PCBs are used for any electronic gadget, from your smartphone to industrial equipment such as electric drills. They can also be used by hobbyists who want to build their own electronics projects such as in the case of Arduino.

Singaporean software engineer Chai Jia Xun has recently used a PCB in an interesting manner. He created a palm-sized trinket prototype of the Singapore MRT, including the new Thomson-East Coast MRT line. Chai has been an employee at Silicon Valley for at least three years. As a graduate of the NUS School of Computing, he says that his education wasn't at all related to PCBs. However, his interest in train system maps and PCBs led him to create the prototype. He also revealed that he made the MRT prototype for the sole reason that it looks cool. Chai learned mostly from YouTube and used free software to start making his PCB projects.

Learn more ...

5 Aug 2021 - Six NUS Computing graduates recently won the Outstanding Computing Project Prize, a new prize that was instituted by NUS Computing in 2020.

Learn more ...

21 July 2021 - NUS Computing Provost’s Chair Professor David Hsu and Professor Lee Wee Sun were recently awarded the Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) Test of Time Award 2021.

Learn more ...

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.

Learn more ...

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.

Learn more ...

7 July 2021 - Five NUS Computing graduates recently received the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize (OURP) for the 2020/2021 Academic Year.

Learn more ...

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. 

Learn more ...

29 June 2021 – A research team from NUS Computing has won the Best Paper Award at the 16th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM AsiaCCS 2021), held online from 7 to 11 June 2021.

Learn more ...

29 June 2021 - NUS Computing successfully hosted the 33rd International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI 2021), which took place from 19 to 28 June.

Learn more ...

28 June 2021 – A team from NUS Computing excelled at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 2020 Differential Privacy Temporal Map Challenge, winning first place at two of the challenge’s three sprints, along with a total cash prize of US$44,000.

Learn more ...

17 May 2021 – Computer Science PhD student Li Qinbin won the Best Student Paper Gold Award 2021 from the Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence Association (PREMIA).

Learn more ...

19 March 2021 – To help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in Singapore, six NUS Computing students and alumni built a web application last year to improve the speed and accuracy of nation-wide contact tracing.

Learn more ...

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.

Learn more ...

10 March 2021 – With a gift of S$300,000 from the Lembaga Biasiswa Kenangan Maulud (LBKM), NUS Computing will now be able to award the endowed LBKM Future Economy Scholarship to three top Malay students from any of the five Computing degree programmes, each year.

Learn more ...

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. 

Learn more ...

7 January 2021 – NUS Computing teams excelled at the recent International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Jakarta regional contest, held online from 18 to 20 December 2020. NUS teams swept the top three positions at the competition, with Teams MLG, (((i^c)>>2)/p)|c), and 3Sophonomore winning first, second, and third place respectively.

Learn more ...

Half of Singapore customers admitted that they are not happy with the gifts they have received.

“To prevent such loss in economic value and environmental damage, cash is theoretically the most efficient solution. However, giving cash as a gift is crude, and could be seen as derogatory. Hence, many people have resorted to getting gift cards, which is a convenient way to gift while reducing economic waste. This explains the rapid growth trends in the gift card market,” Gratify CEO & CFO Dao Xiong Teng explains in an email to e27.

But even gift cards are not perfect.

“If we think about it, most people would remove the price tags and the receipts from their gifts before giving them out, so that the dollar value is not so glaringly in-your-face. Yet, ironically, for gift cards, the dollar value is practically the gift itself,” Teng continues. “What we need is a gift that is as flexible as a gift card, but without having the gift value blatantly apparent and crude.”

This is the opportunity that local startup Gratify aims to seize. 

Launched earlier this month, the startup builds a platform to enable customers to purchase and send gifts to their loved ones. But what sets them apart from other e-commerce platform is that they provide options for gift recipients to receive, swap the gifts, or donate it to a charity.

The platform works by enabling the customer to choose from a wide array of products on their platform. Once they have checked out and given the recipient’s details, the recipient will be notified and be given the options.

If they choose to not accept the gift, for whatever reason, they can opt to swap it with a more suitable one as available on the Gratify platform. They can also choose to donate the value of the gift to a charity organisation that the startup is partnering with.

Learn more ...

The road to university can be difficult for any student, but Mr Ng Jun Kang had to overcome daily challenges that others gave no thought to. Like getting to class, for instance, or taking notes. Or even getting a drink of water.

The 22-year-old first year Computer Science undergraduate at the National University of Singapore has spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, which was caused by a brain injury during birth.

Although his condition affects his muscle control, motor skills and his speech, it proved no obstacle to his achieving good grades and clinching scholarships. Quite the opposite, he argues.

"My condition has gifted me resilience and patience in everything that I do," he said.

Learn more ...

21 December 2020 – Information Systems PhD student Ahmad Asadullah won the Kauffman Best Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2020.

Learn more ...

9 December 2020 – Associate Professor He Bingsheng and his collaborators have won the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 2019 Best Paper award.

Learn more ...