of computer technology in our everyday life. As the computing technology changes, so are the opportunities. Since the early days of Apple and Microsoft, the opportunities for start-ups and business ventures have not changed. Software is a peculiar industry. Few large-scale laboratories or institutions have succeeded in developing any best seller product. Most innovations started with small groups, working on many different topics, often in the research laboratories at the University. The strategy is to let the 100 flowers bloom, and in the process, ensure a few of them bear fruits.
The main engine behind this phenomenal growth in software technology in the US is the University and its partnership with industry. It is largely fueled by a large army of dedicated graduate students guided by professors. It is in this backdrop that the School of Computing was established on July 1st, 1998. We are barely a couple of months old. The new School is formed in recognition of the leading role played by the former DISCS, and the importance of IT in the continuing growth of our nation. The School will be multi-disciplinary in nature, and aims to be a center of excellence in IT education and research. It has two departments -- the Departments of Information Systems, and Computer Science. Our staff/student strength has grown tremendously over the last 10 years. We now have over 80 academic staff, over 10 TAs, and over 40 full-time research staff like RAs and post-Docs. This year, we enrolled close to 600 undergraduate students. They are channeled into a number of degree programmes -- the 4-year CS, 4-year IS, 3-year IT, and 4-year Computer Engineering. The latter is a collaborative programme with the Department of EE. We also have over 100 part-time MSc coursework students, and over 150 full-time MSc and PhD research students, and this number is still growing rapidly. With the setting up of School, we will also consolidate our research. We have set up large Centers in the areas of Systems Security, Internet Research, Information Mining and Extractions, and Telemedia Strategy. We also have significant research in the areas of graphics and VR, database, IS, and constraint-logic programme. We are poised to do large-scale research of social and economic impact.
With the setting up of School, the important task now is to develop it into one that we can all be proud of. You can play active roles in at least three areas. First, you can participate actively in our Alumni Association and give us feedback on our research and graduate programmes. You can do so by communicating with us in various means including through our E-mail forwarding service and the electronic discussion group. You can advise us on our future plans that are beneficial to both you and our existing students. You can let us know what you and the industry want in terms of research and MSc programmes.
Secondly, you can play a key role in encouraging entrepreneurship. You can help promote the spirit by spreading your experience and success stories to our existing students. Thirdly, you can help us cement links with industry, and come back to work with our research groups on projects with commercialization potential. Thus there are many reasons that we should stay in touch, and together we can build a mutually beneficial relationship.
Every year, NUS organizes the Alumni day for you all, and the School will also organize one or two research Open House. I hope to see many of you participating in or helping to organize these events. Lastly, I would like to thank the organizers, for putting in extra special efforts, to make this gathering possible. It will be a hard act for other graduating classes to follow.
Have a nice evening.
Associate Professor Chua Tat Seng
Acting Dean
School of Computing
29 August 1998