Aces go Places
Our panellists and speakers
March
Ms Tan Shui-Min as a panellist at VMware’s new Regional Digital Innovation Hub
On 30th March, VMware launched their Regional Digital Innovation Hub in Singapore. Shui-Min was invited to be a panellist for their opening to discuss the future of work and themes of agility and scale, security, innovation and collaboration through state-of-the-art and next-gen technologies.
The event was also graced by Mr Alvin Tan, our Minister of State, Trade and Industry and Culture, Community and Youth and industry leaders.
April
Ms Tan Shui-Min as a guest speaker at a virtual discussion hosted by Singapore Business Circle and Mulesoft
Shui-Min was invited as a special guest speaker to a virtual discussion hosted by Singapore Business Circle and MuleSoft. The topic of this discussion was NUS’ Digital Transformation journey and our challenges. The session was moderated by Dr Bill Foo, the Honorary Chairman of Singapore Business Circle with over 30 years of experience in financial services, and who currently holds chairmanship and senior positions in a myriad of organisations. This event was also attended by distinguished members from higher learning, banking, property and tourism industries.
It has been in our DNA all these while to keep abreast of all things regarding digital transformation. We have been on this journey for a while. Even in pre-COVID days, the ability to work anywhere was already very important for us as our campus is so big. So when the need to work from home comes, we did not scramble.
May
Ms Tan Shui-Min as a panellist for the fireside chat hosted by Cisco
Amongst the top tier of distinguished leaders in the Tech and Network industries was our very own Chief Information Technology Officer, Ms Tan Shui-Min – who was invited as a special panellist for a fireside chat – “Making Sense of the Noise. Is this the Best Time Ever in IT?”. With the deafening ‘noise’ of the pandemic and other current geopolitical issues affecting the world, we take pride in being forward-thinking as we readily tackle challenges to achieve success. As pointed out by our CITO, we have to be prepared, with the set-up of infrastructure and network technology, to undertake increased demands for digitalisation and technology solutions like uNivUS Crowd Insights. The session was moderated by Mr Nando Gil de Bernabé, Chief Operating Officer, APJC of CISCO. Along with Shui-Min were – Mr Richard Martin, Managing Director, IMA Asia (Singapore/Sydney) and Mr Mark Iles, Executive Consultant and Industry Analyst, Tech Research Asia.
Ms Tan Shui-Min as a panellist at Huawei Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Congress 2022
Moderated by Mr Ivan Low, the Chief Strategy Officer from Huawei. Apart from Shui-Min, our Chief Information Technology Officer, the panel featured distinguished leaders from different industries; namely Mr Benedict Tan, the Group Chief Digital Strategy Officer and Chief Data Officer from SingHealth; Mr Lam Chee Weng, CEO of the Singapore Pools and Ms Sharon Ng, Family CIO and Cluster Director from GovTech. With such an illustrious panel, the session was lively, engaging and relevant as each speaker candidly shared their digital transformation strategy and the journey they took as the pandemic unfolded.
June
Mr Nelson Wong as the keynote speaker at ITMA
Modern cyber threats are mostly brought to us by compromised endpoints when they connect to a network. As the network connects everything, it is important that we have security visibility of all the IP devices linked to it. With this visibility, the network can be used to rapidly isolate modern cyber threats caused by compromised endpoints that connect to the network.
These were some of the pertinent points highlighted by NUS IT’s Head of Network, Mr Nelson Wong, keynote speaker at the IT Management Association’s Networking Event.
Mr Tan Keok Tay’s sharing at CELC’s E-Symposium
NUS’ Centre for English Language Communication recently concluded their 6th Symposium and the crux of the event was uncovering novel solutions to remain relevant amidst the rapid changes within the higher education industry. Keok Tay, Associate Director at NUS IT, demonstrated and showcased two very powerful digital tools, Qualtrics and Miro. These applications have definitely proven to be useful in the face of diversifying our tools for education.
July
VMware hosted Ms Tan Shui-Min, Mr Ng Tiong Beng and Mr Ang Leong Boon at Palo Alto
VMware hosted Shui-Min, Tiong Beng and Leong Boon at the VMware Discovery Center in sunny Palo Alto, and they had an immensely engaging session.
Mr Nelson Wong at Fortinet’s ACCELERATE Asia 2022
For the first time, Fortinet’s ACCELERATE ASIA 2022 was held in Singapore, and Nelson was invited to be a part of the panel Cybersecurity strategy: The Road Ahead! As NUS IT’s Head of Network, Nelson spearheads the development of high-performance and secure network technologies. Through strategic planning, he and his team drive the implementation of the NUS Next-Generation Campus Network. With these innovative initiatives, we are centainly moving closer to NUS IT’s vision of becoming a borderless University!
August
Ms Tan Shui-Min at VMware’s Executive Summit
VMware’s Vice President and Managing Director of Southeast Asia and Korea, Paul Simos, invited CITO Shui-Min, for a fireside chat with another prestigious guest – Ms Sandra Ng, Group Vice President and General Manager of IDC (Asia/Pacific). Shui-Min delved into how NUS handled the transition from cloud-first to cloud-smart, especially when the pandemic exacerbated. NUS Staff were able to seamlessly switch to work-from-home either via their notebooks, virtual desktops or their mobile devices amid the uncertainties brought on by the pandemic.
September
Mr Ng Tiong Beng’s article with APNIC
According to APNIC’s 2021 annual report, the blog views were at 3.46 million. It is indeed an honour that Tiong Beng was invited to contribute an insightful article about NUS’ network and our ambitious goals for it.
The uNivUS has expanded! We’re delighted to see our homegrown application featured in The Straits Times and making great strides.
Mr Nelson Wong at the Huawei Connect 2022 Summit in Bangkok
The presentation on “Digital Transformation – Creating a Campus Network with Ultimate Experience” was well-received by many executives, partners and experts at the global ICT industry Summit. Nelson began the presentation by emphasising NUS IT’s vision to build a “Borderless University, Powered by Infinite Technology.” He then shared highlights of NUS IT’s landscape and how through technology, we had transcended borders and helped NUS remain a leading university in extending its sphere of global influence in the digital realm. He went on to showcase the Hallmarks of our NUS Next Generation Campus network used by his team to evaluate, validate and select the best fit for a future-proof network technology solution. The solution was crucial in enabling NUS’ digital vision and delivering the ultimate campus network experience. Nelson finished his presentation by succinctly summarising the other milestones of what his team in NUS IT had achieved for NUS, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the Metaverse Conference hosted by the Centre for Technology, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and the Law (TRAIL) at the NUS Faculty of Law, guests that included IP lawyers and several officers from the Ministry of Health were very impressed by our NUS IT InterReality Technology team’s VR demonstration. It was deemed one of the highlights of the conference as the team shared details about the cutting-edge products they had developed. The VR demonstration was a testament to the team’s dedication and passion for having a close and collaborative relationship with the faculties that resulted in the development of ground-breaking pedagogies and the implementation of applications.
October
Ms Tan Shui-Min at Cisco Connect ASEAN
NUS IT was invited to be part of a panel discussion at the regional event, Cisco Connect ASEAN that was held at Raffles City Convention Centre in Singapore. Our very own CITO Shui-Min, was on stage to share her thoughts and experience on how we had weathered the challenges of the past (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic) and what we were doing presently to hold us in good stead for the future. Hosted by Dharmesh Malhotra, Vice President of Customer Experience, Cisco ASEAN and Korea, Shui-Min was joined by fellow panellists Colin Tan, Group Director of Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) and Tan Tiew Hin, Managing Director, Head of Technology Shared Services & Operations Singapore Exchange (SGX). The topics discussed revolved around key challenges and how they were overcome, and the elements needed to drive innovation and achieve agility. Considering that NUS IT’s values are to “pursue innovation, push boundaries and remain agile”, this was a perfect opportunity to share how we had applied them to overcome challenges that arose during the pandemic.
DE Team’s sharing at Community Of Practice with AUs
Within NUS IT, we have a Digital Enablement (DE) team dedicated to teaching us the use of tools such as Power Automate Desktop for robotic process automation (RPA) and raising the digital dexterity of the NUS community. In September, the DE team hosted a Community of Practice (COP) forum with RPA representatives from the 6 autonomous universities (AUs) in Singapore. At the meeting held virtually, we saw participants from NUS, NTU, SMU, SUTD, SIT, and SUSS. Ms Chong Lee Hua and Mr Tan Keok Tay, Associate Directors of DE, shared NUS’ RPA journey, initiatives and events they had spearheaded and conducted. They also shared their words of wisdom about directing DE’Hackathon, a large-scale event where all NUS staff were invited to leverage technology and DE tools to resolve challenges at work. The forum wrapped up with the participating AUs summarising their respective RPA journeys and an insightful Q&A with the presenters. Seeing how we learn from each other is always amazing, and this COP is an excellent way to showcase our thought leadership!
Mr Rikky W. Purbojati at AWS Public Sector Research Alliance
As the leading Autonomous University in Asia, NUS has always been committed to staying ahead of the curve, especially in research innovation. We are delighted to have had our Head of Research Computing, Rikky, speak about trends and innovation in High-Performance Computing (HPC) during the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Research Alliance session. The online session, which included several universities and public organisations from Australia and New Zealand, was held to share about new innovations in HPC, particularly the use of cloud technology, and how they help to expedite the research process. Research computing infrastructure is essential in aiding researchers in processing compute and data-intensive workloads. During the session, Rikky spoke about how NUS IT constantly pursues the development and acquisition of cutting-edge research computing infrastructure and how we had incorporated cloud technology with technology partners like AWS. Together with AWS, NUS IT also conducted cloud credit programmes to jump-start cloud adoption with applications from various scientific domains. We would like to thank AWS for having Rikky speak at the session and allowing NUS IT to lead other institutions on the path of providing researchers with the ability to complete their studies seamlessly.
NOVEMBER
We’re honoured that our Director of Infrastructure, Tiong Beng, was invited to share at the session, “How EUC Aligns With and Helps Achieve ESG Goals,” hosted by Shwetank Barathi, EUC Sales Singapore Government and Commercial from VMware. VMware Explore 2022, which was held at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre from November 15 – 16, saw about 4000 registered attendees.
Organisations and investors around the world are making commitments to environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. End-user computing (EUC) can be a significant part of all three of these goals. These include enabling remote work to reduce commute emissions and making job opportunities more equitable. As we strive to achieve better outcomes and reap the benefits that the future of working can bring, it is crucial that NUS IT constantly evolves in securing and empowering a Hybrid Workforce. We would like to express our appreciation to VMware for giving NUS IT the opportunity to share our project experience at their flagship event.