Inspiring NTU: Mastery beyond Boundaries

Dr Sng Hui Ying is Senior Lecturer of Economics in the School of Social Sciences at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She received her PhD (Economics) from NTU and her B.SocSci. (Hons) and M.SocSci. (Applied Economics) from the National University of Singapore. Her research areas include development economics, Singapore economy, and Southeast Asian economies. Prior to joining NTU, she was a broadcast journalist with MediaCorp News and a senior research officer with the Jurong Town Corporation. In 2002, she participated in a consultation project led by Professor Lim Chong Yah to advise the government of Mauritius on wage determination system and wage reform issues. She is the co-editor of the books Singapore and Asia in a Globalized World: Contemporary Economic Issues and Policies (2008), Singapore and Asia: Impact of the Global Financial Tsunami and other Economic Issues (2009) and Crisis Management and Public Policy: Singapore's Approach to Economic Resilience (2011). Her research monograph, Economic Growth and Transition: Econometric Analysis of Lim’s S-Curve Hypothesis, was published in 2010. She has also published in refereed journals such as Singapore Economic Review, World Economics and Journal of Economic Development and contributed to Regional Outlook: Southeast Asia published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Dr. Adams Wai-Kin Kong received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Currently, he is an associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the director of Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence programme. His research works have been published in major AI conferences and journals. One of his papers was selected as a spotlight paper by IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and another one was selected as Honorable Mention by Pattern Recognition. He is listed in Stanford University's Top 2% Scientists’ Study. His PhD students received Best Student Paper Awards in The IEEE Fifth International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems (BTAS), 2012 and IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering, 2013. In 2016, he received the best reviewer award from BTAS. In the summer of 2008, he served as an expert witness to the U.S. Department of Justice for the child sexual abuse case, United States v, Michael Pepe. He also serves as a consultant for other legal cases in Singapore and as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. In 2022, Dr. Kong was nominated for the MSc in Business Analytics Teacher of the Year Award and received faculty award from his school. His recent research interests include pattern recognition, deep learning and their applications on power systems, healthcare, and biometrics.

Prof Lihua Xie received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Nanjing University of Science and Technology in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 1992. Since 1992, he has been with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, where he is currently Professor and Director of 25M dollars National Research Foundation Medium Sized Centre for Advanced Robotics Technology Innovation (CARTIN) and Co-Director, Delta-NTU Corporate Laboratory for Cyber-Physical Systems which received $45M funding from National Research Foundation of Singapore, Delta Electronics and NTU, and has over 100 researchers including 20 professors, 51 research staff and 30 PhD students. He served as the Head of Division of Control and Instrumentation from July 2011 to June 2014 and the Director, Center for E-City from July 2011 to June 2013. He held teaching appointments in the Department of Automatic Control, Nanjing University of Science and Technology from 1986 to 1989. Dr. Xie’s research interests include robust control, networked control systems, multi-agent networks, indoor positioning, human activity recognition and unmanned systems. He has published 9 books, over 500 journal papers, 380 conference papers, and 20 patents/Technical Disclosures. He has been listed as a highly cited researcher (SCI: 27400, H-index: 79; Google Scholar: 44,600, H-index: 103) by Thomson Routers and Clarivate Analytics annually since 2014. He has secured a total research grant of over 90 million Singapore dollars as programme and project PI, and graduated 38 PhD students. He has received many awards for his research including IBM Faculty Award, Changjiang Scholar Award from Ministry of Education of China, and best paper awards at 8 international conferences such as the Guan Zhao Zhi Award from the 29th and 39th Chinese Control Conference (CCC) both of which had over 2000 participants, 7th Asia Control Conference (ASCC), 18th International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR 2017), etc. Dr. Xie is an Editor-in-Chief for Unmanned Systems and an Associate Editor for Sciences China – Information Science. He has served as an editor of IET Book Series in Control and an Associate Editor of a number of journals including IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Network Control Systems, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-II, Automatica Sinca, etc. He was an appointed member of Board of Governors, IEEE Control System Society in 2011 and an elected member of the Board (Jan 2016-Dec 2018). Dr Xie is a Fellow of Academy of Engineering Singapore, Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IFAC, and Fellow of Chinese Automation Association. He was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer from 2011 to 2014. He is a Vice-President, Control Theory and Application Committee, the Chinese Automation Association. He served as the General Chair of the 7th, 13th and 15th IEEE Int. Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA 2009, ICCA 2017, ICCA2019); Vice Program Chair of the 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2015); General Co-Chair of the 9th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation (WCICA 2012); General Chair of the 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV’06); General Chair of 2002 International Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA 2002); Program Chair of the Fourth International Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA’03) and the 8th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV’04); General Chair of the 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision (ICARCV’06). He is the General Chair of the 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2023).

Programme Director, SMTC, NEWRI, NTU (2024 – Present) Deputy Director, SMTC, NEWRI, NTU (2015 – 2024) Associate Professor, School of CEE, NTU (2020 – Present) Assistant Professor, School of CEE, NTU (2014 – 2020) Senior Research Fellow (2011 – 2014) & Research Fellow (2008 – 2011), SMTC, NEWRI, NTU PhD, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2008) BEng (Chem. Eng.), University of New South Wales, Australia (1999)

Dr Xia is the Academic Director and Postgraduate & Undergraduate Programmes Lead at the NTU Entrepreneurship Academy (NTUpreneur). He oversees the Master of Science Technopreneurship and Innovation program (MSc TIP) and provides strategic direction to the management and operation of the MiE and SMiE programmes. Dr Xia’s professional expertise in entrepreneurship education spans across training, mentoring, leadership development, and project management in multicultural context. From 2004 to 2008, he served as Senior Assistant Director in the China Strategy Group (President’s Office) of NTU. He has won recognition for developing educational partnership with top international universities and institutions, for programmes or projects including NTU’s pioneering Global Immersion Program for undergraduates’ overseas study and industrial attachment as well as overseas entrepreneurship immersion and international venture competitions. In 2006 he received the NTU’s Nanyang Award for Teamwork. Prior to his two decades of experience in education, he worked in IT and real estate industries with project management experience in ERP outsourcing, knowledge management, asset valuation, and business M&A. Dr Xia actively participates in professional communities and social services. He is an Adjunct Professor of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He served as the President of International Council for Small Business (Singapore Chapter) from 2015 to 2017. He was frequently invited as one of the final-round judges for Singapore Prestige Brand Award competitions since 2015. With his extensive network of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, policy makers, and educators in the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Singapore and internationally, he has helped many entrepreneurs and startups in securing venture funding or strategizing business growth or international development. In 2019, he received the Commendation Medal (Education) on Singapore’s National Day, in recognition of his commitment, performance, and efficiency in education.

Dr. Fan Xiuyi is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and the School of Computer Science and Engineering (joint appointment). He obtained his BSc and MSc degrees from the University of Utah in the United States and his PhD degree from Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. Before joining NTU, Dr. Fan worked at the University of Utah, the University of Sydney, Imperial College London, and Swansea University. His current research interest is in Explainable AI (XAI). Dr. Fan has a strong track record in developing XAI theories and applications. Specifically, he has developed explainable decision-making theories and applications, and has pioneered work in developing formal semantics for explanations. He has explored ways to introduce argumentation-based explanations to machine learning and developed the first argumentation-based explainable planning framework. He has also studied probabilistic satisfiability for the purpose of developing a probabilistic logic-based explainable machine learning method and its applications. Recently, he has been working on comparing and formally evaluating explainable AI methods, building a generic XAI software toolkit for medical applications, as well as understanding situations in which predictions cannot be trusted using XAI. Dr. Fan has published refereed papers at AI conferences and journals including AAMAS, IJCAI, AAAI, ICRA, ECAI, and AIJ. He was the recipient of the Welsh Crucible Leadership Programme Award, the Best Paper Award at IEEE ICSGAH, the first prize in the Health Innovation Technology Challenge, and the Rector’s Award Scholarship at Imperial College London. While working in the UK, he led projects using Explainable AI to Understand the Impacts of Non-pharmaceutical Control Measures on COVID-19 Transmission for Evidence-based Policy and Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on the International Economy via Currency Markets using Explainable AI, both funded by the Welsh Government.

Dr Murukeshan Vadakke Matham, is the program Director of MSc Smart Manufacturing at the school of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NTU Singapore. He serves as the Director of the Center for Optical and Laser Engineering (COLE), Deputy Director of The Photonics Institute (TPI), and is an Associate Professor of School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NTU Singapore. He leads a research group specializing in Biomedical Optics, Nanoscale Optics, Laser-based Micro and Nanoscale Fabrication, and Applied Optics for Metrology. Prof. Murukeshan has an extensive academic profile with over 28 years of professional experience, including 3 years of postdoctoral work and 25 years of teaching. He has published over 215 international journal papers and over 200 international conference proceedings/presentations, co-authored two books, and filed or awarded 26 patents and 16 innovation disclosures. To date, he has supervised 28 PhD students and 30 Master (MEng by research and Master of science in Engineering) students. He is also Associate Editor for Optical Engineering and the International Journal of Optomechatronics (IJO). He serves in international committees related to optics at different capacities. Prof. Murukeshan has received more than 25 prestigious international recognitions or awards. He is a Fellow of SPIE, Fellow of OPTICA (USA), a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK), and a Distinguished Fellow of the Optical Society of India.

Justus Teo • 20 years of Human Resource experience • 6 years full time Coaching (Career / Leadership / Performance) • Full-time Career Coach with NTU PACE supporting Data Analytics, UIUX and Digital Marketing Credentials: o Certified International Career Services Provider (CCSP) by the National Career Development Association (NCDA) o Professional Member of Career Development Association Singapore (CDAS) + Honorary Auditor o Accredited IAC Coach o Facilitator for Career Development (FCD) o Knowdell Career Adviser

Patrick Pun is currently a tenured Associate Professor, Assistant Chair (MSc Programmes), and the Programme Director of Master of Science in Financial Technology (MSc in FinTech) at School of Physical and Mathematics Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. In 2018, Patrick founded the MSc in FinTech programme to cultivate the FinTech talents. The programme has been well-received in Asia. Prior to NTU, Patrick obtained his Ph.D. in Statistics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in 2016. His Ph.D. thesis on “Robust Stochastic Control and High-Dimensional Statistics with Applications in Finance” won numerous awards, including Nicola Bruti Liberati Prize 2016 (Best Ph.D. Thesis in Quantitative Finance, worldwide) and the Young Scholars Thesis Award 2016 (Best Ph.D. Thesis from Faculty of Science, CUHK). His research paper on high-dimensional portfolio selection won Best Student Research Paper (First Place) in INFORMS Financial Section in 2015. Patrick also won Best Teaching Assistant Award in 2014. Patrick obtained his M.Phil. in Risk Management Science from CUHK in 2013 and obtained his B.Sc. in Statistics, from Nankai University in 2011. He also passed the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) qualification examinations in 2012. Patrick has strong research interests in Financial / Actuarial Mathematics, Big Data Analytics, and AI applications in Finance, as evidenced by his numerous top-tier publications in these fields. He has received several distinguished grants, namely from MOE, NRF, QEP, DSAIR, and NTU, to further his research work alongside his tertiary teaching responsibilities.

Ben Choi is an associate professor in Information Technology and Operations Management at the Nanyang Technological University. He was previously a faculty at the University of New South Wales. He has been named the Best Associate Editor (2024) and Reviewer of the Year at the Journal for the Association of Information Systems (2020) and received the Best Reviewer Award at MIS Quarterly (2016). He has published multiple papers in premier information systems journals, including Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and Production and Operations Management. His research interests focus on human-algorithm/robotic interactions, data visualizations, sustainability, and information privacy using various methods (i.e., lab/field experiments, surveys, driving and flight simulations, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and physiological measurements, such as voice and respiration analytics, GSR, EEG, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and eye-tracking). Ben is the recipient of the Nanyang Education Award 2023.