Dr Mohammad Sherafatmand, CEO and Founder of Hydroleap Pte Ltd Class of PhD Environmental Engineering 2016

What made you choose the course in NUS over other courses?

It was summer 2011 when I travelled to Singapore and fell in love with it instantly. So, I changed my destination from South Korea to Singapore to do my post-graduate here. I find myself lucky to be able to do my PhD course at the best university in Asia with the fantastic academic faculty and great facilities to back them up.

What do you like most about the course and NUS etc?

I would rank the university’s equipment and facilities at the top specifically for the experimental research like mine.

How has the course helped you in your everyday/work life?

I am currently running a three-year-old startup called Hydroleap in the space of wastewater treatment that I founded it after my PhD course at NUS.

To put it simply, if it wasn’t for NUS, I could not start this company at the first place. PhD course gave me the knowledge, the tools and desire to start Hydroleap.

What would you like to share with the incoming and current PhD students?

I would like the incoming PhDs to not look at the PhD, only as a course to pass or to publish some papers. PhD is more than. It can form the biggest fundamentals of their professional career (academic or industrial). I would like them to understand the outside world (industry) and start thinking out of box from their PhD time when they have plenty of time to think, come up with new ideas and put them into the test. PhD course is the best time to start testing big ideas regardless of results. As a quote says "A bold attempt is half success".

What is your advice to our students?

For those who want to step into entrepreneurship journey specifically in tech startups, I would suggest them to build up their research core, business understanding and networking at the same time from now