Congratulations Kon Wen Xuan for receiving the URECA Undergraduate Research Excellence Award! The URECA Undergraduate Research Excellence Award is presented to URECA students who have demonstrated excellent research experience & achievement throughout the 11-months of URECA Programme.
*URECA stand for Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus (URECA)
Wen Xuan is a Year 4 student in NTU School of Biological Sciences pursuing a Double Degree Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences and Bachelor of Chinese Medicine, a 5-year “East Meets West” bilingual programme.
Passionate in promoting the effectiveness in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices, he embarked on a URECA project utilising data science to understand the diagnostics of TCM.
Why did you choose to study in NTU SBS?
NTU SBS places a strong focus on research which is the direction I wish to explore. Since young, my brother and I have always been interested in pursuing Maths and Science together as our future careers as we are deeply intrigued by how things work. While my brother decided to study Physics and Maths, I chose to study Biology so that we can discuss the ideas and knowledge we learn in the different Scientific fields. While in SBS, the professors integrated the current projects that they are embarking on in their lessons, which are topics that I am keen in pursuing as well. This sparked my interest to participate in their research projects.
URECA provides the opportunity for me to do so, which is why I decided to try it out in my second year in NTU SBS. It was a great experience as I got to work with the research team and learnt their skills and knowledge in their specialised field. After the project was completed, I wanted to embark on a new research topic of my choice this time. So, I joined URECA again in the following Year 3 of my studies and conducted my own research by proposing ideas to the professors.
What is your URECA project about?
My research is about using data scientific methods to investigate Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostics. The features that TCM practitioners use for diagnosis are different from the Western Medicine practitioners. Some examples include types of pulse, tongue colour and tongue coating. Furthermore, these TCM features are not well understood as it is unclear how these features can lead to a diagnosis. I wanted to approach this problem from an objective point of view by utilising Data Science to analyse how TCM features are used in diagnosis.
How did you feel about your URECA experience?
There were many challenges during my URECA experience. The project is cross-disciplinary between TCM and Data Science, where I had to read up on TCM diagnostics and learn Data Science from scratch. Thankfully, I had support from the TCM practitioners from the NTU TCM clinic who answered my queries while my mentor, Dr Goh Wen Bin Wilson, guided me through the basics of Data Science.
Despite the challenges, it felt rewarding to complete my own project from the start to the end and I enjoyed the entire process. Furthermore, this project is not a one-time project as the final goal of understanding TCM diagnostics cannot be fulfilled within the URECA timeline. This is just one step towards developing models that can support TCM diagnostics or improve Western Medicine diagnostic tools which I continued to explore in my FYP.
Dr Goh Wen Bin Wilson (left), who guided Kon Wen Xuan (right), on the basics of Data Science during the URECA programme.
Any advice you might have for others interested in joining the URECA programme?
I would recommend all students who are interested about research to join the URECA programme. For those who are simply interested to know how research is like, URECA can be like a ‘internship’, where they can get a first-hand experience of the process. For those who are genuinely interested, URECA can be a platform for engaging with professors and proposing a research project that they want to pursue.