23 September 2020 – Four NUS Computing professors and seven alumni were named in the inaugural Singapore 100 Women in Technology List. The list is a collaboration between the Singapore Computer Society, Infocomm Media Development Authority, SG Women in Tech and Mediacorp.
Provost’s Chair Professor Wynne Hsu, Professor Janice Lee Mong Li, Professor Tulika Mitra and Adjunct Professor Kwong Yuk Wah were named in the list, which was unveiled in early September this year.
Learn more ...
NUS and ST Engineering are collaborating on a S$9 million, multi-year advanced digital technologies research programme to further their common goals of building a people-centric, smart future for Singapore and beyond.
Research efforts of this new programme will focus on technologies related to Smart City as well as Smart Maintenance, Repairs and Overhaul (MRO), covering five areas: resource optimisation and scheduling; prescriptive analytics; decision and sense-making; reasoning engine and machine learning; as well as digital twin. These research areas support ST Engineering’s focus on developing differentiated and people-centric, smart city solutions that meet the present and future needs of cities around the world. The interdisciplinary research areas are also aligned with NUS’ endeavours as a driving force behind smart city innovations, leveraging its deep expertise that spans multiple domains and faculties.
Professor Chen Tsuhan, NUS Deputy President (Research & Technology), said, “As Singapore advances its position as a Smart Nation, having the right enterprise architecture to support those goals will determine if true digital transformation can be achieved. Over the years, NUS and ST Engineering have enjoyed a close and productive relationship. This new collaboration will combine NUS’ expertise in the science of cities with ST Engineering's industry knowledge to co-create people-centric Smart City solutions that will form the foundational systems to bring about not just impactful, but radical, change to the lives of people in Singapore and the world.”
Just two months ago, Mr Na Yi Rong had little to no knowledge of Financial Technology (FinTech). The Engineering Science graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS) is now working full time as a product management lead at a local FinTech start-up, after receiving the job offer when he was participating in the NUS-FinTechSG Programme.
Jointly developed by the NUS FinTech Lab and Strategic Technology Management Institute (STMI), the programme was launched on 6 July 2020 to nurture Singapore’s next generation of FinTech talents and full stack developers. The pioneer batch of 25 students graduated on 10 September in a virtual ceremony after undergoing a structured two-month intensive full-time course on the fundamentals of financial services technology and business.
Your heartbeat quickens as you watch your video game avatar run through the twisting corridors of the castle. There is still treasure to be found and a hostage to be rescued, and time is running out. Suddenly, a large shadow looms on the dim candlelit stone walls, followed by a low roar that sounds awfully close. You take a deep breath, clutch your mace a bit tighter, and ready yourself to attack. You swing around the corner, weapon raised, and…
28 August 2020 – Six NUS Computing final-year students and alumni received the NUS Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize (OURP) for Academic Year 2019/2020.
The annual, university-wide competition encourages undergraduates to pursue research projects and recognises exceptional undergraduate researchers for their work.
27 August 2020 – Six former and current NUS Computing students, along with NUS Computing Associate Professor Ben Leong, developed a fully operational national contact tracing workflow management web application with the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), in 3 months.
A group of security researchers from the department of computer science at the National University of Singapore has created an attack model they call SpiKey to determine the key shape that will open any tumbler lock.
Soundarya Ramesh, Harini Ramprasad and Jun Han are the talented hackers behind SpiKey, which they say "significantly lowers the bar for an attacker," when compared to a more traditional lock-picking attack. The theoretical methodology is deceptively simple, listening for the sound of the key as it moves past tumbler pins in turn when the key is inserted in the lock.
The Singapore hackers use a simple smartphone to record the sound of the key being inserted, and withdrawn, with a smartphone and then observe the time between each tumbler pin click using their custom key reverse-engineering application. This forms the secret of the key, the fine-grained bitting depths which, the researchers report, can differ by as little as 15 milli-inches, or 0.381 millimeters.
"As SpiKey infers the shape of the key, it is inherently robust against anti-picking features in modern locks," the research paper states, "and grants multiple entries without leaving any traces."
19 August 2020 – The Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF) will be funding three research projects by NUS Computing Associate Professors He Bingsheng, Huang Ke-Wei and Liang Zhenkai.
In 2015, Shi Ying Lim was working on her Ph.D. in Austin, Texas. As part of her work, she studied a budding health IT startup that was trying to develop an app to help patients with chronic diseases.
The aim was to help patients — who were living with conditions such as diabetes or had just been discharged after surgery — better manage their care. Among other things, the app would send patients reminders to take their medication or change their dressing, and to contact their doctors if complications arose.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Page 10 of 25