Education History

National University of Singapore: Aug 2023 – present
PhD student affiliated with the Integrative Sciences & Engineering Programme

• Pursuing PhD in the application of machine learning in music and audio.
  Current research topics:

  • Symbolic Music Generation for guitar

  • Automatic pronunciation evaluation of tonal languages and its educational applications

University of Nottingham: Sept 2019 – Sept 2020
Master of Arts in Learning, Technology and Education:
(Note that this course has been renamed as Digital Teaching and Learning)

• Awarded Distinction grade, scoring higher than distinction requirements for all classes taken.

• Recipient of the ASEAN Masters Scholarship.

• Focus on application of data science methods to syllabus and assessment, primary focus on Natural Language Processing.

• Took additional postgrad-level classes at the School of Computer Science to supplement Masters programme, covering machine learning, data modelling and analysis, information visualisation.

National University of Singapore: May 2011 – July 2015
Bachelor of Science (Honours), major in Physics, minor in Psychology:

• Graduation Cumulative Average Point (CAP): 4.72/5.00

• Dean’s List from 2011 to 2013.

• Selected into University Scholars Programme (USP) and recipient of the USP Honour Roll and USP President’s Honour Roll.

• Recipient of the Ministry of Education (MOE) Teaching Award

• Recipient of the Jurong Shipyard Book Prize.

• Recipient of the Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize (Merit) for Honours Thesis.

• Honours thesis has been published in Classical and Quantum Gravity (IOPscience): https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6382/aaa4ea/.

• Extensive work in numerical modeling using Mathematica.

• Two years of research on musical acoustics, specialization in chordophones and lamellophones.

• Consistent grade of A or A+ in both undergraduate and postgraduate physics classes.

Recent Work History & Other Experiences

Data and Computer Science

National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore: May 2023 – July 2023

• Research assistant: Back-end development, model training, and supporting the lab's academic output.

• Areas of research: Pitch detection, tone evaluation of tonal language audio, symbolic music generation and music information retrieval

Pedagogical research and development

Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore: Oct 2020 – Apr 2023

• Planning and development for subsequent iteration of the A-Level syllabus

• Collection and analysis of data for development of courses and resources

• Design and conduct of training courses and seminars for teachers and MOE staff for data analysis and visualisation.

• Member of Professional Learning Community in AI/ML.

• Organising national level events for physics learning.

FuPro Europe: Jan 2020 – Sept 2021

• Course developer for an award-winning online course at the University of Nottingham:

  • Management and training of facilitators for the course’s live debate forums.

  • Collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to support course development, including datamining Slack chatlogs and scraping Wordpress data.

Selected samples of teaching experience

River Valley High School, Singapore: Feb 2016 – Aug 2019

• Develop and conduct lectures, tutorials and lab practical sessions; spearheaded developments in the use of pedagogical technology that continues to be used by the school presently; see portfolio page for details

• Acting Subject Head for Science Research; mentored and coordinated students for national research programmes, and designed novel interdiscplinary independent student research course

• Coach, mentor and lesson developer for student teams representing the school

NUS High School of Mathematics and Science (NUSHS): June 2012 – May 2015

• Official external instructor and course developer for the “CRADLE programme” series of workshops and physics elective module "Nobel Prize Experiments in Physics"

Young Educators in Science (YES), National University of Singapore: Oct 2011 – May 2015

• Development and conduct of official outreach programmes to bring science to children and youths via engaging and educational demonstrations

USP Mentorship Programme (UMP): June 2013 – May 2015

Peer mentor 2013-2014; faculty coordinator for Faculty of Science 2014-2015

• Providing guidance to assist freshmen in their transition into university life

• Coordinated other mentors in this task and planned syllabus

Musical background

I have an extensive history with classical and contemporary music as a musician and songwriter. Currently, I mainly work with the electric bass, but have experience with other instruments, primarily percussion, guzheng, guitar, piano, violin, and yangqin (in order of familiarity).

In the past decade, other than writing, recording, and releasing two albums (with a third album currently in progress), I received awards such as representing Singapore in the Yamaha Asian Beat competition, and was part of major programmes such as the National Arts Council's NOISE programme and Baybeats Budding Band programme organised by Esplanade Singapore.

Previously, I was a member of the Singapore Youth Chinese Orchestra, where I represented Singapore overseas, and a guest musician of the Hsing Hai Chinese Orchestra, as well as other school orchestras and ensembles. 

As a corollary to these experiences, I have also worked in event organisation, management, and publicity for music-related events, and have received funding for several musical projects.

For more information, see my portfolio page.

Classical qualifications:

• • ABRSM: Musical Theory Grade 5, Violin Grade 7, Piano Grade 8

  • Central Conservatory of Music: Guzheng diploma; national top scorer