Prof Bernard Tan

Prof Bernard Tan is Senior Vice Provost (Undergraduate Education) at NUS. He assists the Provost in setting educational directions and policies, and in assuring educational quality for the University. His achievements include the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2012, NUS Outstanding Educator Award in 2004, and NUS Young Researcher Award in 2002. Prof Tan is also Shaw Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Analytics.

Education Reform at NUS
Students today will be working in an Industry 4.0 workplace for much of their careers. Such a workplace is characterised by rapid obsolescence of knowledge, massive transformation of industries, increased complexity of problems (and solutions needed), and greater turbulence of the environment. To prepare students for such a workplace, it is imperative for universities to re-examine and make bold but necessary changes to its curriculum and pedagogy. This address provides insights into (and the rationale for) the various pieces of education reforms carried out by NUS (over the past few years) to better prepare students for an Industry 4.0 workplace.

Theme 1: Strategic Partnerships on Education

Patrick Pu

For more than 10 years, Patrick has been helping the Engineering and Computer Science community in information literacy, consultations, collection development and outreach. Outside of work, Patrick has many interests including travelling, cycling, swimming, eating and many more. He lives by the motto of “just do it” in his daily life.

Richard Ho

Having been at NUS for almost a decade as an undergraduate, working at a café and being a research assistant, Richard has found himself back at the very same place where he spent countless hours as a student -- as a librarian at NUS Libraries. He currently provides research support to the NUS community on digital scholarship and scholarly communication matters. He also spends too much of his free time on social media, with a recent favourite being the 'she's/he's a 10' trend.

Prof Virginia Cha

Prof Virginia Cha is a leading educator of Innovation & Entrepreneurship with multiple appointments at Singapore’s leading tertiary education institutions: Adjunct Professor at NUS Business School; Adjunct appointment at SMART (Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology). Her research work in entrepreneurial logic has been published as a chapter in The Entrepreneurial Behaviour. Unveiling the cognitive and emotional aspect of entrepreneurship, published by Emerald (2020). Together with her MIT colleagues, she has recently published Adaptive Innovation, by World Scientific (2022). In her multi-faceted four decades-long industry and academic career which spanned multiple countries, Virginia co-founded or was the sole-founder and CEO of multiple venture-funded, hi-tech companies in Singapore and China, with listings on NASDAQ and HKSE. She co-authored Asia’s Entrepreneurs: Dilemmas, Risks and Opportunities, published by Taylor and Francis (2009), which captured Singapore’s technology entrepreneurial history from 1995-2005. Additionally, Virginia is a member of the Future Council of World Economic Forum. Virginia is also an active researcher, mentor, and angel investor in Singapore’s entrepreneur ecosystem with 16 start-up companies in her angel investment portfolio with operations in Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, USA, Finland, and the UK. Virginia earned her Bachelor of Science in Information Computer Science, University of Hawaii and her PhD from National University of Singapore.

Challenges and Opportunities in Deep Technology Commercialisation
Prof Virginia Cha will share on the state-of-the-art practices in commercialising therapeutic technologies – including emergent market research techniques such as generative AI to determine opportunities, and techniques for validating the value proposition. A methodology for communicating technology innovations will be shared, to facilitate the communication of the value created.

Theme 3: Scholarly Communication

Prof Sow Chorng Haur

Prof Sow received his B.Sc. degree from NUS. He completed his PhD at The University of Chicago and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Bell Laboratory. He is now a Professor with the Department of Physics. He has published a number of papers in the field of nanoscience.

Sharing Exciting Scientific Discoveries via Different Platforms
In this talk, Prof Sow will share his experience in how he uses different platforms to inject fun in scientific discovery and research findings.

Ryan Fan Ruiming

Ryan is currently pursuing his PhD at NUS, studying long non-coding RNAs in cardiac development. Although his research at present is in the field of developmental biology, he is interested in a wide range of topics, including immunology and ecology! Outside of research, Ryan spends his time coaching and is active in the environmental group, NUS SAVE.

Science Communication for the Prospective Researcher
The talk encompasses the different aspects of science communication that Ryan has experience with, the learning lessons he has gleaned from his research experience and work with the Science Journalism Club, as well as examples of effective science communication.

Dr Chitra Venkataramani

Dr. V. Chitra is an Assistant Professor at NUS Department of Sociology, with a joint appointment in the South Asia Studies Programme. She is an anthropologist who is broadly interested in ecology, science and technology studies, and visual studies. She holds a PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University and prior to joining NUS, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard. She has a background in design and she experiments with graphic narratives in her anthropological research.

Comics as a Scholarly Medium
This talk reflects on the possibilities comics open for research and communication. Taking climate change as its focus, the talk demonstrates how comics can intervene to reshape human-nature relationships in important ways. Comics play with images and text in inventive ways, and Dr. V. Chitra will show how she works with that to narrate complex concepts and arguments.

Theme 4: Entrepreneurial Journey

Prof Ignatius Rasiah

Prof Ignatius Rasiah, is currently the Programme Director at the Institute for Engineering Leadership at the College of Design and Engineering in NUS. This institute provides postgraduate training in Engineering Leadership. He is also the advisor to the Centre for Innovation in Healthcare (CIH) at NUHS. He has previously held a joint appointment as Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. Prior to his current appointment, he was the VP for Breakthrough Research at Medtronic.

Life of an Entrepreneur
There are many who are excited by the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship, however, is a special vocation that has it’s many ups and downs as well as trying moments. It requires certain skills and traits that sometimes are not apparent. This talk will delve into some of those skills and traits needed by an entrepreneur. It will then provide some real-life experiences of individuals who have been there and done it. It is hoped that this will give a more realistic view of what entrepreneurship entails and how one should be prepared if one chose such a vocation in life.

Jovan Tan

Jovan is an Instructor at the Engineering Design and Innovation Centre. He teaches the EG2301 Value Creation in Innovation course and supervises undergraduate students in EG3301R Ideas to Proof-of-Concept and EG4301 DCP dissertation. His research interests are in applied innovation and sustainability, where Restorative Innovation and the LASER framework to design innovations for the circular economy are his most notable works. He has also been regularly featured on respectable media outlets, including Channel NewsAsia’s Money Mind and CNA938, for his thought leadership and expertise in sustainability and the circular economy.

Jovan is also a Fellow of the World Economic Forum, where he co-leads initiatives and fosters collaborations and communities relating to innovation in manufacturing, sustainability, and the circular economy. With his vast entrepreneurship and industry experiences, he advises TRIA, chairs the SAFRA Entrepreneurs’ Club, and is appointed to several other committees, including the NUS Zero Waste Taskforce.

Jovan earned his first degree in Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the University of Adelaide. He holds a Master of Science in Management from NUS and two Diplomas from Singapore Polytechnic.

Lessons From My Sustainable Entrepreneurship Journey
Jovan has extensive experience in launching and building sustainability-focused companies before joining academia. In his most recent role, he served as the Chief Evangelist of TRIA, a global sustainable food packaging company that enables food service brands to achieve zero waste. In his talk, Jovan will share the most significant lessons he learned from his time with TRIA. It promises to be an insightful experience for all attendees.

Kong Qi Herng

Kong is a co-founder of Moonbeam, a startup that aims to use innovation and business to solve food waste. The former NUS Merit Scholar and Chua Thian Poh Scholar engages businesses and institutions to encourage adoption of brewer's spent grains in food products and services.

Brewery-to-Table
What if food by-products are completely consumed? Being homebrewers, that was the question Moonbeam had when they searched for ways to eat the nutritious spent grains that would otherwise be incinerated. Today, Moonbeam aims to connect industrially-produced spent grains to human consumption, starting with Singapore. In the process, they learnt the difficulties of integrating spent grains in food that go beyond technical ones like their poor texture and high moisture content. Join Kong as he goes through Moonbeam's journey and how their multidisciplinary team addresses those challenges of commercialising upcycling spent grains to food.

Panel Discussion: Entrepreneurial Journey

A/Prof Sarah Cheah

A/Prof Sarah Cheah is Associate Professor with the NUS Business School, with research publications in technology commercialisation and innovation management. She advises public agencies in commercialisation strategy and ecosystem development, as well as private companies on corporate entrepreneurship and venture building. She has also provided executive training and consultancy for corporations and public policymakers in Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Thailand.