SPS Welcome Tea 2016
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•413 views
Slides from SPS Welcome Tea 2016
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (14)
Similar to SPS Welcome Tea 2016
Similar to SPS Welcome Tea 2016 (20)
More from Andreas Dewanto
More from Andreas Dewanto (6)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
SPS Welcome Tea 2016
- 1. Andreas Dewanto Assistant Director Not a game of Scissors Paper Stone SPS Welcome Tea, 26 July 2016
- 2. Multidisciplinary Collaborative Computation-driven 3 Features of 21st-century Science
- 3. curriculum Multidisciplinary Atoms to Molecules examines atoms, their quantum properties, and how they come together to form larger structure, using carbon-based material as example Cell studies how cells process information with fidelity, and how they behave as stochastic systems that harness, store, and utilize energy in ways that obey conservation laws Earth investigates the different models and parameters that affect the formation and evolution of planet Earth, and the environmental impact Universe introduces modern cosmology as a result of the interplay between philosophy, mathematics and physics, leading to Big Bang Theory and the expanding universe 4 Modules
- 5. curriculum Year of Study Semester 1 Semester 2 1 (Freshmen) SP2173 Atoms to Molecules SP2174 The Cell SP2171 Discovering Science (span through the year) 2 (Sophomore) SP3172 Integrated Science Project SP3175 The Earth SP3176 The Universe 3 Junior mentorship (go for UROPS and/or SEP, NOC, Double- degree, etc) 4 (Honor) Senior mentorship (Honour Year)• 2-year programme to give students ample time to go for exchange/ overseas programme or to contribute back to the programme as mentors. • All SPS modules are 4MCs, non-examinable, and can be used to fulfill Faculty Requirements from 3 distinct subject groups outside the group under which the respective student’s major falls. More info: http://www.science.nus.edu.sg/undergraduate-studies/ugreq/curriculum-structure?id=212
- 6. curriculum • SP2171 precludes SP1541, i.e. SPS students who have completed SP2171 is no longer required to take SP1541 Exploring Science Communication through Popular Science. • Students who withdraw from SPS after 1 semester, while still reading SP2171, will not be allowed to continue enrolling in SP2171, and will be require to read SP1541 back. • Withdrawing from SPS after 1 semester will result in W (Withdraw) grade for SP2171. Think twice before applying for SPS!!! Year of Study Semester 1 Semester 2 1 (Freshmen) SP2173 Atoms to Molecules SP2174 The Cell SP2171 Discovering Science (span through the year) 2 (Sophomore) SP3172 Integrated Science Project SP3175 The Earth SP3176 The Universe 3 Junior mentorship (go for UROPS and/or SEP, NOC, Double- degree, etc) 4 (Honor) Senior mentorship (Honour Year)
- 7. curriculum Modules Date/ Time SP2171 lecture Tues, 12 – 2 PM (weekly) SP2171 Workshop Wed, 2 – 4 PM (occasionally) SP2173 Lecture Friday, 8 – 10 AM (weekly) • SP2171 lecture will be dedicated for MathematicaTM and Python lesson. • SP2171 workshop will only be held occasionally for science communication, lab safety, and risk assessment workshop. • Tutorial & practical timetable is flexible (jointly-decided by successful applicants on the 1st day of school). • SPS modules are allocated (need 1 bid point/module) upon successful application. Timetable
- 8. curriculum • SP2171 Discovering Science and SP2173 Atoms to Molecules could be S/U-ed. • SP2171 and SP2173 do not clash with any level 1000 core modules (may not be the case for GEM), but… • Chemistry: strongly encouraged to take CM1191 in semester 1 • Start low-profile: – no more than 5 modules in semester 1, – No more than 3 core modules in one semester. • Minimum cut-off CAP of 3.2 (i.e. Honor cut-off point)
- 9. curriculum • It’s possible to be in SPS and other programmes (USP, FDDP, GSP, NUS-ANU JDP, etc), but BE CAREFUL WITH WORKLOAD!!! • SPS students can read up to 27 MCs in semester 1 (FYI, normal science students can read only up to 23 MCs in semester 1). Some suggestions: – 18 MCs: 3 major + SP2171 + SP2173 – 22 MCs: 3 major + SP2171 + SP2173 + 1 GEM or SS – 22/24 MCs: 3 major + SP2171 + SP2173 + 4 or 6 MCs special programme module (for USP/CAP/RVC/Tembusu students) Bid your other modules as usual via CORS. If you need to drop because of timetable conflict with SPS, we’ll return your CORS bidding points fully (minus 1).
- 10. curriculum SPS & USP • Any two of SP2173, SP2174, SP3175 and SP3176 will be counted as Inquiry modules in the Sciences & Technologies (S&T) domain • SP3172 will be counted as an ISM in the Science &Technology domain.
- 12. curriculum people A/P Liou Yih-cherng Director of SPS, Associate Professor Dr. Chammika Udalagama Atoms to Molecule Lecturer Dr. Linda Sellou Earth Lecturer Dr. Lim Zhi Han Universe Lecturer Dr. Robert Lieu, Cell Lecturer
- 13. peoplecurriculum mentorship Junior mentors (3rd-year) + Senior mentors (4th/honor- year) + Graduate mentors (MSc & PhD) Supervise, Counsel, Asses, Develop & Administer
- 16. infrastructuresmentorshippeoplecurriculum fun Amazing Science X Challenge (ASXC) 1st Prize 2012, 2013 Special Mention 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Silver 2015 Competition
- 17. infrastructuresmentorshippeoplecurriculum fun Exposure Harvey-Mudd Global Clinic Programme NUS-La Trobe Nanotechnology Study Tour to Japan Caltech’s SURF Programme NUS Overseas College & Student Exchange Programme Visits from various partner universities More research-experienced Better recommendation
- 18. infrastructuresmentorshippeoplecurriculum fun SPS Student Committee Mentor Appreciation Night Night-cycling Newbies Orientation Camp Π-day Dean’s Tea & SPS Commencement {latex} - course Chinese New Year Steamboat Movie-screening DoTA Boardgames
- 19. 19 Jul • SPS admission interview commences, until 30 July 26 Jul • SPS Welcome Tea (application is open to all Science students, apply & we will call you back to confirm) 5 Aug • Release of interview result (via email, also succesful applicants will receive a call to confirm acceptance) 8 Aug • Welcome message and programme briefing for successful applicants 13-14 Aug • SPS Newbies Orientation Camp (Compulsory) sps.nus.edu.sg > Apply Now
Editor's Notes
- My name is Andreas Dewanto. I am the assistant director of SPS. And I’m telling you that, despite of those challenges I have elaborated for the past 10 minutes, you can still make a good use of your university time and prepare well for the job market as scientists. This talk, titled “SPS, not a game of Scissors Paper Stone”, hopefully convinces you that SPS in indeed an enriching and rewarding programme, which will equip and expose you to useful skills that set you apart from the majority of Science students. This programme is open to any Science students, regardless of race, language, or religion, and most importantly, A-level result. We do have criteria, which I will elaborate shortly. However, this programme is definitely not for the faint-hearted because, this is an academic programme. It has requirements and carries modular credit. First of all, there are 6 modules you have to complete, which further divided into 4 thematic based modules and 2 research-based modules. We have sweet names to call the 4 thematic-based modules: Atoms to Molecules, Cell, Earth and Universe. As the names of the modules suggest, these 4 modules are designed to bring up discussion topics from different scale of universe. From atom to the expanding universe, so do the modules progresses, one module each semester. I will talk about about the timeline later on. In addition, these modules bring up topics which interplay the difference facets of conventional scientific disciplines, namely math, physics, biology and chemistry. Take for example the Cell module. Look at its description. Is this a biology module, or a physics module? In the Cell module, you will learn how to cultivate your own bacteria, put them under microscope, and write a computer programme to analyze their random Brownian motion. You do not learn this back in Life Science department, neither do you in Physics department. Only in SPS you will be exposed to this sort of study.
- So what now? I have gone through various aspects of SPS. How do all those help improve my chance of employability as I explained in the beginning of this talk? Well, in summary, SPS will set you apart from the rest of Science students in 3 aspects. And these 3 aspects are what I believe the features science, or how people will do science, in 21st century [click]. First, SPS will expose your to multidisciplinary facet of scientific problems. Problems, such as climate change, renewable energy, or epidemic diseases, requires experts from all sort of disciplines to solve. Now, don’t get me wrong with what I mean by multidiscipline here. I don’t expect everyone here to and an expert in everything. I do not expect SPSIans to take double major and double minor. You are perfectly fine to stay with single major and be good at it, as you still have to be grounded in your respective field of expertise. But you have to be ready to collaborate… that’s the second feature… with others from different fields. Even if you choose to work with people of the same of similar background as you, you can’t expect to run your own lab, publishing your own papers, right on the next day after you earn your PhD. You need support from larger, more established lab. You need a network of people, some are already established (these are the people who are able to request for research grant, persuade senior administrators, and recommend you to suitable places), and some are, like yourself, trying to established themselves (and these happen to be people who are doing ground work where most of the exciting things are). That’s just the way it works. And mind you, I’m not just talking about collaboration between person A and person B across the block, or between Science and Engineering. I’m also talking about collaboration at global level, between university in country A, and research institute in country B, and an industrial player in country C. Lastly, computer-aided design and simulation has been pushing the boundary of scientific progress more and more. Transistors are cheap and cheaper. Internet gets faster. Massive amount of data is being generated as we speak, faster than our speed of analyzing them. All the signs are there. That’s why I said earlier, programming is a skill as important as communication that we should acquire. SPS lays the groundwork for all these. But I must also say that SPS is not for everyone.
- The running concurrently with the 4 thematic-based modules are 2 research-based modules [click], which goes by the name Discovering Science and Integrated Science Project. In these 2 courses altogether you will learn the following skills [click]. Programming, for instance. Unless you are taking specialized modules, such as Bioinformatics or Computational Methods in Physics, you may graduate from Science without knowing how to programme at all. Even then, these courses are only available at year-3 level. In SPS you will learn programming as early as your second week of first semester. Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, in 21st century knowing how to programme is as useful as knowing how to communicate. In fact, in essence, the two are the same. The former equips you with the ability to exchange information with computer… with machine… the latter enables you to exchange information with fellow human being. And, therefore, in SPS we also emphasize a lot on communication and teamwork. You have to be able to communicate your knowledge and idea in a symposium or in a small group discussion. This way, we can learn from each other… from fellow classmates, seniors or mentors, and even staff. If you look around, there are posters along the wall. These posters testify the amount and quality of research that every SPS student has to defend in a symposium. But what is impressive is that it is done only after they are 1.5 years in NUS. If you are not doing Honors, you can graduate from Science without doing any research at all, though I must say that the opposite is also true: there is plenty of avenue for students to do research outside SPS. UROPS is one of such avenue.
- However, in SPS, apart from the early exposure, you have the support from a community of like-minded people. SPS people, or SPSians, come from the different basic disciplines across science… math, physics, chemistry, life science, and statistics… unfortunately, due to timetable constrain, we definitely cannot accommodate pharmacy for sure. We welcome applicants from food science and technology, quantitative finance, and environmental science, but timetable and workload may become an issue. I will elaborate about this later. Nonetheless SPS opens its door to all Science students, apart from Pharmacy, who are passionate about Science, dedicated, and not-less-importantly, open-minded. It is very important for SPSians student to have the open mind and to learn other disciplines… not so much to be an expert in that discipline, but to expose oneself to that discipline. So if you are a physicists, but you just like to go to your own corner to play with your equation, you absolutely hate biology because to you it’s all only about memorizing species names, then SPS probably is not for you. If you do enjoy watching Big Bang Theory, getting engrossed in solving Albert-Bernard-and-Cheryl problem, and wondering how the leopard gets it spot, then do apply for SPS. We will interview you, and if successful, we will admit you to the programme. Due to space and resource constrain… as you see, we have only this number of chairs to accommodate everyone… we only admit a maximum of 45 students each year. 6 staff are fully committed to the programme… myself, Dr. Adrian Lee the Director (he is overseas at the moment), Chammika who teaches Atoms to Molecules ….
- Then we have the multitude of students mentors. These mentors are senior SPS students who have completed the 6 modules I mentioned earlier, and thereby completing the programme in their first 2 years. Now they are contributing back to the programme as mentors. And I must say that we are particularly proud of our strong mentorship spirit in SPS. SPS mentors carry heavy responsibility in supervising, counseling and assessing their juniors when working on the various projects. They are actively involved in designing and developing the programme. And a few mentors who are taking the role of coordinators are essentially the ones who run things on the ground. At the end of this talk, I will leave you to roam around the premises, to talk to fellow SPSians… that’s one of the reasons why we are physically meeting here… so you can experience first hand talking to SPS students, staff and mentors… touring around the facilities we have at this floor and downstairs… you can ask SPSians to show you around… we have the main hall [click] here… over that side is the library, which also serves as our computer cluster… on the same floor, across the foyer is active learning room. Strictly speaking, it belongs to the whole Faculty, but SPS has always the most frequent user of the facility, because it is equipped with various gadgets to facilitate our interactive small group tutorials… then downstairs we have the SPS Lab, a fully equipped level-2 biology lab to carry-out nonpathogenic cell work. Most of these facilities are maintained by our own SPS students … are heavily-guarded by Hamtaro
- But, we don’t always do serious things all the time. We may be geeks, but we are definitely not nerds. SPSians students like and have been performing well in various scientific competition [click]. They have been going for various enrichment programmes that Faculty of Science has established with its partner universities around the world [click]. Yes all these programmes are open to every Science students. However, these are also popular pogrammes with very limited number of space available. SPS students are often given priority, not because of favoritism, but because the close-knit community of SPSIans and intensive interaction between student and staff enable us to write a strong recommendation letter. If you decide to join, say, NOC, and you ask your favorite lecturer who teach 1001 other students in a big lecture theatre to write a recommendation letter for you, how much do you think he will be able to recommend you? If he even replies to your request, consider yourself lucky. And [click]… we do organize activities which are purely for enjoyment. Free food has always been the highlight of most, if not all, of SPS activities.