Tag: Singapore

The Overseas Centre Jakarta will be part of a regional eco-system network of knowledge-sharing nodes enabling SMU to be Asia’s Knowledge Gateway.

Singapore Management University (SMU) has opened its first overseas centre in Jakarta, Indonesia on 6 December 2022. This bolsters the university’s goal to positively impact local communities as it advances its “Growth in Asia” strategic priority as part of its Vision 2025.

Since its inception in 2000, SMU has established itself as a premium global-city university in Asia
and made great strides in leveraging its cross-disciplinary strengths to successfully execute its strategic thrusts of delivering transformative education, cutting edge research, and meaningful engagements, to meet Singapore and the region’s future needs as Asia’s Knowledge Gateway.

As Centre Director of the SMU Overseas Centre Jakarta (OCJ), Mr Shoeb Z Kagda will lead the centre to develop deeper engagement between the University’s Schools, Offices, Centres, and Institutes and Indonesia Institutes of Higher Learning, business leaders, and key policy makers.

OCJ will work with local partners in education and industry to support human capital development in Indonesia and enable exchange of knowledge and expertise between Singapore and Indonesia. The Centre will provide direct access to innovative, in-depth knowledge across Institutes of Higher Learning in Indonesia; build deeper engagement with Indonesian business leaders and policy makers; and facilitate regular exchanges between SMU students and Indonesian youth.

Indonesia’s status as the largest economy in Southeast Asia with their rising rates of tertiary educated workforce puts them in an ideal position to capitalise on Asia’s growth. SMU aims to provide the avenue by which Indonesia’s corporate, government and industry workforce can take advantage of SMU’s world class education through its professional continuing education and postgraduate programmes. Additionally, SMU will work to strengthen bilateral efforts so as to develop and carry out strategic collaborative initiatives and programmes to build intellectual capital ground up and positively impact local communities.

More details here.

SMU College of Graduate Research Studies will build strong intellectual content through credit-bearing interdisciplinary courses focused on advanced methods and interdisciplinary research, and a professional development programme focused on skill-based trainings.

It will enhance ‘co-learning’ experiences and academic exchanges across SMU Schools for postgraduate research students and graduates, facilitate the collaboration of faculty members from different Schools and disciplines, as well as strengthen the development of research which is more applied.

Additionally, it will strengthen networking, cohort building and collaborative opportunities for postgraduate research students across the various programmes, facilitated through the student and alumni groups.

With interdisciplinary training, graduates of the new College will be more well-rounded, more relevant, and better able to provide applied contributions to Singapore’s development needs.

The Singapore Management University (SMU) has established its eighth school – the College of Graduate Research Studies (CGRS). The new College aims to develop world-class thought leaders who are trained to undertake cutting-edge research across disciplines, bringing about significant impact to businesses, societies and public institutions worldwide.

To this end, the College will equip SMU postgraduate research students with knowledge and competencies to develop novel solutions that are relevant to some of today’s most challenging issues through the integration of disciplines, culture and industry. It will enhance integration and interdisciplinarity across the various SMU postgraduate research programmes that will enable our students to gain a holistic learning experience and well-grounded approach to their research. This will be achieved through interdisciplinary programmes, shared courses and professional training workshops. Furthermore, the College will strengthen networking, cohort building and collaborative opportunities for postgraduate research students across the various programmes, facilitated through the student and alumni groups.

Mr Ho Kwon Ping, Chairman, SMU said “The establishment of CGRS is in line with the national strategy of building a robust base of research capabilities and peaks of international excellence, as well as nurturing a strong research and innovation talent pipeline. Our community of learners will benefit from the diversity of expertise, disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge and perspectives that will be shared within the College. This enhances the learning experience of postgraduate research students as they become better equipped to understand complex issues and challenges affecting the world across boundaries, and create significant, long-term impact. It will also make them more sought after by academic institutions and industry organisations that have interdisciplinary opportunities. Besides providing a holistic education, the College will also enhance the community-based experience.

“In addition to benefitting our students, the interdisciplinary approach also enables our faculty members to address societal challenges through their thought leadership and research. They increasingly collaborate with colleagues in other Schools, academics in other universities as well as with industry to enhance and accelerate the generation of knowledge.”

Sir Nigel Thrift, Chairman, Academic Affairs Committee, SMU said “The College of Graduate Research Studies is another step towards providing a superlative student experience at SMU, this time for graduate research students. Not only will it establish interdisciplinary programmes and the opportunity to access more interdisciplinary topics and workshops but it will, as a result, allow graduate researchers to gain access to broader research horizons and to discuss these new horizons with many more of their peers.”

Since 2006, SMU has trained over 400 postgraduate research graduates, and is currently training over 580 such students. About 65% of its graduates in academic research PhD programmes are working as faculty members or postdoctoral fellows in prestigious academic universities or institutions in Singapore and internationally, whilst about 35% work on R&D in industries locally and abroad.

Key Elements of CGRS

1. Building strong intellectual interdisciplinary content

(i) CGRS provides postgraduate research students with two categories of courses: Graduate Research Interdisciplinary Topics (GRIT) and Graduate Research Professional Development (GRPD) programme.

GRIT is a series of interdisciplinary courses in curated topics which are either ‘required’ or ‘electives’ depending on the academic research PhD programme. The inaugural interdisciplinary course on ‘Machine Learning for Social Science’ was held in Academic Year (AY) 2021, Term 1. This was followed by the course on ‘Applied Econometrics in Social Science’ in AY2021, Term 2. The course on ‘Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research’ will run in AY2022, Term 1.

GRPD will include two sub-components, comprising Foundation courses (e.g., graduate teaching) and Elective courses (e.g., scientific writing and presentation). This new format, which is credit bearing, will take effect for incoming academic research PhD students from the non-STEM disciplines from AY2022 onwards.

(ii) CGRS will also play an important role in the development of interdisciplinary programmes.

· PhD in Law, Commerce and Technology

CGRS has, together with the Yong Pung How School of Law (YPHSL), launched a new interdisciplinary programme – PhD in Law, Commerce and Technology which will welcome its first students in August 2022.

The first of its kind in Asia-Pacific and among a handful of interdisciplinary research doctoral programmes offered by law schools around the world, the programme is built on YPHSL’s research strengths, particularly in the areas of commercial law, and law and technology.

The programme adopts an industry-focused and policy-oriented approach with the purpose of producing cutting-edge research that can help regulators, companies and society as a whole face the challenges of today’s changing world.

It aims to train future thought leaders in academia, judiciary, regulatory agencies and international organisations, as well as prepare students for a career at leading research-oriented institutions.

· Master’s and PhD programmes in Asian Urbanisms

CGRS has also worked closely with the SMU’s new College of Integrative Studies to launch a Master of Philosophy in Asian Urbanisms and Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Urbanisms, upcoming in AY2023.

The programmes aim to provide an opportunity for Singaporean students, and for students from the Asia region and (eventually) beyond, to access postgraduate-level degrees in urban studies in Singapore that will be theoretically and empirically focused on Asia. With interdisciplinarity at the heart, the programmes integrate courses and supervision from various SMU Schools, especially those with particular urban expertise. Students will develop deep knowledge of the theory and practice in at least one area of urban Asia, and one related area in sustainability, culture or technology. They will also attain the ability to critically analyse problems using either quantitative and/or qualitative research methodologies commonly used in advanced-level scholarly and applied research to address problems of interest to industry partners that can be translated for practical business scenarios.

Professor Wang Heli, Dean of CGRS, said “The launch of the PhD in Law, Commerce and Technology, as well as Master of Philosophy and PhD in Asian Urbanisms, will be our first steps in 2022 and 2023 respectively, to strengthen SMU’s interdisciplinarity in research. The programmes are both academic- and industry-oriented, and our postgraduate research students in these programmes will be expected to bear both intellectual depth and material industrial relevance in their dissertations.”

2. Enhancing ‘co-learning’ experiences and academic exchanges across SMU Schools for postgraduate research students and graduates

CGRS will strengthen the ‘co-learning’ experiences for postgraduate research students via sharing and interdisciplinary learning across Schools through the development and delivery of intellectual content. This intellectual content includes the introduction and facilitation of shared interdisciplinary courses, interdisciplinary programmes (e.g., PhD in Law, Commerce & Technology), as well as interdisciplinary events (like seminars and brown-bag sessions). The College will explore both internal and external resources (e.g., Visiting Fellows) to ensure quality offering of the above-mentioned intellectual content.

3. Strengthening networking, cohort building and collaborative opportunities

The College will ensure that there is enhanced academic and social engagements through the planned Graduate Research Student Society (GRSS). The main objective of the GRSS is to deepen interactions amongst the students through academic events/activities (e.g., brown-bag seminars, poster competitions, and possibly over time an annual Doctoral Conference), and social activities (e.g., get-together or sports sessions). The GRSS will also build strong ties with the planned Graduate Research Alumni Chapter (GRAC), so as to enhance collaborations and source for placements. The GRAC will enhance engagement amongst SMU’s postgraduate research graduates.

New research by academics from leading business schools Singapore Management University (SMU), INSEAD and HEC Paris demonstrate how growth training helps entrepreneurs achieve increased revenues for their ventures. This research project, developed by Prof Reddi Kotha (SMU), Prof Bala Vissa (INSEAD), Yimin Lin (SMU) and Prof Anne Valerie Corboz (HEC Paris), was funded by the Singapore government’s Ministry of Education research grant.

According to the research paper, titled “Do Ambitious Entrepreneurs Benefit More from Training?”, training in growth-catalyst tools helped entrepreneurs achieve a 72% increase in their ventures’ revenues; which is about 40% more than entrepreneurs who did not receive such training. Additionally, the paper also showed that ventures led by entrepreneurs with more ambitious growth expectations experienced revenue growth of about 100% compared to 10% for those who had not received training.

Research findings are based on an extensive field experiment involving interactive training sessions, workshops and personalised coaching which was delivered to 103 Singapore-based entrepreneurs, out of the 181 entrepreneurs participating in the study (the remaining 78 made up the study’s control group). The entrepreneurs, who were running new ventures, received training in three specific areas, or growth-catalyst tools, relevant for formulating and executing innovation-led growth: business-model design, leveraging external networks, and building internal teams.

The paper, which is forthcoming in Strategic Management Journal, also looked at other success measures like a venture’s “survival rate,” in other words, the likelihood that a start-up will survive. According to the study’s findings, ventures whose founders attended had a survival rate of 50 percent against the 36 percent survival rate of ventures led by entrepreneurs who had not been trained in growth-catalyst tools.

Surprisingly, previous research on the impact of training on entrepreneurs and their ventures had provided mixed results – a few studies did find a positive impact of training whilst many others failed to do so. The authors of this study suggested that the prior mixed findings are a reflection of at least two factors: (i) many prior studies were conducted in emerging economies where entrepreneurship is often necessity-based; (ii) entrepreneurs with diverse growth ambitions may have been lumped into the same training intervention with narrower content.

Prof Vissa comments, “our research suggests that perhaps training interventions for entrepreneurship in mature market economies need to be tailored differently for entrepreneurs who value growth versus those who value autonomy or control”.

The authors of the study argue that their findings can support policymakers when designing initiatives to support entrepreneurs. “Fast-growing new ventures founded by opportunity-seeking entrepreneurs benefit society because they are key sources of jobs and innovation that boost economic prosperity,” says Prof. Corboz, citing business and management experts.

“We hope our work encourages new research on entrepreneur training and inform policymakers to draw new plans to help entrepreneurs, as they are key drivers of economic growth,” adds Prof Kotha.

More than 8 in 10 Singaporeans associate suicide with stigma and only one in every three Singaporeans “will do something to help” someone who shares personal thoughts of suicide.

Less than 1 in 10 think the effectiveness of support in Singapore for a person facing a crisis and thinking about or affected by suicide, is high.

A study conducted by the Singapore Management University (SMU) revealed these perceptions of suicide in a city known for its cosmopolitan vibrancy, high quality of life and educated workforce.

With the Samaritans of Singapore (S.O.S.) as supporting partner, SMU Principal Lecturer of Statistics, Rosie Ching, created and carried out the nation-wide study, named “Save.Me.” with her 62 students in January and February this year, interviewing 2,960 people across Singapore, on the topic of suicide. Ms. Ching and her students conducted the surveys through face-to-face interviews, telephone calls and Zoom.

The survey results are available at www.screeningstatistics.com/saveme.

Save.Me. delved into knowledge levels of signs of suicide, beliefs propagated about suicide, their preferred platforms for reaching out for help, the level of support available to people in crisis, and the efficacy of such support channels. It adhered closely to the demographics of Singapore with regard to gender, race, age and found that more than 8 in 10 (83%) in Singapore believe in the existence of stigma associated with suicide. Those with no connection to suicide have a significantly more negative attitude towards suicide than those with immediate family who attempted or took their lives and those with friends who did the same.

Overall, more than 3 in 4 Singaporeans (77%) rate their level of knowledge about suicide as below average. People with more intimate connections to suicide (from immediate family to relatives to friends) cite “No outreach or education” as the top reason for their low knowledge levels. For everyone who would avoid someone suicidal or in a crisis, more than 70% say it is their fear of making the affected person worse, their lack of ability to do anything, and their lack of knowledge.

The most outstanding myth believed by Singaporeans is that that talking about suicide may give someone the idea. People with immediate family connected to suicide form the highest proportion who believe this, at 70%.

Less than 1 in 10 think highly of the effectiveness of support in Singapore for a person facing a crisis and thinking about or affected by suicide, with the overall effectiveness of such support in Singapore rated as significantly lower than average by all profiles of respondents.

Commented Mr Gasper Tan, Chief Executive, Samaritans of Singapore (SOS), “The results from the survey confirms what many of our mental health experts are saying: there is an unprecedented Page 2 of 6 mental health crisis in our country, accentuated by the pandemic. Over the last two years, SOS has seen an increase of 89% in at-risk individuals seeking support. As a community, we must continue to galvanise our resources to strengthen and transform our health care ecosystem to address mental health and suicide holistically and accessibly.”

According to Professor Lieven Demeester, Associate Provost (Teaching and Learning Innovation) at SMU, “It is great that SMU’s collaboration with SOS, has yielded such valuable insights that may be usefully applied towards more effective prevention of suicide.”

The older a person, the more he believes in the unpredictability of suicides. Yet overall, more than 9 in 10 (92%) believe that suicide can be prevented. The younger a person, the higher the percentage who believe suicide can be prevented: Gen Z (93.3%) to Millennials (93%) to Gen X (90%) to Baby-Boomers (84%). The more years of education, the greater the percentage who believe suicide can be predicted and prevented as well, with the highest at 96% of those with postgraduate education.

Said Ms. Ching, “The memory of three special individuals lost to suicide drew me to this realm of suicide. As I learnt from SOS, each of them only wanted the pain, not their life, to stop, but they saw no way out. It is to each of their memories I dedicate every tear shed in Save.Me. I know those whom I have lost would want anyone in crisis to be pulled from the brink, that their pain be addressed, that everyone may know where, how to seek help and support. So that healing may begin.”

Key Findings:

a) More than 8 in 10 (82.87%) believe in existence of stigma associated with suicide in Singapore. All profiles show strong majorities who believe in the stigma of suicide in Singapore.

b) Only one in every three Singaporeans ”will do something to help“ someone who shares personal thoughts of suicide. “Offering presence and continual support” is the top most immediate and effective action, followed by a fairly distant second-placed “Encourage professional support, e.g. mental health counsellors”. Together they form almost 3 in 4 of Singaporeans’ responses to someone in a crisis. Only about a third (33%) would encourage professional support.

c) For every two in three persons who would not support and save someone who is in a crisis or suicidal, more than 70% say it is their fear of making the suicidal person worse, their lack of ability to do anything, and their lack of knowledge.

d) More than 9 in 10 (92%) believe that suicide can be prevented. The younger a person, the higher the percentage who believe suicide can be prevented: Gen Z (93.3%) to Millennials (93%) to Gen X (90%) to Baby-Boomers (84%). The more years of education, the greater the percentage who believe suicide can be prevented, with the highest at almost 10 in 10 (96%) of those with postgraduate education.

e) Preferred sharing platforms: Overall, 6 in every 10 choose “Physical, F2F” as their most comfortable platform to talk to someone about their problems. Second place of text messaging goes for Gen Z and Millennials, but not so for Gen X and Baby-boomers, who prefer the telephone or a hotline. Statistically, text messaging to Gen Z and Millennials is what the telephone or a hotline is to Baby-boomers.

Across all age bands, “a friend” is the person they will most likely turn to about problems. Amongst all age groups, only 6.35% choose a trained counsellor, with Gen X the most open to them at 9.47%. 67.43% would be more willing to talk to someone about their problems if their identity were anonymous, a common thread across genders, ages, races, religions, professions, educational qualifications.

f) Effectiveness of support: Less than 1 in 10 think the effectiveness of support in Singapore for a person facing a crisis and thinking about or affected by suicide, is high. In fact, 74% overall rate the effectiveness of such support in Singapore as significantly lower than average. This low rating stretches across all profiles connected to suicide.

Background Information on Save.Me

In January 2022, SMU students in a unique Statistics module called STATISTICS-X created by Rosie Ching, Principal Lecturer of Statistics at SMU, collaborated with Samaritans of Singapore to conduct Save.Me., an original nationwide study.

With the support of SOS, Ms. Ching spent 13 months in total crafting this project from the outset at the request of SOS CEO Mr. Gasper Tan in December 2020.

At both the kick-off and mid-term of the project, Ms. Ching invited the Samaritans of Singapore to SMU, who warmly and enthusiastically supported and guided her and students about managing persons in distress, and learn about the meaningful work and outreach efforts of the SOS through the many years in Singapore.

Ms Ching and her students collectively invested more than 3.5 months of intense work in the study, survey and analysis, gathering data from more than 2,960 interviews in 5 weeks.

Professor David Lo from the School of Computing and Information Systems (SCIS) at the Singapore Management University has been elevated to IEEE Fellow for his contributions to “synergising software engineering and data mining”. This is the highest grade of membership in the IEEE. It is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. Each year, less than 0.1% of voting members are selected for this member grade elevation. The number of newly elevated IEEE Fellows under age 40 is very rare, and Prof Lo belongs to this youngest category of new IEEE Fellows this year.

IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.

Prof Lo has also been included among the Fellows of Automated Software Engineering (ASE). ASE Fellows are deemed to “have rendered significant and sustained contributions to the ASE Community, through their scientific accomplishments and their service to the ASE Conferences, ASE Journal, and to the ASE research community in general.”

Professor Lo said, “I am honoured and humbled to receive these recognitions. I would like to thank my PhD advisor, mentors, mentees, and collaborators for their help, support, and contributions, without which these recognitions would not have been possible. I am grateful to SCIS and SMU for providing me with much support in the last 13 years to allow me to grow as a researcher and mentor. These recognitions are a great encouragement for me to continue contributing to the research community, especially to the software engineering and data science fields, as a member of a vibrant group of researchers at SCIS and SMU.”

Prof Lo’s research is at the intersection of software engineering and data science, also known as software analytics, encompassing socio-technical aspects, and analysis of different kinds of software artefacts such as code, execution traces, bug reports, Q&A posts, user feedback, and developer networks, and the interplay between them. He designs data science solutions that transform passive data into tools that improve developer productivity and system quality, and generate new insights.

Prof Lo has published more than 400 papers in refereed conferences and journals. His research work has created impact in a number of ways. Collectively, they have attracted much interest from the research community and inspired many subsequent studies that push the frontiers of knowledge in the areas of software engineering and data science. This is evidenced by the more than 18,000 citations listed on Google Scholar, corresponding to an H-index of 73. In addition, many of his research work are conducted with industry partners, leading to papers presenting state-of-the-art solutions deployed in practice, as well as unique insights into industrial software systems and processes. For example, in a recent paper, Prof Lo and his co-authors presented a state-of-the-art system that is deployed in practice to detect emerging issues of WeChat app by analysing a stream of user feedback.

Additionally, Prof Lo has successfully trained 12 PhD students, who have secured employment at high-tech companies and world-class universities and research institutions across the globe. Prof Lo’s research work has also created collaborations (including many long term ones) between SMU and other universities in over 20 countries, resulting in works published in renowned conferences and/or journals across various areas of computer science research.

Aside from his research work, Prof Lo has also contributed actively to the research community by co-organising conferences and workshops, and serving in the programme boards, programme committees, steering committees, and editorial boards of many top-tier and leading conferences and journals. For example, he served (or is current serving) as the General Chair / Program Co-Chair of 11 international conferences, including the 31st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, which was held at SMU campus in 2016. He is also serving on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Empirical Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Automated Software Engineering, Journal of Software: Evolution and Process, Information and Software Technology, Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development, Information Systems, and Neurocomputing.

Earlier this year, Prof Lo was awarded the 2021 IEEE CS TCSE Distinguished Service Award for his “extensive and outstanding service to the software engineering community in his many roles in major software engineering conferences and journals”. He is the first in Singapore and second in Asia to have received this prestigious award.

Prof Lo obtained his Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from Nanyang Technological University in 2004, and his PhD degree in Computer Science from National University of Singapore in 2008. He joined the School of Information Systems (former name of SCIS) as a Lecturer in May 2008. In April 2020, Prof Lo co-founded the Research Lab for Intelligent Software Engineering (RISE) that conducts research in the intersection of Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Cybersecurity with the goal of improving software quality and reducing software cost.

In addition to his current line of research work on software analytics, Prof Lo is keen to solve an emerging problem — how best to adapt software engineering processes and tools that are currently used to design conventional software for AI system development. AI is advancing rapidly and has been, or will be, incorporated into many systems that humans interact with daily, such as self-driving cars. His immediate future goal is to investigate and characterise the limits of current best practices and tools to AI system development, and design novel solutions that address those limitations.

In 2019, Prof Lo was named ACM Distinguished Member for his outstanding scientific contributions to computing. He was among the 62 members worldwide to achieve this recognition in 2019. ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society.

Prof Lo was the recipient of several SMU research awards: the Lee Foundation Fellowship in 2009, the Lee Kong Chian Fellowship in 2018, and the Lee Kuan Yew Fellowship in 2019. He has also received 17 international research and service awards, including 11 best/distinguished paper awards.