I am pleased to share that after 18 years of education in Singapore, I finally graduated from Singapore Management University (SMU) with a Bachelor of Science (Information Systems) – Smart-City Management & Technology (SMT) Major with a 2nd Major in Technology for Business Solutions (Business Analytics)!

As a SMU student, I had the privilege to learn from world-class faculty at SMU School of Computing and Information Systems where I studied range of computing interests from algorithimic fairness, computational social science, cybersecurity and more importantly – contributing to the smart-cities development in Singapore where I took part in a SMU-X module called Analytics Applications for Smart Living to study on the vaping phenomenon among university students in Singapore in collaboration with Health Promotion Board with my teammates. I also had the opportunity to study a guaranteed second major, Business Analytics where I gained some knowledge on machine learning and analytics in different focal areas including finance and AI governance, enabling me to gain a plethora of both business and computing knowledge and technology toolkit. My majors come hand in hand as I am able to bridge the non-tech and tech together to come up with ideas and solutions to push for innovation within the companies that I have interned with and the projects I embarked on over the four years.

Apart from academic matters, I had the opportunity to give back to the community during my early years in SMU where I volunteered in several community service projects, one being Project Yokefellow with Uni-Y Singapore to bring social activities to life via Zoom for the migrant workers in Singapore due to the circuit breaker (Singapore’s colloquial term for partial lockdown) measures imposed by the government to contain the then serious development of COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. Another virtual overseas community project I had the honour to take part in was Project XinYuan in 2022 where we provided basic English lessons to the Vietnamese children. These community service projects have enabled me to adapt to circumstances via digital platforms and also appreciate the community I have in SMU to go beyond for others’ needs and to be of service. Likewise, this mindset extended to me embarking on two student exchanges at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University respectively with the latter being my four months immersion in Hong Kong SAR and the Greater Bay Area.

These experiences would not be possible if not for SMU’s partnership with many benficiaries and universities. Most importantly – SMU’s belief in shaping the students to be prepared for the world and be ready to enter the workplace. I will embark on my IT graduate programme with Nomura on 15 July 2024, and look forward to a new chapter of achieving greater heights!