Remember choose your own adventure books or the multi-player online game Club Penguin? Local educational technology start-up LevelUp World hopes to use these as models for a smarter and more enjoyable mode of learning for children under the age of 12.

Since its inception in 2010, LevelUp has managed to secure some S$100,000 in equity free funding from competitions and grants, such as Oxford's Incubator and the European Young Innovator Award in 2020.

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Waffles with maple syrup are a welcome breakfast treat, or pair them up with fried chicken for an irresistible savoury dish. The flexibility of the popular food item helped fire up the imagination of two National University of Singapore (NUS) students during their time with the NUS Overseas Colleges programme in Silicon Valley, and spurred them to create a business idea. The founders, Mr Auston Quek, 27, and Mr Zames Chua, 26, started the firm about five months ago, after graduating from NUS last year, following a chat about the idea over lunch - which happened to be waffles and fried chicken.

Called Waffle Technologies, the firm provides point-of-sale services to bricks-and-mortar food and beverage outlets. It aims to provide insights to these businesses by analysing the data from their transactions as well as loyalty and rewards software. So far, the firm has racked up a client base of 42 customers and the two founders manage a team of six.

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As the fintech ecosystem continues to flourish in Singapore, there is a growing need for talent. To prepare for this, the government together with these institutions are working towards creating a strong fintech talent pipeline, equipped with the relevant skills for tomorrow’s workforce. Recognising the gap in the fintech talent pool, these institutions are also forming strategic collaborations to strengthen the talent pipeline with relevant skills through education.

National University of Singapore (NUS) – FinTechSG Programme
On 6 July 2020, the National University of Singapore (NUS) School of Computing launched the NUS FinTechSG Programme. Students will have the opportunity to learn about contemporary issues in the fintech industry, front-end and back-end development, cloud systems, blockchain, algorithmic trading, and the integration of financial domain know-how.

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A new centre at the National University of Singapore (NUS) is rolling out a raft of special programmes for people with autism, children from low-income homes and social service agencies. The initiatives, which offer NUS Computing students opportunities to take part in community service, are helmed by the Centre for Computing for Social Good and Philanthropy, which was launched yesterday at the NUS School of Computing. The centre was set up with a gift of $1.5 million from the Mrs Lee Choon Guan Trust Fund, which supports initiatives linked to healthcare and education. Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat, the guest of honour at the launch, said the push for an inclusive digital society must continue as digital disruptions gain momentum in the future. 

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Some believed Chan Wei Zhang would never succeed academically after he was placed in the lowest stream in primary five and later scored 109 for the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE). However, they would be wrong. Chan, now 28, will graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with honours next month. In his interview with Lianhe Zaobao, Chan said that he gets "looked at differently" by some people who know about his academic history in primary and secondary school and his ITE education. Therefore, after getting accepted into the NUS School of Computing, he made it his goal to graduate so that he could prove wrong those who believed in stereotypes of the less academically inclined. Chan told The New Paper that he was unsure at first if he could cope with the NUS curriculum given his academic background before adding that "it turned out to be a lot better than expected". During his time at NUS, Chan also volunteered to teach coding and networking basics to children from low-income families, he told Lianhe Zaobao. He will soon graduate from NUS and will be working as a software engineer at a multinational corporation.

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Since Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) kicked in with its no dining in restriction, many F&B establishments, especially hawkers, have been struggling due to the reduced footfall. Apart from governmental efforts, a 28-year-old Singaporean user of the Reddit forum who goes by the waffleboy92 handle, launched a crowd-sourced Google Map layer that shows some of digitally-disadvantaged hawkers that have been hit hard to raise their visibility online. The map layer creator is inviting others to contribute to the map to give the digitally-disadvantaged hawkers more exposure. According to his first post published on May 23, the Redditor, whose real name is M Thirukkumaran, was inspired to help local hawkers after reading KF Seetoh's Facebook post. The aim of his initiative is to help those who wish to support digitally disadvantaged hawkers in their vicinity but are unaware of who and where these hawkers are located.

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Madanmohan Rao reviews Leading with IT: Lessons from Singapore's First CIO, on YourStory.com. Insights and stories on riding the “technology tiger” in an enterprise are well captured in the book, Leading with IT: Lessons from Singapore's First CIO, by Alex Siow. Topics covered include management of IT infrastructure and applications, information processing, knowledge management, data governance, cybersecurity, change management, and organisational culture. The book is written in a compelling storytelling manner, and also integrates research from leading consultancies. A glossary of terms, chronology of events, and reference section would have been a welcome addition to the material.

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Universiti Teknologi Brunei (UTB) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Cybersecurity R&D Laboratories (NCL) of the National University of Singapore (NUS) via video conference yesterday. Signing on behalf of UTB was Dean of School of Computing and Informatics (SCI) Dr Mohamad Saiful bin Haji Omar while NUS was represented by Dean of NUS Computing Professor Mohan Kankanhalli. 

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The Covid-19 crisis in India has escalated in the past month, with the country reporting several hundred thousand new cases per day and the total number of cases surpassing two million on May 4. Hoping to raise money to support efforts in the fight against Covid-19 in India, one Singapore-based couple started a dollar-for-dollar matching crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than S$192,000 from donors around the world in just 11 days. Singaporean permanent residents (PRs) Prantik Mazumdar and Dipti Kamath told Mothership that they started the fundraiser because of deep concern for their family, friends, colleagues, and loved ones living in India. Prantik has been been living in Singapore for 20 years, coming here initially to complete his Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) School of Computing. He became a PR in 2007. They decided to provide help from the outside by galvanising and mobilising the Indian diaspora, as well as their friends, colleagues, and network in Singapore, through a campaign on local crowdfunding platform Milaap, which was founded in Singapore by two NUS School of Computing alumni, Anoj Viswanathan and Sourabh Sharma.

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The world first caught wind of a massive breach linked to cyber firm SolarWinds last December. The breach was unique not only in its scale, but also in its method of attack. Hackers targeted the very first stop of the entire cyber line of defense: the cybersecurity software.

One surprising factor was the scale of these attacks, say Abhik Roychoudhury, Provost’s Chair Professor at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Computer Science, and Liang Zhenkai, who is Associate Professor at the same department.

First, we need to rethink what makes ‘trustworthy’ software, say Roychoudhury and Liang. “Think of this as extra vigilance – why trust software because it comes from a trusted supplier?” they add. The second lesson is to prioritise application security, which means making services that run on individual devices more secure. Every device – be it a mobile phone, laptop or IoT sensor – that connects to an organisation’s central network presents an opportunity for attackers to strike. The bad news is that software for these devices are “most fragile (and poorly written), allowing attackers easy access,” Roychoudhury and Liang note.

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The term "NFT" (Non-Fungible Token) has become very popular recently, and it has been constantly appearing in news about the sale of artworks. The digital collage image file "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" created by American digital artist Beeple was traded in the form of NFT. Last month, it sold for a record US$69.3 million (approximately S$93.1 million) at the New York auction, shocking the art circle. The buyer turned out to be an Indian blockchain entrepreneur who settled in Singapore.

Associate Professor Hahn Jungpil, head of the Department of Information Systems and Analytics at the School of Computing, National University of Singapore, said in an interview that the independent authentication function of NFT can derive many usage scenarios. "For example, a virtual item in an online game cannot be traded outside the game. If the game is discontinued, the item will disappear. With NFT, the owner of the virtual item can sell it to people outside the online game."

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The National University of Singapore (NUS) will offer two new graduate programmes in digital financial technology (FinTech) in the new academic year, to help build a robust ecosystem of high-quality research talent and capabilities to support the fast-growing financial industry in Singapore. The new Masters and PhD programmes are under the Asian Institute of Digital Finance (AIDF) at NUS, a university-level institute jointly founded by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF) and NUS. The PhD programme, in particular, is Singapore’s first and only doctoral programme in FinTech. In these uncertain times, more financial organisations than ever are leveraging FinTech to grow and improve their financial products, and to enable smooth and more innovative interaction with their customers.

Masters of Science in Digital Financial Technology

The 1.5-year Masters of Science in Digital Financial Technology is a collaborative programme by AIDF, NUS Computing and NUS Business School. Please visit here for more information on the Masters programme.

PhD in Digital Financial Technology

The PhD in Digital Financial Technology programme will be hosted jointly by the NUS Graduate School and AIDF. Please visit here for more information on the PhD programme.

Applications to the new Masters and PhD programmes are now open and interested students should submit their applications before 15 April 2021.

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The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Sea Limited (NYSE: SE) (Sea) today announced that Sea has made a corporate gift of S$50 million to NUS to support the advancement of research and education at NUS School of Computing (NUS Computing), one of the world’s leading computing schools. The gift agreement was signed today at NUS Kent Ridge Campus, where Minister for Education Mr Lawrence Wong witnessed the signing as the Guest-of-Honour.

The commitment, which is the largest corporate gift received by NUS to date, will support NUS Computing in its efforts to substantially enhance and develop pivotal areas such as:

• Cutting-edge research and education in critical, fast-growing areas such as artificial intelligence and data science;
• Recruitment and development of academic and research talent through scholarships for undergraduate and postgraduate students, research fellowships, visiting professorships, support for professional development and more; and
• Strategic initiatives including seed grants for enterprising projects and outreach programmes.

Mr Forrest Li, Sea’s Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer, said, “Sea is fortunate to be deeply rooted in Singapore's world-class ecosystem of tech talent and research, and we are honoured to give back to our community by supporting the next wave of innovation. The talent, ideas, and breakthroughs in key technology areas that will result from this partnership will not only enhance Singapore's already vibrant tech sector, but also create good jobs and cement our nation's reputation as a global hub for technology innovation.”

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With new Covid-19 cases spiking into the hundreds daily in May last year, a team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) raced against time to develop a system to help government contact tracers identify close contacts of patients. Despite their relative inexperience in creating such a large-scale system, the team of six current and former NUS students managed to develop a Web application in under three weeks, with help from the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). The app collated information from various sources to provide contact tracers with an overview of the patient's movements and the people he was in close contact with.

The NUS team's efforts were recognised on Thursday (March 18) at the IT Leader Awards 2021, which was themed Tech Heroes From Crisis to pay tribute to people who made a significant positive impact on the community through technology during the Covid-19 crisis. The awards were organised by the Singapore Computer Society.

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It did not happen exactly with a snap of the fingers. It took consistent years of hard work with nurturing and support by NUS Enterprise for PatSnap to be what it is today – a unicorn in business – a company valued at more than US$1 billion. Its R&D intelligence as well as IP intelligence platforms are used by more than 10,000 customers around the world.

Today, its founders, two NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) alumni, can proudly proclaim that they have left their fledgling days far behind when they first formed the start-up in 2007. The company now has offices in the US, the UK, Canada, Japan and China. Its close ties with NUS and access to Singapore’s talent eco-system and dense network of industry partners has enabled it to launch an R&D centre in Singapore three years ago.

In fact, founders Mr Jeffrey Tiong (NUS Engineering, Biomedical Engineering) and Ms Guan Dian (NUS Computing, Information Systems), both previous NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award winners, have just announced that the company has secured US$300 million in Series E funding. This puts them in unicorn territory, which is reserved for start-ups valued over US$1 billion – a first for NUS-supported start-ups.

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Wiley announces a new book, 'Leading with IT: Lessons From Singapore's First CIO' by Alex Siow, the first Chief Information Officer of Singapore's Housing Development Board (HDB) in 1989, and currently a professor in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and concurrently Director of the Advanced Computing for Executives (ACE). The book offers the next generation of business leaders and executives working closely with technology practical tips and personal insights for navigating the rapid digital transformation efforts due to the pandemic and thriving the new normal.

This book aims to inform and educate readers on the crucial role that IT plays in organizations and why the C-suite should offer CIOs a seat on the top decision-making body or board. As businesses shift their technology investments to embrace digital transformation, putting CIOs and CTOs at the forefront of digital work transformation is crucial in keeping businesses abreast of new industry developments that pop up every single day.

'Leading with IT: Lessons From Singapore's First CIO' is now available at all major bookstores and online book retail platforms.

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In this second of the AskST series on university education, The Straits Times looks at how to pick the right institution and course of study.

John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte Ltd., a global leader in research and education, and the National University of Singapore’s Advanced Computing for Executives (ACE) today announced a partnership to jointly train and certify executives in a range of in-demand technology skills. This partnership will address the need to continually upskill, especially as the world contends with the economic impact of COVID-19.

This series of professional short courses will enable learners to meet the skills demand for long-term career success. The courses, which can be completed in two to three days and will be both instructor-led and self-paced, will be available to all learners globally beginning in April. Courses include:

Driving Innovation through Design Thinking
Story Telling with Data
Developing Winning User Experiences with UI-UX
Analytics for Finance
Analytics for Talent Management

“NUS’ Advanced Computing for Executives (ACE) is pleased to collaborate with Wiley to launch the Global Certification Program. We believe that the knowledge and expertise of ACE, combined with Wiley’s global reach and excellent record of delivering quality products, will help deliver much needed training opportunities to IT professionals around the world. It is also in line with ACE’s vision of helping business leaders harness emerging technology to boost business competitiveness,” said Professor Alex Siow, Director of Advanced Computing for Executives (ACE), School of Computing, National University of Singapore.

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In this second of the AskST series on university education, The Straits Times looks at how to pick the right institution and course of study.

Q: It is good to have a choice of six local universities, but what should my son look out for in making the choice, other than ensuring that the university offers the computing degree course he wants to pursue?

A: Computing is a good course to study, given the rise of Industry 4.0, which refers to a new phase in industrial revolution that focuses heavily on interconnectivity, automation, machine learning and real-time data.

Several public universities offer degree courses in computing. So, how do you pick the right one?

First, look at whether your son is able to meet the cut-off score for computing, as it is highly competitive. 

For the National University of Singapore (NUS), which has Singapore's largest intake of students for computing - with more than 1,400 last year - students generally need four As to enter the course.

Having said that, many students, including those at NUS, are admitted into computing despite falling short of the cut-off score.

Often, they demonstrate their aptitude for and interest in the field through other means, be it in the interview process or through some software they may have created.

NUS provost Ho Teck Hua feels it is important to recognise that developments in computing are rapid. Therefore, his advice is to pick a university where teaching and research in the field are at the cutting edge.

How do you ascertain that? One way is to look at the international rankings according to disciplines.

NUS, for example, was ranked ninth in the world last year for computer science and information systems by Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), where significant weightage is given to research output.

Your son should study the job and salary prospects for computing graduates in the yearly survey results, which were released on Friday last week. 

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It may not be possible for some Singaporeans to get their fix of The Mandalorian Star Wars TV series by using technological tricks to watch an overseas version of Disney+, such as before the video streaming service launches here officially on Feb 23. The Walt Disney Company told The Straits Times that in line with the Disney+ subscriber agreement, it does not allow users to access Disney+ using a virtual private network - to bypass geographical restrictions - in a territory where the service is not yet live.

 Associate Professor Liang Zhenkai from the National University of Singapore (NUS) said that when a person uses a VPN, Disney cannot directly detect the overseas clients at the network level.

"These undetected IP addresses used by the VPN service are not easily blocked. If Disney gradually recognises the VPN provider's network, they can block it later," said Prof Liang, who is from NUS' Department of Computer Science.

This could happen if, for example, Disney detects a large number of unrelated users sending in requests from the same IP address, which suggests a delegation service like a VPN service is being used. But Prof Liang said that if the Disney+ app is used for streaming, there are other methods to recognise whether the client is from a different country, such as using the app store's region or global positioning system information of a mobile device.

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Life has gotten more digital than ever before. And the plusses of that for the environment has been clear…as in clear skies and clean air. What is not so clear however is this: when it comes to greenhouse gases, the Internet is responsible for 2% of global emissions. If the Internet were a country, it would be ranked as the sixth largest polluter in the world.

But the Internet is here to stay, so what can be done to make it greener? From individuals not hitting Reply All on emails or turning off Auto Play for videos, to data centres running on green energy and search engines giving back to the environment, host Prerna Pant looks at all the various ways we are Greening The ‘Net.

Pant also interviews Assistant Professor Trevor E. Carlson on how Internet usage is contributing to our carbon footprint.

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