Wrap-up: Industrial Seminar Series (semester 2)

Dr. Aik Beng Ng, Regional Manager, Nvidia AI Technology Centre Singapore, speaks on-stage at the 5 April, 2023 seminar.

With the presentation on 5 April by the Nvidia AI Technology Centre Singapore team, the AY22/23 Semester 2 Industrial Seminar Series (ISS) was successfully concluded. This semester hit a record for the ISS in terms of the number of seminars run: a total of 10 seminars were presented to the FoS  students, covering a gamut of industries including the maritime, biopharmaceuticals, healthcare, food science, financial services, and the ICT.

The semester kicked off with a data science-centric talk featuring Maersk, one of the global shipping giants. The speaker, Ms. Gayatri Tharmaindran, Head of Finance, Ocean Customer Logistics, presented an overview on how end-to-end logistics companies like Maersk unlock values in productivity with data science. In a similar vein, the state-of-the-industry seminar run alongside the Science Career and Internships Fair (SCIF) 2023, titled “Data Powering the Financial Services Industry”, invited two NUS alumni from SAS, a developer of analytics software, and BAM, an asset management company, to speak about how math and data science is intimately involved in risk management.

Mr. Anand Sinha, Head, Systematic Business (APAC), Citadel Securities, introduces Citadel | Citadel Securities at the 22 March, 2023 talk.

The other seminars catering to the mathematical sciences student featured Nvidia and Citadel, with the Citadel speaker, Mr. Anand Sinha, Head, Systematic Business (APAC), at Citadel Securities, went in-depth on the real-world “alpha” generation process, used to locate excess return in the capital market, affording student an example of the technical know-how required in developing quantitative research and trading algorithms at market leaders such as Citadel. Nvidia’s team of 4 speakers touched on popular topics such as how Nvidia GPUs accelerate AI workload to fuel scientific discoveries, and how powerful foundation models such as ChatGPT were made possible by the computing powers of Nvidia chips.

Invited speakers from Charles River Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna Singapore engage with students and alumni alike at the 24 March, 2023 seminar on the biopharmaceutical landscape in Singapore.

With a majority of the Faculty of Science students reading life and physical sciences, a large number of the seminars were catered to deepening their exposure to their relevant industrial sectors. AstraZeneca were invited to brief students on the commercial activities that big pharmas typically carry out. DKSH, a market expansion services company that promote, among others, life sciences research equipment, opened many students for the first time, about commercial roles that life sciences graduate could pursue in B2B companies. Of course, Syneos Health, from the Contract Research industry, represented another relevant industry that our Life Sciences students might not have been aware, where they could plough with their subject matter expertise on clinical trials, safety regulations, and project management. Thematic seminars were also facilitated to give Life Sciences students important trends such as future of precision medicine, again, as port of the state-of-the-industry seminars coinciding with the SCIF 2023, and an overview of the current biopharma landscape in Singapore, including trends, challenges, and opportunities.

Researchers from Mondelēz’s Singapore Research Center present on-stage at the 18 Jan, 2023 seminar, “code-shared” with the Sci & Tech Industry Insights I course – SP2401.

Finally, the food industry, of concern and interest by Chemistry and Food Science & Technology students, was ably represented by the Mondelēz Singapore R&D team, whose sharing on how many of our favourite food items, from candies to cookies, are continually refined at the Mondelez laboratories.

The ISS will resume in AY23/24 semester 1 with 5 seminars scheduled to continue to expand the industrial awareness of the science students.