STUDENT ACHIEVEMENTS & STUDENT LIFE
You're cordially invited to Wolfram's birthday celebration!
Wolfram is turning FOUR!
The CDE Office of Student Life is excited to invite you to a special celebration of our CDE mascot, Wolfram's birthday. Join us on 2 April 2025, 2pm, at Techno Edge Level 3, for a fun and lively event as we celebrate our cuddly Wolfram and all the joy it has brought to our CDE community.
Wolfram is a regular at all big CDE events like CDE Day and the CDE Open House. In fact, he made his first appearance in public on 19 January 2022 at CDE Day!
Learn more about Wolfram here: https://cde.nus.edu.sg/student-life/our-mascot/
There will be cake cutting, music, and, of course, an opportunity to snap a photo with our mascot Wolfram. See you there!
CDE Urban Hike - February 2025
The popular CDE Urban Hike returns in AY2024/2025 Semester 2 with a new trail route to Sentosa held on 21 February 2025, Friday evening.
38 students, including the Wellness Ambassadors who planned and facilitated the event, embarked on a 8.5km hike in Sentosa. The hike’s purpose extended beyond physical activity, aiming to promote both physical health and mental wellness. Participants were encouraged to appreciate Singapore’s rich heritage, particularly during their visit to Fort Siloso, where they got to learn a bit more of the history of Singapore. Moreover, the hike fostered social connections and team spirit through group hiking, creating a supportive and engaging environment.
An unexpected highlight of the hike was the spectacular sight of fireworks as the group approached their final games spot, adding a memorable and delightful conclusion to the day's activities.
DoA PhD candidate Zhijian Sun awarded third prize in Lingnan Culture Paper Competition
PhD candidate Zhijian Sun from the Department of Architecture secured third place in The Chinese University of Hong Kong's esteemed “Lingnan Culture Studies Paper Competition 2024 Award.” His paper, part of his doctoral thesis, presents a fresh perspective on mid-20th-century global tropical modern architectural history.
Click here to learn more about this milestone in his academic journey and his contributions to architectural history.
DOA students showcase their creativity and entrepreneurial skills at the Handmade Harvest Market
Our creative students from the Department of Architecture recently showed their entrepreneurial spirit at the Handmade Harvest Market, organised by the NUS Makers' Market. Wang Yu Ting, a Year 4 Architecture student, sells handmade linocut postcards, prints, bookmarks, and stamps. She handprints her products after carving designs on linoleum blocks.
Vedika Gupta, a Year 3 Architecture student, makes handcrafted resin jars and scented products at home, such as candles, perfume balms, room sprays, and diffusers.
Lebelle Merci Abbeyquaye and Nur Neesha Shafeera Binte Selamatshahh, Year 4 Landscape Architecture students, started a small business during the COVID-19 pandemic. They began by creating beaded accessories, then switched to metal designs, using high-quality stainless-steel chains, beads, and rhinestones while focusing on sustainability.
Our students in Architecture and Landscape Architecture show great creativity and resourcefulness. We are excited to see how they can further develop their businesses!
BME students shine at Duke-NUS’ DHIP Dazzle Day
Biomedical Engineering students with a second major in Innovation & Design Programme Chan Syn-I, Jaynielle Claire, Julian Tan and Lakshmi Sujeesh shined at Duke-NUS Health Innovator Programme (DHIP) Dazzle Day 2025, a multidisciplinary “Shark Tank” event showcasing prototypes that address clinical needs.
Five multidisciplinary teams from the College of Design and Engineering, the School of Business, and Duke-NUS Medical School showcased innovative healthcare solutions while tackling critical unmet clinical needs.
We are excited to announce that Team ReVision, with Lakshmi Sujeesh as the engineering fellow, won the S$50,000 top prize for their contact lens management system designed for children, enhancing safety and care. Julian Tan received the "Outstanding Technical Fellow Award" for his team’s project on a device that allows instant removal of small stomach lesions during endoscopy. Additionally, another team, including Syn-I, won the "Popular Project Award" for their endoscopic grasper for minimally invasive bariatric surgery, which received the most votes from the panel.
Congratulations to the students, and a big shoutout to their industry and clinical mentors!
To find out more about their journey and the innovations presented, check out the full article here.
Computer Engineering and Chemical Engineering students win 1st place in the SONDRA Challenge 2025 with project DroneGuard
A team consisting of Computer Engineering students (Lee Xian Hui and Chan Sheng Bin), Chemical Engineering student (Jonas Low), alongside members from SIT and NTU, won 1st place in the SONDRA Challenge 2025 with their project, DroneGuard—a real-time drone detection system using Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and Edge AI.
The team’s winning project, DroneGuard, presents a cutting-edge, real-time drone detection system that combines RF-based machine learning detection and computer vision to identify unauthorised drones in restricted areas. By leveraging SDR to analyse drone radio signals using a CNN model and using a YOLOv8 model for live video detection, DroneGuard offers a low-cost, scalable, and highly accurate solution for drone surveillance. Their system, powered by a Hailo AI accelerator and Raspberry Pi 5, achieves more than 95% accuracy and provides real-time alerts via a web dashboard and Telegram notifications. This innovative approach to autonomous drone detection highlights the potential of AI-driven security solutions in urban environments.
The winning team will earn themselves a one-week sponsored trip to attend the 6th SONDRA’s workshop in La Grande Motte, France, where they will have the opportunity to network with academics, researchers, engineers and PhD students from French and European research institutes.
Vikas Dhamu: Carbon Capture Innovator and Inflection Award Winner
Global warming is driving extreme climate events, such as glaciers melting, rising sea levels, and more frequent droughts. Without immediate intervention, these impacts will escalate," said PhD candidate Vikas Dhamu.
His passion for climate mitigation led to his innovative work on carbon capture via clathrate hydrates, earning him recognition as one of the world's best 30 young scientists and the recipient of the Inflection Award 2025. The award is organised by Marble backed by Breakthrough Energy Fellows and the Quadrature Climate Foundation.
Vikas is one of two awardees from an Asian university and the sole awardee from a university in the ASEAN region. The awardees came together for an exclusive 2-day event from 10-11 March 2025 in Paris, the birthplace of the International Treaty on Climate Change.
Under the guidance of his PhD supervisor, Professor Praveen Linga (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering), Vikas's work focused on carbon capture via clathrate hydrates – a groundbreaking approach to combatting global warming. By exploring the potential of storing captured CO2 in deep-ocean sediments as solid gas hydrates, his research offers a stable, long-term solution to reducing atmospheric CO2.
His approach also leverages natural deep-ocean conditions—high pressure and low temperature—to form ice-like hydrates that securely trap CO2. This innovative solution is both scalable and economically viable, minimising the need for expensive infrastructure. With the potential to store over 100,000 gigatonnes of CO2, Vikas's research offers an opportunity to support global carbon neutrality efforts by 2050. When refining his ideas and presentations, Vikas also considered interdisciplinary perspectives to help strengthen his approach to ensure that all areas were covered.
Vikas cited Professor Linga's expertise and mentorship as instrumental in shaping his work. As one of the 25 faculty named in the Clarivate 2024 Highly Cited Researchers™ list and among the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, Professor Linga is an expert in gas hydrates and current world environmental goals, which pushed Vikas to delve deeper into his work on CO2 sequestration using clathrate hydrates.
Professor Linga's encouragement also fostered an environment of curiosity and independence, allowing Vikas to explore novel solutions for climate change mitigation. "His mentorship has left a lasting influence on my career, providing both academic and personal guidance. I am deeply appreciative of his consistent support, which played a critical role in attaining the award," said Vikas.
Congratulations, Vikas, on your remarkable achievement!
Read more here.
ECE Research Team wins Best Paper Award at IEEE Electron Devices Technology and Manufacturing Conference 2025
A research team led by Associate Professor Gong Xiao received the Best Paper Award at the 9th IEEE Electron Devices Technology and Manufacturing Conference (EDTM), held from 9 to 12 March 2025. EDTM, established and sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), is Asia's premier event in the field of EDS.
The award was presented to Assoc Prof Gong's PhD student and first author Xu Ying for her paper titled BEOL-Compatible Multi-layer ITO-ZnO-ITO Channel FETs Achieving Enhanced Mobility, Positive VTH Shift, and Improved PBTI. The award-winning paper was co-authored by Zijie Zheng, Yiyuan Sun and Associate Professor Gong Xiao.
Read more about their achievement here: https://cde.nus.edu.sg/ece/news-detail/research-team-from-nus-ece-wins-the-best-paper-award-at-ieee-edtm-2025/