A new research institute will be set up by the end of the year to drive education, research and entrepreneurship in digital finance in the region. The institute, called the Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF), is jointly developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), the three organisations announced on Tuesday (Aug 4).

It will be hosted at NUS and offer a master's programme, as well as award scholarships to students to pursue further research at the doctoral level. It will also train post-doctoral fellows in the areas of digital finance and fintech. Through its education programme, the AIDF will build the FinTech leadership pipeline for Singapore and the wider region. The institute will be based at the Kent Ridge campus of NUS.

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21 July 2020 – NUS Computing Provost's Chair Professor Abhik Roychoudhury and his team received the ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award at the 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2020), held online from 27 June to 19 July 2020. The conference provides a platform for researchers to present and discuss innovations and trends in the field of software engineering.

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Confined to their homes during the circuit breaker period, Singapore’s Covid-19 lockdown, people began ordering certain products in earnest: fitness equipment, home office accessories, flour and other baking goods. If, like many, you were forced to turn to online shopping in recent months, you might have realised what a complex beast it can be.

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Using Intel’s neuromorphic chip, Loihi, researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) developed an artificial skin that allows robots to detect touch 1,000 times faster than the human sensory nervous system. The system can also identify the shape, texture and hardness of objects 10 times faster than the blink of an eye. The researchers believe this work could improve human-robot interaction, making things like caregiving robots and automated robotic surgery more feasible.

NUS said enabling a human-like sense of touch in robotics could significantly improve current functionality, offering the example of robotic arms fitted with artificial skin that could easily adapt to changes in goods manufactured in a factory, using tactile sensing to identify and grip unfamiliar objects with the right amount of pressure to prevent slipping.

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NUS Computing announced the launch of a new NUS-FinTechSG Programme on 6 July 2020. Offered by the NUS FinTech Lab and Strategic Technology Management Institute (STMI), this new programme aims to nurture Singapore’s next generation of Financial Technology (FinTech) talents and full stack developers.

On top of gaining knowledge in FinTech, students will also have the option to access SGUnited traineeships and employment opportunities with partner enterprises.

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2 July 2020 – In one second, the human eye can only scan through a few photographs. Computers, on the other hand, are capable of performing billions of calculations in the same amount of time. With the explosion of social media...

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New research by a team of NUS Computing professors is promising to restore privacy to individuals by making their online images unrecognisable to even the most advanced facial recognition technologies.

Led by Professor Mohan Kankanhalli, Dean of NUS Computing, the research team from NUS Computer Science has developed a technique that safeguards sensitive information in photos by making subtle changes that are almost imperceptible to humans, but render selected features undetectable by known algorithms.

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Today’s virtual assistants and smart devices have come a long way. They can tell you if you’re running low on milk, what the weather will be like tomorrow, or change the TV channel without you having to lift a finger. But if researcher Desmond Ong has his way, the Google Homes and Alexas of the future might be able to add another attribute to their already impressive resume — emotional intelligence.

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24 June 2020 – NUS Computing Distinguished Professor Ooi Beng Chin and his team have won a 2020 ACM SIGMOD Research Highlight Award at the 2020 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, which was held online from 14 to 19 June. The conference is a leading international forum for researchers who explore and advance research on data management.

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24 June 2020 – NUS Computing Professor Roger Zimmermann and his team won second place at the Adaptation Algorithms for Near-Second Latency Grand Challenge, held online from March to May this year.

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When Yingda Zhai was working on his PhD in Austin, Texas, he used to stroll through the neighbourhood he lived in not too far from campus. On these walks, he saw something that puzzled him, something that would set the course of his research for the next few years.

What Zhai noticed was this: his neighbourhood wasn’t that well-to-do, and lining the streets were shops like MetroPCS, Cricket Wireless, and FamilyMobile. These small cell phone companies, also known as mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), offered cheap plans without any contracts or credit checks. But the snag was that they came with slower connection speeds, smaller network coverage, and without features such as phone tethering.

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10 June 2020 – NUS Computing Distinguished Professor Ooi Beng Chin has won the 2020 ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award, for his contributions to the development of database systems and databases. Prof Ooi received the award at the 2020 ACM SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data, held online from June 14 to 19.

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Full-time National Servicemen (NSF) who are cyber specialists can now take modules from NUS Computing’s Information Security programme, after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for a new Work-Learn Programme by Dean Mohan Kankanhalli and Defence Cyber Chief Brigadier-General Mark Tan.

The academic credits earned in the programme can be counted towards a full degree.

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If you have been to parts of Orchard Road or Bugis Junction, two busy shopping streets in Singapore, you might have noticed something unusual. There, familiar “traffic light men” flash red and green to help guide pedestrians safely across the road. But these are also accompanied by matching LED strips on the ground.

In recent years, Singapore and a handful of other cities, including Sydney, Tel Aviv, and Augsburg, have embedded lights into pavements at busy intersections as an additional safety measure for pedestrians. Ilsan in South Korea has gone even further, employing flickering lights and laser beams at road crossings to warn walkers of the dangers ahead.

Whatever the means, their target is the same: the heads-down tribe of smartphone zombies — people who walk around perpetually glued to their mobile device.

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To understand the work she does, Angela Yao says to imagine a future where robot helpers are commonplace. Whether they’re workplace assistants, companions, or domestic helpers, robots need to be able to do one crucial thing, says the assistant professor from NUS Computing.

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According to a recent Fitch Solutions report, the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to lower levels of funding for fintech startups in the months ahead. This may start a trend of fintech startups being acquired by large corporate and tech companies.

Associate Professor Keith Carter discussed how these acquisitions can benefit both parties.

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To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the Singapore government released the contact tracing app, TraceTogether, which has been downloaded by approximately 20 per cent of the population. However, this is still far below from the recommended 75 percent adoption rate.

Professor Atreyi Kankanhalli discussed how wearable dongles can be used to supplement contact tracing efforts.

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6 May 2020 – Xilinx will be establishing Xilinx® Adaptive Compute Clusters (XACC) at four of the world’s most prestigious universities — The National University of Singapore (NUS), ETH Zurich, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC).

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These days, artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere we look. It’s what powers predictive searches on Google, enables Spotify and Amazon to recommend new songs and products, puts self-driving vehicles on the road, helps doctors to quickly diagnose diseases…the list goes on. With the presence of AI growing ever larger in our lives, so has the need for us to trust it.

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It was July 2011 in Pattaya, Thailand. While guiding the Singaporean team at the International Olympiad for Informatics (IOI), Dr Steven Halim was struck by an idea to improve the teaching of algorithms to students—by creating a website where many different algorithms can be learnt through animation.

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