SUTD Class of 2024 Commencement - Speech by Prof Phoon Kok Kwang, President, SUTD
SUTD Chairman, Mr Lee Tzu Yang;
Board of Trustees;
Distinguished Guests;
And most importantly, our exceptional Graduands,
A very good afternoon to all of you.
There are a few firsts happening today.
The first, of course, is the conferment of University Professorship on Professor Chong Tow Chong, who stepped down as President of SUTD end of July this year after helming SUTD for 14 years. Congratulations Tow Chong! This is such a well-deserved recognition.
The next “first” is a personal one – I am participating in this important occasion as President of SUTD for the very first time. I am deeply honoured and humbled. I promise I will give my all and I will work with our entire community including all our graduands to make “designed by SUTD” a badge of excellence in everything we do. “Designed by SUTD” will embody our trailblazing spirit to improve lives and communities through human centred design powered by AI and technology.
And of course, I have saved the best “first” for last: Today’s commencement ceremony is the first for our pioneer batch of postgraduates from our Masters of Science in Technology and Design in Cybersecurity and Sustainable Product Design. All 44 of you are trailblazers, having spent the last 12 months combining cutting-edge technology with innovative design principles to address real-world challenges. Congratulations on your career milestone. This is the first time we have run our master programmes with different specialisations under a Design and Technology programme structure. Adult learners in and outside Singapore are eager to experience our unique SUTD pedagogy. Now, I can say: “Join our MTD!”
It would be remiss of me to not congratulate our Masters and PhD graduates from EPD, ESD, ISTD, STEP as well as MUSPP. Each and every one of you is an innovator leader, having spent the last few years in SUTD equipping yourselves with distinct design and tech skills. Our valedictorian, Ms Jemima Lee, is the perfect embodiment of such skills. Jemima graduated from NTU and went on to spend six years in the workforce – first at SLA, then at MOE. She decided to pursue a postgraduate degree in Urban Planning and joined our MUSPP programme. She describes the last 12 months as the most stimulating in her life. In her own words, “the mental stimulation and the free rein to think outside-of-the-box” made her “feel alive” once again. She also cites her wonderful professors and fellow students from countries as far away as Costa Rica and Jordan as being the reasons why her time at SUTD has been so rewarding.
Indeed, if you look around you, you will notice the diverse make up of our graduates. To be sure, we have students from all walks of life and countries applying for our MTD programmes. For example, as part of our collaboration with the Guizhou Department of Education in China, 15 candidates from Guizhou enrolled in our MTD programme in September last year. One of them is Ms Pan Yongxin, a graduate today in the MTD Sustainable Product Design programme. With a background in Mechanical Engineering and five years of experience teaching Mechatronics and Industrial Robotics at Guizhou Vocational Technology College, Yongxin was drawn to explore sustainability in product design, a concept that is slowly gaining traction in Guizhou. In the past one year that she has spent with us, she has not only refined her design thinking skills, but also discovered a lifelong passion for learning. Yongxin now plans to bring her newfound knowledge back to China, where she aims to bridge the gap between domestic and international education, integrating innovative teaching methods and project-based learning into her curriculum. Like many of her friends, Yongxin has surmounted significant challenges to complete her programme. Yongxin's story truly exemplifies perseverance and what it means to embrace lifelong learning.
Now that our first post-grads have successfully completed the MTD programmes and we are seeing how well-received the programmes are, we are excited to be adding six new MTD programmes in the areas of data science, healthtech innovation, advanced IC design and technology, robotics and automation, as well as human-centred design. This reflects our commitment to providing a comprehensive post-graduate education that equips students with the skills and knowledge to drive successful innovation and create impactful solutions in their respective fields. Interest is growing rapidly. Enrolment will increase by 2.5 times more this September – a clear demonstration of the value of our unique approach to design and innovation.
Before we continue with the commencement proper, I would like to take the opportunity to share something that is close to my heart and constantly on my mind these days. You would have heard or read about SUTD LEAP by now. It is our new multi-pronged growth strategy aimed at propelling us to the forefront of the Design x Tech space for a post AI world. And key to the success of SUTD Leap is Design, AI and Tech, or D.AI.Tech. You will hear more about this in the months to come as we pivot towards AI. In particular, we will be re-imagining human-centred design using deep Tech like AI to create better solutions for real world problems or re-imagining new solution paradigms for complex problems through a designer-AI tag team. In other words, we will no longer be looking at plain old vanilla “design”, but “design powered by AI”. This is human-centred D.AI.Tech coming together to create a better world.
On this note, to all our post grads and PhD grads today, your time at SUTD, no matter the length, has equipped you with the unique interdisciplinary ability to integrate design thinking, AI-driven insights, and technological expertise to create innovative solutions that transform industries and improve lives. As you celebrate today’s milestone in your lives, I urge you to embrace the challenges and opportunities that lie at the intersection of Design, AI, and Tech – this sweet spot where a completely new mode of innovation thrives, and where your expertise can unlock a new Renaissance.
Spiderman’s Uncle Ben famously said: “With great power comes great responsibility.” I urge all of you to take all that you have learnt during your time here and multiply it when you head back into society. Give back to the communities that you belong to, in any way you can. This is exactly what we at SUTD are all about. As an example, we have partnered Science Centre Singapore and other educational institutions to make our pedagogy and maker spaces accessible to schools in a programme called STEAMunity.
Let me close with an anonymous Irish blessing that a wise gentleman shared with me many years ago at my own commencement:
May the sun shine gently on your face.
May the wind be at your back.
May the road rise to meet you.
Until we meet again.
Thank you and I wish you the very best in your future endeavours.