In this post, we feature Professor Chen Xiaodong, Distinguished University Professor and Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at NTU. A prolific scientist with over 50 patents and hundreds of publications, Prof Chen is internationally recognised for his work in soft materials and flexible electronics for healthcare innovations.
As Deputy Director of NTU’s Institute for Digital Molecular Analytics and Science (IDMxS) and Editor-in-Chief of ACS Nano, and the first Asia-based recipient of the prestigious Dan Maydan Prize in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, he brings a wealth of expertise into the classroom.
Since 2018, his innovative ‘Triple Helix’ teaching approach in the wearable sensors course MS4613 has been demonstrating how engineering educators can effectively combine theoretical rigour with practical problem-solving to prepare students for real-world innovation.
When Professor Chen Xiaodong began teaching at NTU around sixteen years ago, he described his approach as being heavily content-focused. This method, which he now considers outdated, was underpinned by his own nervousness as a new professor.
“The traditional model I used back then was more about content and lecturing,” he admitted. “I was trying to teach a lot of material.”
This model typically involved detailed lecture slides covering every technical concept and theory he aimed to convey. Following the lecture, there were standard tutorial sessions and assessments, with little interactivity or hands-on learning.
It was a process that proved exhausting for both him and his students. Worse still, he didn’t find it particularly effective.
The instructor-centred approach lacked active student engagement and experiential learning, key elements in reinforcing learning. Additionally, it also failed to bridge the gap between academic knowledge and real-world application.
Triple Helix and a Flipped Classroom
By 2016, around the same time he became a full professor at NTU, he had begun to develop a new model of pedagogy for his courses.
Prof Chen recognised that engineering education demands more than just top-down theoretical knowledge. It also requires students to develop practical skills, critical thinking, and industry awareness.
“Overall, I’ve realised a university is not just there to teach you content, it’s also there to inspire,” he commented.
However, the professor didn’t completely abandon instructor-led teaching. Rather, he understood its place in a system he now refers to as the “Triple Helix”.
Inside the Triple Helix, instructors count as only one part, complemented by a problem-driven mindset and experiential learning.
To enable all parts of the Triple Helix, Prof Chen began operating a “flipped classroom”, a method where students learn foundational concepts before class, freeing up in-class time for deeper engagement. That engagement may take place through discussions, hands-on activities, and problem-solving exercises.
In the case of his MS4613 Wearable Sensors for Healthcare course, those pre-class lectures, read materials, and online exercises cover fundamental topics such as sensor materials, fabrication techniques, and healthcare applications.
This means actual class time can be used for interactive discussions, hands-on lab work, and real-world case studies. Students have the time to apply their knowledge through group projects, technical problem-solving, and prototype development, all which they engage in through a cleanroom facility environment.
Shifting students from a passive note-taking role to active learning while offering them one-on-one interactions with instructors and mentors meant they could better retain knowledge and an understanding of what it means to apply the concepts they learn.
Real-Life Problem Solving
And apply them, the Year Four students in MS4613 certainly do. Students are expected to design, prototype and present early-stage engineering designs. Past projects have ranged from a heart attack detection and alert patch to an EpiBand that monitors health, and a system that alerts for falls that its creators named S.A.F.E.
“Seeing the actual prototype helps them connect what they learned in previous semesters to real applications,” said Prof Chen.
He often draws parallels between classroom experience, and his work as a scientist and engineer himself.
For example, his lab recently made a discovery about the unique properties of spider silk. The team found the material had an ability to become soft and pliable when exposed to water, and that materials with similar properties could be used to bridge the mismatch between rigid electronics and soft biological tissues, like human skin and organs.
While the discovery of spider silk’s properties was significant, its true potential lay in its application – creating flexible, conformable electronics and sensors that can seamlessly integrate with the human body for healthcare monitoring and medical applications.
For this reason, Prof Chen always starts by putting real world problems in the minds of his students. He’s known to even ask his students to interview their grandparents to find out what exactly an aging population might find useful in their healthcare products and formulate a design thinking approach from day one.
“I keep telling my students – who are your customers? Your grandparents. Interview them, talk to them, really identify key challenges they are facing,” shares Prof Chen.
Mentors at the Ready
Through the process, Prof Chen also opens the door for mentorship. His courses involve a student to teacher assistant ratio of around five to one, leaving plenty of on-site advisors available for consultation.
In addition to having teaching assistants available as mentors, the professor also invites industry professionals to speak to his classes and help expand their problem-driven mindset.
“When students engage with industry professionals, they encounter different perspectives on their projects,” explained Prof Chen. “Questions about manufacturing costs or market feasibility push them to think beyond pure technical specifications.”
Interactions can lead to project refinements, with teams adapting their designs based on practical industry feedback.
The forums also create natural opportunities for students to articulate their ideas to non-specialist audiences. Presenting prototypes to industry representatives requires clear communication of both technical concepts and potential applications – skills essential for engineering careers.
A primary teaching goal for Prof Chen is for his students to be “industry ready”. This means continual refinement of his course, year after year.
“Every year is different. For example, I may have started off once merely talking about AI, but now we are living with it. As a result, case studies have changed and so have the way I have students present their work,” offered the professor who often prefers video presentations to written ones.
Changing and shifting with such development is just part of the process for both him and his students.
“What I’m teaching is to use the latest development to educate our students. Engineering means application and relevance. It’s not just learned theory – it is application.”
A 100-year Project
While Prof Chen has authored over 400 research publications and holds more than 50 patents, it’s his work as an educator that he views as this major role.
“My number one job is not research. My number one job is education,” emphasised the materials scientist. “It’s really about enabling our next generation students. This is the main product of the university, and research is basically just a way to really educate our students.”
The professor’s attitude remains the same, despite it often seeming harder to graduate students than publish research. He discovered early on that smaller classes were more effective and decided to capitalise on the finding.
“Smaller groups of 15 to 20 students allow for more detailed discussion during presentations,” Prof Chen explained. “When we increased to 30 students, we found it harder to maintain the same depth of mentoring and project guidance.”
To further elucidate his point, he thoughtfully drew on a Chinese proverb: It takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to cultivate a person.
“A human is a 100-year project, unlike publications,” he concluded.
