Professor Wen Yonggang named “Top Asia Pacific Technology Leader” for Data Centres

Wednesday, December 1st, 2021 - W. Media's Asia Pacific Cloud and Datacenter Awards ceremony was held in Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, with participation of more than 125 senior executives from Asia Pacific’s data centre sector.

A diverse range of technology sectors and industries were represented on this very unique evening with the judges evaluating different projects, teams and individuals who have excelled in three categories: innovation, leadership and sustainability.

Professor Wen Yonggang (Professor and President’s Chair in Computer Science and Engineering), was recognised as Top APAC Technology Leader. This prestigious award aims to recognise outstanding achievements and leadership qualities of technology professionals who have gone above and beyond their call of duties to make innovations happen.

His cutting-edge research of digital twin and AI techniques to improve the energy efficiency of green data centres, especially in the challenging environment presented by Singapore’s tropical climate and achievements in this emerging area have won multiple accolades, placing him and positioning Singapore, at the forefront of global green data centre research.

Professor Wen Yonggang’s research is behind the award-winning cognitive digital twin platform DCWiz, that empowers digital transformation for data centre operators to digitalise, optimise and automate mission-critical operations and management, toward business resilience and environmental sustainability.

Specifically, it draws upon real-time and historical data from data centre operations to calibrate an industrial-grade digital twin of the physical data centre for two purposes:

1. Synthesizing self-labelled operational datasets for AI model training, and
2. Validating AI-recommended actions for risk-return profiling before deployed onto the physical infrastructure. 
   

Advanced machine learning algorithms are embraced for a suite of user cases, ranging from design/change validation, what-if analysis, PUE/CUE/WUE optimization, capacity planning to predictive maintenance, in life-cycle management for data centre of green and brown built.

The industrial-grade digital twin empowers a born digital mindset for digital transformation through improved application of physical and synthesize data judiciously, and predictively optimizing the end-to-end life cycle operations and management in the digital space. The turn-key platform solution has been deployed with international and regional customers (e.g., Alibaba and Singapore National Supercomputing Centre) and proven to improve business resilience, reduce carbon emissions, and enable energy savings.

The cloud AI platform is highly scalable for data centre in a single or across multiple sites, and hardened with operational technology (OT) security capability to instil a greater peace of mind for data centre owners and operators. Its dual cycle control loop mechanism, further enhanced with expert-in-the-loop decision capability, has been touted by both industry and academia as a real game changer in transforming mission-critical infrastructure operations and management, shifting from traditional data centre monitoring tools to impactful and actional insights for resilient operations and climate change strategies. 

DCWiz’s revolutionary potential impact has been recognised and supported by the Government of Singapore (including  National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF), Energy Market Authority (EMA), Building and Construction Authority (BCA), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), The National Environment Agency (NEA), Enterprise Singapore (ESG), Public Utilities Board (PUB), AI Singapore), as well as from the industry (Alibaba, National Supercomputer Centre, BDx, PSA), that understand the need to transform the data centre operations and management as we know them today.