UROPers' ACHIEVEMENTS

UROPers at Competitions

Singapore AUV Challenge (SAUVC)

By Prof Pablo Valdivia (EPD) and SUTD Organisation of Autonomous Robotics (SOAR)

Exclusive interview with the student team from SOAR.

Our team of students took part in the Singapore AUV Challenge from 8 to 11 March 2019 and made it into the Top 16 fastest teams to qualify for the final round. This was the first time that SUTD has made it to the finals, with a team comprised mostly of Freshmore students.

“I think the overall experience has been very fruitful and pleasing for the SAUVC 2019 team, and most of us are very interested to attempt for a win next year. We definitely achieved our own goals this year, in which we managed to qualify for the finals considering the lack of experience our team had.” said Bryan Kong (team lead).

Highlights from SAUVC 2019.

Brain Inspired Computing and Applications

By Prof Zhao Rong (EPD), Chan Luo Qi, Hong Peng Fei, Hum Qing Ze

SUTD Team (from left, Chan Luo Qi, Hum Qing Ze, Professor Shi Luping (TsingHua University), Hong Pengfei receiving the first prize at the First National Collegiate and International Invitational Tournament on Brain Inspired Computing and Applications organised by Tsinghua University

A team of SUTD students clinched the first prize for the First National Collegiate and International Invitational Tournament on Brain Inspired Computing and Applications held by Tsinghua University in Beijing on 14 and 15 October 2017. The team consists three Freshmores, Chan Luo Qi, Hong Pengfei and Hum Qing Ze. A total of 229 teams from 47 institutions signed up for the competition, with only 16 teams shortlisted for the finals.

The SUTD team’s project was titled the Face of Fonts: 字之魂. The aim of the project was to discover the semantic meaning behind fonts and apply it to design. The team decided to explore their hypothesis using neural networks and managed to develop a font recommendation system that acts as a first-cut for typographic designers.

After a road show and a final presentation, the team managed to clinch the first prize worth 120,000 RMB.

“The past three months had been an immensely humbling journey for us as we were Freshmores navigating the foreign field of neural networks. We had to continually push ourselves to think out of the box while working on this project. With the immense support and mentorship from our professors, we managed to further improve on our research methodology to achieve viable results.” said Hum Qing Ze

Machine learning was also a new topic to them and they had to quickly pick up the broad strokes of the multitudes of algorithms, each with their own strengths in classification and efficiency, in order to develop their font recommendation system. Going forward, the team hopes to continue developing their research.

UROPers' Publications

SUTD Physicists Unlock the Mystery of Thermionic Emission in Graphene

Under Prof Ricky Ang's guidance and research team, UROP student Chen Yueyi’s contributions are published in the research paper 'Generalized High-Energy Thermionic Electron Injection at Graphene Interface' in Physical Review Applied.

Working closely with researchers, I get to experience of what research life is like. It's also a good opportunity to try and learn. I found out what kind of research I like, while before this I don't even know research have different kinds. I also pushed myself to finish my UROP even though it gets harder, I became busier and the initial momentum faded off. Looking back I appreciate that I tried, hard.

Chen Yueyi, EPD

A General Descriptor ΔE Enables the Quantitative Development of Luminescent Materials based on Photoinduced Electron Transfer

Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), one of the most prestigious chemistry journals in the world, our UROP student Tan Tee Meng is listed as a co-author for his contributions made in the UROP project.

What motivates him to join UROP and how is it like working with Prof Liu Xiaogang?

The project description seemed cool to me. It helped that it was sort of related to the healthcare field, which I hope to pursue a career in. Prof Liu is a very supportive professor. As computational chemistry is not something I have worked with, I naturally had many questions to ask, and he took the time to explain the many concepts to me. In addition, he encouraged exploration, which I gladly took the chance to.

Tan Tee Meng, EPD