NTU MSE celebrates Nanyang Education Award recipients at all three levels
Congratulations to Dr Eileen Fong, Dr Luciana Lisa Lao and Prof Aravind Dasari on receiving Nanyang Education Awards for excellence in teaching. Together, they represent NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at all three award levels — University, College and School.
The Nanyang Education Award is NTU’s highest honour for teaching. It recognises faculty who enrich students’ learning through outstanding and innovative teaching, enthusiasm for their subject and genuine care for their students. The award recognises teaching excellence at the School, College and University levels.
Dr Eileen Fong helps students apply theory to real engineering problems
Nanyang Education Award – University (Silver)
Across foundational physics, materials characterisation and engineering design, Dr Fong helps students see how concepts relate and where they can apply them. Students valued how she made those connections clear and gave them room to ask questions and discuss ideas in class.
As Principal Lecturer and Director, Student Life, Dr Fong extends learning beyond the classroom through industry engagement, overseas learning experiences and student development programmes. Her redesign of MS3015, a third-year core capstone course, is one example of how she brings that approach into the curriculum. Students draw on what they’ve learnt across their degree to tackle real-world engineering challenges.
Senior Lecturer Luciana Lisa Lao helps students make sense of complex ideas
Nanyang Education Award – College
Senior Lecturer, Dr Lisa breaks complex concepts into manageable parts and helps students see how they fit together. Visuals, familiar examples and worked calculations give students several ways to approach a difficult idea. When an idea was hard to grasp, students appreciated how she explained concepts from different angles and how she provided feedback.
She also led MSE’s adoption of iterative retrieval practice, giving students repeated opportunities to recall and build on earlier learning. She also brought added stakeholder perspectives to inform MSE’s undergraduate curriculum review.
Prof Aravind Dasari develops students’ critical thinking and engineering judgement
Nanyang Education Award – School
Prof Aravind, MSE’s Associate Chair (Undergraduate), designs classes and assessments that give students practice in reasoning through engineering problems. He draws on engineering successes and failures to help them question assumptions, connect ideas from different courses and explain why a material behaved the way it did.
Students valued the depth of his explanations and the way he challenged them to work through the reasoning for themselves. That combination of clarity and challenge helped them connect ideas from across their courses and see how those ideas apply to real engineering problems.
Through their teaching, NTU MSE students practise what engineers do every day: make sense of complex ideas, apply theory to practical problems, and explain the reasoning behind their decisions. Congratulations to all three educators on their Nanyang Education Awards!
