Homecoming is a beloved tradition of the CN Yang Scholars’ Club which takes place at the beginning of the year. The event is designed to strengthen the connections between current scholars and alumni. It provides an opportunity for current scholars to learn more about potential career paths and gain insights into life after graduation. For alumni, it is a chance to reconnect with old friends and reminisce about their time in the CN Yang Scholar’s Programme.
During homecoming, both alumni and current scholars are treated to a delicious dinner. This year’s theme is “Reverie,” meaning ‘a dreamlike state’. To match the theme, we have decorated the photobooth with Polaroid pictures of the alumni during their time in university.
There are also several activities available at the venue, including a pool table, a dart machine, Nintendo Switch games, and a Karaoke machine.
Insightful experiences were also shared at the event, including networking tips from the director of the NTU Career & Attachment Office, and internship opportunities and graduate school experiences from alumni.
All in all, homecoming is a highly anticipated annual event. It celebrates the CN Yang Scholar’s community and fosters strong connections between members, past and present.
Thank you to our 16MC Outreach Portfolio for organising Homecoming 2024!
CNYSP Homecoming 2022 happened on 25th February 2022. It was unfortunately still held online due to the prevailing Covid-19 situation. Alas, it was a light-hearted evening filled with laughter from our alumni who happily shared and reminisced their time in CNYSP. The theme for this year’s Homecoming is Vibrance – signifying the vibrant life alumni had during their undergraduate years and even now.
There were a total of five alumni who have very kindly volunteered their time to share more about their journey and experiences with us! They are Alvin Lee, Mohammad Zaidi bin Ariffin, Yap Chor Yen, Alvin Chan, and last but not least Koo Kwan Yee. The sharing sessions were delightful and engaging with many undergraduates actively asking questions during the QnA segment.
The night ended with a wholesome conversation between the alumni and undergraduates during the free and easy segment where all of us engaged in a conversation filled with chuckles and wisdom imparted by our alumni. It was very interesting for us, undergraduates to see how our alumni have flourished and adapted well in whatever endeavours they are doing now, be it in industry or academia.
Overall, all of us had a great time attending the event and we certainly hope that next year’s Homecoming will be an offline one with a buffet dinner where all of us can freely walk around and chat with everyone!
Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT) has never been too well-known of a
defence technology organisation amongst most Singaporean youth, with the likes
of Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) and Defence Science Organisation
(DSO) taking precedence in terms of reputation. This is due to the highly
classified nature of CSIT’s work which deals with cybersecurity and other
highly sensitive technologies which naturally are a cause for secrecy. However,
on the 8th of October 2019, we were fortunate to be given
the opportunity to visit CSIT as part of their open house event. As a
computer science undergraduate, I was excited to learn more about the
‘strategic technologies’ that CSIT was working on.
Our visit started off with a welcome talk in an
intimate setting of what was not more than 40 students from the various local
universities. The speakers shared about the nature of work they carried out at
CSIT and how CSIT fitted in amongst the various defence technology organisations
in Singapore. We were split into various tables and every table had an
attached person from CSIT so that we could ask any questions we
had. I found this first segment of the visit to be quite eye-opening as I
was better able to understand the complex defence ecosystem that Singapore had
and how all the various acronym-laden government organisations worked together
to bolster Singapore’s defence.
The second segment of the visit was round robin of the
booths of the five main technology areas of CSIT: cyber-technology, software
engineering and analytics, communications technology, systems and network
infrastructure, and crypto technology. Each booth had its own fun activity for
us to get a better understanding of what the area encompassed, from looking at
how virtual machines are designed and deployed almost instantaneously, to how
to sniff data packets that were being sent to an attacker in order to find out
more information about a cyber-attack. The booths were very engaging, and I was
really awestruck by the technology showcased, as even though it may not be
anything ground-breaking, we rarely get to see such things unless we are
involved directly in such work.
Finally, we ended off the visit with a dinner and
closing address by the Chief Executive of CSIT, who shared his own
views on the security landscape in Singapore and how the career
progression was like in CSIT, which is based on meritocracy rather than other
means, unlike other similar organisations. Overall, it was a very enjoyable and
possibly once-in-a-lifetime experience at the CSIT open house, and it definitely helped us to better understand the nature of work that
CSIT does.
Kicking off the first industrial visit of the school year, 10 CN Yang Scholars visited Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School located near Singapore General Hospital to learn more about its unique MD, MD-pHD and pHD curriculum.
What sets Duke-NUS apart from other medical schools is its central “Clinician-First, Clinician-Plus” vision. They believe that graduates are first competent clinicians, and beyond that, build on their other capabilities to become more than just simple clinicians, but clinician-scientists, leaders and innovators. Therefore, Duke-NUS welcomes students from different disciplines and academic backgrounds as they believe that they provide a different perspective and expertise to the study of Medicine. There are graduates with majors in Engineering, Business and even Law!
Fortunately, this aligns with the multi-disciplinary nature of the CN Yang programme which equips scholars with the skills and knowledge from multiple fields. Scholars also had the opportunity to ask key questions during an informative Q and A session with past NTU alumni who are now on the prestigious MD-pHD programme. The seniors encouraged them to engage in more diverse fields of research and explore their interests in those areas to gain greater perspectives in the process of scientific inquiry.
NTU and NUS alumni who are current students in Duke-NUS shared on their experiences in the programme
Scholars also had an exclusive peek into the different laboratories in Duke-NUS where despite the cluttered outlook of the benches, the scientists there are engaging in cutting-edge research at the forefront of science. It is not uncommon to see students and scientists working together hand-in-hand and engaging in intense discussions over their research work. It was indeed an eye-opening experience for us to experience the research culture of laboratories beyond NTU.
We had the chance to handle some samples from the labs!
The CN Yang Scholars’ Club (CNYSC) is set up and run by the scholars of the CN Yang Scholars Programme. The management committee is elected by the scholars on an annual basis.
