SoC Turns 20
18 August
NUS School of Computing (SoC) celebrated her 20th Anniversary with a Homecoming Fun Fair on 18 August, with some 400 SoC alumni, students, staff and their guests enjoying a day of fun on School grounds.
Aside from typical carnival-style games such as giant darts, archery, and even a mechanical rodeo bull, the Fun Fair was given a Computing slant. Attendees had opportunities to fly a drone, experience a virtual reality game, and even receive suggestions for make up from Associate Professor Terence Sim’s Face Recognition Project Showcase.
The Fair also received support from alumni from the past few decades. Founder of Hutcabb Services Mr Oliver Tian (Computing ’88) set up booths to expose kids to coding robots; Co-Founder of Nomis Piy, Mr Ng Hern (Computing ’92 ’98) specially created puzzles for an Escape Room-style Puzzle Hunt around the School; and Co-Founder of Neeuro, Mr Kelly Choo (Computing ’08) set up a game booth that had participants challenging to break high scores in their memory game app while getting their brain waves measured.
No Fun Fair would be complete without a Dunking Tank. Alumni had a ball of a time taking an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dunk their past lecturers including the current Dean of SoC, Professor Mohan Kankanhalli. Amongst the sporting volunteers were alumni-turned-lecturers Dr Colin Tan (Computing ’97 ’00 ’04), Mr Aaron Tan (Computing ’89 ’93), Dr Tan Wee Kek (Computing ’07 ’13), and Dr Soo Yuen Jien (Computing ’99 ’01 ’06). Hats off to all the academic staff who braved the half-hour slot to be dunked – over 20 times for some – for everyone else’s enjoyment.
While the School is only celebrating her 20th year, the SoC Family consists more than two decades of alumni, as the history of NUS Computing alumni spans much further back to 1975 as a department under the Faculty of Science.
The SoC Family looks forward to having all alumni joining in the upcoming 20th Anniversary Gala Dinner in October.