Faculty/Staff Achievements
AirTable Joins List of German Design Award 2020 Winners
The AirTable has been recognized as a German Design Award 2020 winner for Excellent Product Design under the category ‘Furniture’.
The AirTable consists of a 3 meter triangular table top supported by an intricate system of 6 millimeter diameter stainless steel bars connected by 3D-printed nodes. It was conceptualised by the team behind the Architectural Intelligence Research Lab (AIRLAB) at SUTD including Assistant Professor Carlos Bañón (ASD) and Felix Raspall, in collaboration with SUTD Digital Manufacturing and Design Centre (DmanD).
Read the ArchDaily feature about the AirTable.
Highly Cited Researchers 2019
Associate Professor Tony Quek, Acting Head of the Information Systems Technology and Design pillar in SUTD, joins the annual list of Highly Cited Researchers. This marks his fourth consecutive recognition in this list.
The methodology that determines the “who’s who” of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group. The Highly Cited Researchers list contributes to the identification of that small fraction of the researcher population that significantly extends the frontiers of knowledge.
The data are taken from 21 broad research fields within Essential Science Indicators, a component of InCites. The fields are defined by sets of journals and exceptionally, in the case of multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science, by a paper-by-paper assignment to a field based on an analysis of the cited references in the papers.
The full 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found here.
View Associate Professor Tony’s most cited publications here.
Winners of the Cybersecurity Awards 2019
(Credit: AiSP) Mr Ivan Lee (second from right) is the Deputy Director for iTrust – Centre for Research in Cyber Security.
(Credit: AiSP) Mr Tok Yee Ching, SUTD PhD student (second from left) receiving the Professional Award.
The Cybersecurity Awards 2019 winners received their awards at the Cybersecurity Gala Dinner held on 8 November 2019. Mr Ivan Lee Chin Ann (Deputy Director, iTrust - Centre for Research in Cyber Security) and Mr Tok Yee Ching (PhD, ISTD), both from SUTD, won the Professional Awards.
Giving recognition to outstanding contributions to the local cybersecurity ecosystem, a total of 13 individuals and organisations were awarded under various categories at this year’s Cybersecurity Awards. Nominees for the Awards undergo a Selection Round where candidates are shortlisted for the Final Round, which includes an interview. The selection criteria for the Professional Awards include: contribution to profession and society, raising profile of Singapore’s cybersecurity internationally, and contribution to areas of expertise and reputation.
The Cybersecurity Awards is organised by the Association of Information Security Professionals (AiSP) and supported by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA).
More information about iTrust.
Associate Professor Joel Yang Elected as 2020 OSA Fellow
Associate Professor Joel Yang, with the Engineering Product Development (EPD) pillar, was elected as a member of The Optical Society’s (OSA) 2020 Fellows Class for his pioneering contributions in plasmonic colour printing and sub-10-nm resolution patterning for nanophotonics.
In his more recent work, Joel led a research team to print the smallest 3D model of the Eiffel tower in an array of colours without any pigments or inks, but in colours that were high-resolution, permanent and eco-friendly. The 3D model was made up of a finely printed mesh of transparent polymer, forming photonic crystals. The model exhibited multiple colours due to the manner in which light interacted with the nanostructures that hold up the model.
Founded in 1916, OSA is the leading professional association in optics and photonics. It honours its Fellows for having served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics. Out of the total OSA membership, not more than ten percent are elected as OSA Fellows.
Nature Index's Young Universities 2019 Supplement
The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) was listed in the Nature Index’s Young Universities 2019 supplement, under the Top 25 rising young universities and Top 100 young universities tables.
This supplement highlights the world’s leading young universities (aged 50 and under) in the natural sciences in the Nature Index, and explores the research and strategies behind their success.
Good Design Award 2019 – The Natural Composite Pillar
Spanning up to 1m in diameter and 5m in height, the Natural Composite Pillar was announced a winner of the Good Design Award 2019 (GDA) on 2 October 2019. A total of 1,420 entries were awarded out of 4,772 submissions, with 4 winners coming from Singapore.
The GDA was established in 1957 with the intention to “enrich our lives and society through design”. The Award recognises designs both in tangible and intangible forms, evaluating and honouring their quality with five fundamental guiding ideals: Humanity, Honesty, Innovation, Aesthetics and Ethics.
Designed by Associate Professor Stylianos Dritsas (ASD) and Assistant Professor Javier G. Fernandez (EPD), the Natural Composite Pillar weighs up to 100kg and is one of the largest 3D printed biological artefacts today.
It is also one of the winners of the Singapore Good Design Mark 2019.
International Architecture Awards 2019
The Future of Us Pavilion @ Gardens By The Bay, has been given recognition under the category of Exposition Centres at the International Architecture Awards 2019.
Originally designed by the Advanced Architecture Laboratory (AAL) at SUTD to house The Future of Us exhibition to commemorate Singapore’s golden jubilee in 2015, the project had received many awards including the President*s Design Award Singapore, Design of the Year 2018, the German Design Award 2018 and the Singapore Design Award 2016.
Professor Thomas Schroepfer, director of AAL and designer of the Pavilion, at the award ceremony held on 13 September 2019, in Athens.
Jointly organised by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, the International Architecture Awards gives a global overview of the current direction and developments in architecture and urbanism, recognising excellence in the field. Over 120 projects from 31 nations across various categories were recognised this year.
Double Wins for SUTD #MUGHARDERPLAYLATER Campaign at the Marketing Events Awards 2019
SUTD’s #MUGHARDERPLAYLATER 2018 campaign won the Gold award under the Best Public Sector/Non-profit category and the Silver award for the Best PR/Marketing Stunt at the Marketing Events Awards 2019.
The #MUGHARDERPLAYLATER campaign was conceptualised together with creative agency, Goodfellas. The team received the awards at the Award Ceremony held at Fullerton Hotel.
#MUGHARDERPLAYLATER is an annual campaign led by the Office of Marketing and Communications since 2014, with the objectives of motivating and providing stress relief for pre-university students during the pre-A-levels examinations period. In this guerrilla-style activation, Marketing and Admissions staff visit schools to distribute examination survival kits and organise mini activities, creating positive vibes and personal interactions. By going to the schools, we build the SUTD awareness via this exclusive channel of interaction between staff and students.
In its eighth year, the Marketing Events Awards is a showcase of creativity and successes, recognizing excellence in event marketing. This year’s award winners, for a total of 31 categories, were announced at the Gala Dinner & Award Ceremony on 13 September 2019.
Top 30 at the 2019 Super AI Leader (SAIL) Award
Associate Professor Ngai-man (Man) Cheung (ISTD), with his research project “KroniKare: Transform Chronic Wound Care using AI”, was shortlisted as one of the top 30 finalists at the 2019 Super AI Leader (SAIL) Award.
The award results were announced as part of the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), held in Shanghai from 29 August 2019 to 31 August 2019.
There were nearly 700 projects that participated in the SAIL Award this year, including AI teams from Tencent, Baidu, Amazon, IBM, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and more. The Award recognises outstanding and breakthrough projects in AI from all over the world.
Find out more about Prof Ngai-Man’s research and KroniKare.
Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE MRS 2019
At the 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Multi-Robot and Multi-Agent Systems 2019 (IEEE MRS 2019) held on 22 and 23 August 2019, SUTD won the Outstanding Paper Award for the paper ‘Decentralized Multi-Floor Exploration by a Swarm of Miniature Robots Teaming with Wall-Climbing Units’.
Experimenting with two variants of miniature robots - a wheeled ground variant and a wall-climbing variant, in a multi-robot system, the research team demonstrated scalability, robustness and flexibility of the swarm in multi-floor exploration and mapping.
The team includes Jabez Leong Kit (PhD), Audelia Gumarus Dharmawan (researcher), David Mateo (researcher), Associate Prof Foong Shaohui (EPD), Associate Prof Soh Gim Song (EPD, Assoc Director of Graduate Studies), Associate Prof Roland Bouffanais (EPD, Director of Graduate Studies) and Prof Kristin L. Wood (EPD, Assoc Provost of Graduate Studies, Co-Director of SUTD-MIT IDC).
The IEEE MRS brings together researchers to exchange ideas in the field of multi-robot and multi-agent systems. A total of three papers were nominated for the Outstanding Paper Award.
ASME Design Theory and Methodology Best Paper Award 2019
SUTD team won the ASME Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Best Paper Award 2019. The paper, ‘Evaluating Crowdsourced Design Concepts with Machine Learning’, was presented at the 31st International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology, held from 18 to 21 August 2019, at Anaheim, California.
The paper introduces a method for filtering, categorizing, and rating large sets of design concepts. It leverages unsupervised machine learning (ML) trained on open source databases.
Co-authored by Dr Bradley Camburn (research scientist, SUTD-MIT IDC), Yuejun He (PhD student, EPD), Sujithra Raviselvam (PhD student, EPD), Assistant Prof Jianxi Luo (EPD, Director of DDI) and Prof Kristin L. Wood (EPD, Assoc Provost of Graduate Studies, Co-Director of SUTD-MIT IDC), the paper was one of five papers nominated for the award. This year’s DTM conference received a total of 90 submitted papers, of which only 57 were accepted.
(L-R) Sujithra Raviselvam, Dr Bradley Camburn and Assistant Prof Jianxi Luo received the award at the conference.
The SUTD team is affiliated to the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC) and the Data-Driven Innovation Lab (DDI).
National Day Awards 2019
SUTD recipients of the National Day Awards 2019:
Public Service Medal - Mr Ronny Tan, Member of SUTD Board of Trustees
Long Service Medal - Professor Chong Tow Chong, SUTD President
Public Administration Medal (Silver) - Dr Jaclyn Lee, Chief Human Resources Officer
Long Service Medal - Ms Judy Teo, University Librarian
Long Service Medal - Ms Wendy Kee, Senior Associate
The Singapore National Day Awards (NDA) are a means of recognising various forms of merit and long service to the nation. The first national awards were established in 1962. This year, a total of 4,985 individuals received National Day Honours.
Participation at the 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting
The 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, dedicated to physics, took place from 30 June 2019 to 5 July 2019 in Germany. A total of 580 international young scientists were selected to participate in this year’s Meeting, including SUTD research fellow Dr Ang Yee Sin. Dr Ang was one of eight representatives from Singapore.
The participants engaged in dialogue and interacted with 42 Nobel Laureates. This year’s Meeting topics were dark matter and cosmology, laser physics and gravitational waves.
Dr Ang was also invited by the Federal Minister of Education and Research (Germany) to attend the pre-conference event, Summer Festival of Science. The exclusive invitation was only extended to a select group of 35.
Dr Ang Yee Sin (right) having lunch with other participants.
Best Paper Award at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency
SUTD researchers, Stefanos Leonardos, Daniel Petrus Reijsbergen and Assistant Professor Georgios Piliouras (ESD pillar), devised a new algorithm for added security in Proof of Stake Blockchain protocols and won the Best Paper Award at the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC 2019).
Proof of Stake (POS) Blockchain protocols rely on voting mechanisms to reach consensus on the current state of data, but are vulnerable to faults when validators accidentally or maliciously withhold their votes. The SUTD researchers studied weighted voting in these protocols and designed an algorithm to enhance their security. The research paper also discussed potential issues and limitations of weighted voting in trustless, decentralised networks and related the results to the design of current PoS protocols.
ICBC 2019 is the first premier technical conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, sponsored by IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc).
Singapore Good Design Mark (SG Mark) 2019
12 teams of SUTD professors and researchers were awarded the Singapore Good Design Mark (SG Mark) 2019, including one SG Mark Special Mention. A total of 81 projects were awarded this year.
Launched in 2013 by Design Business Chamber Singapore (DBCS) in partnership with the Japan Institute of Design Promotion, the SG Mark is a benchmark for good design quality impacting local and global communities. The SG Mark gives recognition to products and services that address human needs and experience, contributing significant value to improving quality of life.
SG Mark Special Mention
Winners
2019 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) Fellowship
Dr Nachamma Sockalingam, Programme Director of the Learning Sciences Lab at SUTD, has been honoured to join the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) in its inaugural cohort of ISSOTL Fellows. The ISSOTL appointed a total of nine Fellows this year, including three from the UK, three from Canada, one from the USA, one from China and one from Singapore.
The ISSOTL Fellows Program was launched in 2019 to give international recognition to leaders who are committed to and passionate in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The selection criteria include demonstrated evidence of impact, community engagement, collaboration and global citizenship.
The adjudicators of the fellowship acknowledged Dr Nachamma’s efforts in expanding SOTL in Singapore and contributions in technology enabled and blended learning.
Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy
SUTD Assistant Professor Georgios Piliouras and Research Fellow Stefanos Leonardos won the Best Paper Award at the 1st International Conference on Mathematical Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE), held from 6 to 9 May 2019.
Their paper “Oceanic Games: Centralization Risks and Incentives in Blockchain Mining” seeks to demystify centralization in cryptocurrency mining. In collaboration with Nikos Leonardos from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the team developed a novel approach to untangle the centralization phenomena in blockchain mining based on the theory of Oceanic Games, originally devised by the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Economics, Loyd S. Shapley.
Top 100 Materials Science Papers on Scientific Reports in 2018
The research paper “Large-scale additive manufacturing with bioinspired cellulosic materials”, by a team of SUTD professors and researchers, has been placed as one of the top 100 read materials science papers for Scientific Reports in 2018.
Co-led by Assistant Professor Javier G. Fernandez (EPD) and Assistant Professor Stylianos Dritsas (ASD), the research demonstrated the use of cellulose to sustainably manufacture/fabricate large 3D objects. Inspired by the wall of the fungus-like oomycetes, the resulting fungal-like adhesive material(s) (FLAM) are strong, lightweight and inexpensive, and can be molded or processed using woodworking techniques.
Architecture, Construction & Design Awards 2018
The project (Ultra) Light Network, conceptualized by Assistant Professor Carlos Bañón and Assistant Professor Felix Raspall of the Architectural Intelligence Research Lab (AIRLAB), has received the Second Award at the Architecture, Construction & Design Awards 2018, in the category of Pop-Ups and Temporary (Built).
Installed at i Light Marina Bay 2017, the (Ultra) Light Network is an interactive light sculpture which explores the seamless connectivity achieved using 3D-printed components. Composed of 715 polycarbonate squared tubes, the tetrahedral mesh spans 10 meters wide and illuminates in response to movements below it.
The Architecture, Construction & Design Awards is hosted by international architecture platform Rethinking the Future. 768 entries were received for the competition in 2018, coming from more than 50 countries.
AIRLAB Awarded Finalist at the SDA 2019
The Architectural Intelligence Research Lab (AIRLAB) at SUTD was awarded Finalist at the Singapore Design Awards (SDA) 2019, under two disciplines: Placemaking and Multidisciplinary.
AIRLAB was co-founded in 2016 by Assistant Professor Felix Raspall and Assistant Professor Carlos Bañón, both of the Architecture and Sustainable Design (ASD) pillar. The AIRLAB uses state-of-the-art technology and parametric design to reduce the usage of material while increasing structural performance, to deliver a new conception of informed lightness in Architecture.
Assistant Professor Carlos Banon and his team win the International Ideas Competition - Coastal Passage of Alicante
Assistant Professor Carlos Banon (ASD Pillar) and his team has won the International Ideas Competition – Coastal Passage of Alicante. Prof Carlos is also co-founder of Subarquitectura Architects Spain, which collaborated with Grupo Aranea to submit the winning entry, “My Connected Archipelago”.
The team used parametric design thinking and digital design techniques in this project, which Prof Carlos describes as “a large intervention where sustainable considerations, articulation of the existing landscape and an ecologic principles have been considered.”
The competition, announced by Alicante City Council, is an open international contest to re-masterplan the 20 kilometre-long coastline of Alicante.
SUBARQUITECTURA:
Carlos Banon
Andres Silanes
Fernando Valderrama
GRUPO ARANEA
Francisco Leiva
Marta Garcia-Chico