NUS has honoured seven exceptional educators, researchers and professionals at the NUS University Awards 2020. The annual event recognises individuals for their outstanding contributions in the areas of education, research and service to the University, Singapore and the global community.
Professor Dong Jin Song from the NUS' School of Computing was given the University Research Recognition Award for developing a software verification framework that has more than 4,000 users from over 150 countries.
NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye lauded the award winners for being role models for the university community. “Each award winner has exemplified the spirit of excellence with an indomitable spirit. They are truly esteemed individuals – beacons and pathfinders who inspire us to better ourselves and to scale new heights even in times of crisis. NUS is proud to celebrate their dedication and distinguished accomplishments,” he said.
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In recent years, the Singapore government has tapped on facial recognition for various purposes as part of its ‘smart nation’ initiative. For instance, Changi Airport’s Terminal 4 uses facial recognition technology for various purposes such as passenger check-in, immigration and boarding, while GovTech launched a launched the "Lamppost-as-a-Platform" project, which outfits some 95,000 traditional lampposts in the country with a network of wireless sensors and cameras to support urban and transportation planning and operations.
Associate Professor Terence Sim from the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore stated in an exclusive interview with China-based news website The Paper that there are trends of facial recognition technology being abused, and that laws protecting such technology could be further strengthened. He also elaborated further on privacy issues regarding such technology.
When a secondary school friend contacted him out of the blue a few months ago asking for a verification code on WhatsApp, administrative executive Tan Jun Heng, 25, did not suspect anything was amiss.
His friend simply claimed to have "accidentally" sent the code to his number. But within seconds of sending the code, Mr Tan was automatically locked out of his own WhatsApp account. It had been hijacked.
Mr Tan and his friends are among a growing pool of WhatsApp users who have become victims of social hacking, where scammers use already hijacked social media accounts to contact victims by posing as their friends or family.
National University of Singapore's Associate Professor Chang Ee-Chien, whose research interests include data privacy, said the impersonation tactics used by hackers are "very low-tech, but very effective, as people tend to trust their friends or family".
With full access to their victim's account, hackers may then exploit the victim's personal relationships and ask for money from friends or family. Or, if they glean enough information about their victim's place of employment, they may also target the victim's workplace, added Prof Chang.
However, experts say, there are preventive measures that users can take to prevent such attacks.
Ms Wong and AiSP executive committee member James Tan said setting up a two-step verification process on your WhatsApp account can prevent others from signing in to it. Users should not click on suspicious looking links, even if they are purportedly from friends or family, they added.
For impersonation scams, however, "the only solution is to not trust people", said Prof Chang. He added: "It is very important that you must presume that whoever is speaking to you on the other end is not your friend."
National University of Singapore (NUS) researchers have developed a tool to safeguard against a new form of cyber attack that can recreate the data sets containing personal information used to train artificial intelligence (AI) machines.
The tool, called the Machine Learning (ML) Privacy Meter, has been incorporated into the developer toolkit that Google uses to test the privacy protection features of AI algorithms.
In recent years, hackers have figured out how to reverse-engineer and reconstruct database sets used to train AI systems through an increasingly common kind of attack called a membership inference (MI) attack.
Assistant Professor Reza Shokri, who heads the research team behind ML Privacy Meter, said such attacks involve hackers repeatedly asking the AI system for information, analysing the data for a pattern, and then using the pattern to guess if a data record was used to train the AI system.
Prof Shokri likened MI attacks to thieves probing for weak spots in a house's walls and doors with a needle before breaking in. "But the thief is not going to break in with the needle. Now that he knows (where the weak spots are), he is going to come with a hammer and break the wall," he said.
ML Privacy Meter helps AI developers through a scorecard showing how accurately attackers could recreate the original data sets and suggests techniques to guard against actual MI attacks. The Privacy Meter is the result of three years of work to create an easy-to-use tool which helps programmers see where the weak spots in their algorithms are.
Google started using the tool earlier this year. The tool is open-source, meaning that it can be used for free by other researchers or companies around the world.
"Our main focus was to build an easy-to-use interface for anybody who knows machine learning, but might not know anything about privacy and cyber attacks," said Prof Shokri, who is Iranian by birth and moved to Singapore in 2017.
The NUS research team that developed the Machine Learning Privacy Meter also consists of master's student Mihir Khandekar, 24, doctoral student Chang Hongyan, 24, research assistant Aadyaa Maddi, 22, and doctoral student Rishav Chourasia, 24.
As international competitions move online in compliance with social distancing measures, Singapore students are flying the Singapore flag high at these virtual competitions. This was shared in a Facebook post by Minister for Education Lawrence Wong yesterday. He wrote that while the format for many international competitions such as Olympiads were altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore students nevertheless continued to excel in the Olympiads for Science, Mathematics and Informatics, and even came in first at the New Zealand Physicists’ Tournament. He also mentioned that the International Olympiad for Informatics was hosted by Singapore and organised by NUS this year, with careful planning and management undertaken by the NUS team to ensure the Olympiad’s safe execution. Mr Wong noted that Singapore would also host the IOI again in 2021. In his post, he expressed hope that Singapore would be able to welcome participants under more favourable circumstances next year.According to the Ministry of Education’s press release, this is the first time Singapore has hosted the IOI. President Halimah Yacob and Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat were also invited to address the participants in the IOI’s virtual opening and closing online ceremonies respectively.The Singapore team comprising of students from Hwa Chong Institution, Raffles Institution and NUS High School of Math and Science bagged four silver and three bronze medals at this year’s IOI. The competition required participants to answer a series of questions related to programming and informatics. Participants from a total of 87 countries and regions participated in the virtual Olympiad, with Singapore ranking 19th in the Olympiad.
Three NUS researchers have developed wearable devices that help perform gait analysis. The four sensors installed at the toe and heel of the shoes can detect the speed, rotation and step length of the user's movement. The data is reflected in the app in real time for analysis by the therapist.
Dr Boyd Anderson, a lecturer from NUS Computing's Department of Computer Science, said: “If you are an elderly person, you may be more frail when walking, and being able to quantify that is very important. If you’re a sprinter, seeing how every step hits the track is also very important for say, optimising your performance. Traditionally, you would use a clinical gait mat which is pressure sensitive."
Medical gait mats take up space and are expensive, costing upwards of $10,000. The cost of this device however, is expected to be under $500. In addition to relying on an inertial measurement instrument to measure acceleration and rotation during movement, the device also combines ultra-wideband radio technology to collect step lengths and step widths that are difficult to measure. Its accuracy rate is 97%.
The four sensors mounted on the shoes run on lithium batteries and has a battery life of 18 hours per charge. The research team has already applied for a technology patent. They are working to bring this technology to professional athletes who are looking to improve their skills.
The team is also looking at ways to incorporate the sensors for use in various running shoes.
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.
NUS students proved they have the chops when they took part in the region’s largest online coding challenge that saw more than 21,000 participants. Among the top 100 student teams taking part in the Shopee Code League which spread over two months from June to August, 21 teams had one or more NUS participants.
Team UET comprising NUS Computing students Long Vuong Hoang, Quang Minh Nguyen, Minh Phan and Quang Tuan Le, emerged second runner-up. They were among the 10 top teams to win a cash prize and career opportunities with Shopee, an e-commerce platform led by CEO Mr Chris Feng, an alumnus of the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme.
The challenge consisted of a series of big data competitions that included data analytics, data science and algorithm questions designed by Shopee teams. Participants also took part in workshops facilitated by their training partners from Shopee offices located in Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, China and Vietnam.
In 2019, Singapore generated around 744 million kg of food waste — that’s equivalent to two bowls of rice per person a day, or around 51,000 double decker buses.
Food wastage is a real problem — it does not only cause environmental problems, but also affects our food security and puts pressure on our resources.
When Preston Wong, 31, saw his family members clearing out excess expiring food items from the refrigerator one day, he wondered if a platform could be built to facilitate a redistribution of surplus food. He pitched the idea to his National University of Singapore (NUS) schoolmate, Kenneth Ham, 30.
The duo didn’t even share the same classes — Preston majored in law and accountancy, while Kenneth majored in computer science — but they knew each other from church.
In their final year at NUS, they decided to take the leap to develop an app to tackle food wastage in Singapore by reducing the amount of buffet food that’s thrown away at the end of the day.
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."
He was only 11 when he learnt how to code and design his first computer game, a 2D car racing game, with a $25 software called Game Maker 8.1. Now 19, Mr Victor Loh will be joining the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) once he completes his studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he is reading a double degree in computer science and statistics. The national serviceman is one of 15 Smart Nation scholarship awardees this year - selected from a pool of 723 applicants, an increase from 614 applicants last year.
Another Smart Nation scholar joining GovTech is Mr Kevin Foong, 21, a Year 1 computer science student at NUS. He became interested in artificial intelligence and cloud computing during his eight-month internship at a private software engineering company last year. Mr Foong believes technology can solve problems and cited GovTech's SafeEntry digital check-in system, which aids in contact tracing efforts against Covid-19, as an example.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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