In The News

TUMCREATE would like to extend congratulations to our colleagues from the Area-Interlinking Design Analysis group for winning the Best Contributed Application Paper Award at the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) 2020 with their manuscript titled “Multi-thread State Update Schemes for Microscopic Traffic Simulation”.  The authors are Dr Tan Wen Jun, Dr Philipp Andelfinger, Dr Xu Yadong, Prof Cai Wentong, Prof Alois Knoll, and Dr David Eckhoff.    WSC recognizes contributed papers of exceptionally high quality and implements a stringent process in selecting the winners. Out of 200 accepted contributed papers, four finalists were selected by the track committee. Among the four finalists, the winner was eventually selected by an independent panel of three distinguished members of the simulation community. This academic achievement is a high recognition for the research work by the authors in the simulation field.   The paper discusses how in a simulation (e.g., traffic), agents (e.g., vehicles) are advanced in time such that the reproducibility and scalability of the simulation can be supported. This is a critical aspect to address in high-performance simulations where hundreds of thousands of agents are simulated in parallel. The research has already been incorporated into TUMCREATE’s city-scale simulator CityMoS, which is being deployed in various research, government, and industry projects.   The panel’s decision was based on the following: “This paper systematically explores the effects of different synchronization and agent update methods on the performance of multi-threaded traffic simulations. Asynchronous and synchronous approaches for updating agent states are compared in terms of locking and conflict resolution requirements and simulation runtime. The results of experiments are clearly and succinctly summarised, providing actionable evidence on how best pursuing when applying parallel computing techniques to traffic simulations.”   The Winter Simulation Conference (WSC) is the premier international forum for disseminating recent advances in the field of system simulation, with the principal focus being discrete-event simulation and combined discrete-continuous simulation. In addition to a technical program of unsurpassed scope and quality, WSC provides the central meeting place for simulation practitioners, researchers, and vendors working in all disciplines in industrial, governmental, military, and academic sectors. This year’s theme of WSC is “Simulation Drives Innovation”. Simulation allows us to tackle many complex problems we could not otherwise – which, in turn, allows us to innovate.   The authors’ version of the paper can be found here:  https://www.david-eckhoff.net/pdf/tan2020multi.pdf    

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   Dr Nirmala Ramakrishnan from the Sensing and Management for Agile Transport (SMAT) team speaks with us today.   To study for her undergrad in Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Nirmala moved from Trivandrum, Kerala in South India to Singapore. She dipped into the work of a software engineer and firmware developer before realising her passion in education and took up teaching at Republic Polytechnic, teaching programming and mathematics, prior to pursuing her PhD and joining the SMAT team. As a career mum, she makes sure to spend quality time with her son by doing activities together and shares that his curiosity keeps her motivated to continue to learn and gain new experiences.   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am a Research Fellow with the SMAT team in TUMCREATE. I joined the SMAT team upon submitting my thesis and started to work with my PhD supervisor on the vision of using sensing for traffic surveillance. Our team’s vision is to deploy smart cameras with IoT sensors city-wide to enable intelligent traffic monitoring and management and alleviate traffic congestions. We focus on edge computing for computer vision and develop light-weight computer vision and deep learning algorithm pipelines that can estimate traffic density, trigger intelligent traffic signals and enable traffic law enforcements such as illegal parking in restricted zones. Being able to do all the data processing on the edge also means that our solutions are privacy preserving, which I believe should be an important factor for how surveillance cameras operate.     Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? It started with my father coming across an advertisement of the SIA-NOL scholarship and encouraged me to apply for it. With my mum’s history of working at the remote foothills of the Himalayas for her first job, it was quite natural for my parents to let their 17-year-old daughter to go to a foreign country. Having come from a fairly conservative city, I really appreciate the freedom and independence I have in Singapore. I really like how clean and organized the city is and the convenience of being able to fly back to India to visit my parents easily. I am truly grateful for the awesome multicultural spirit of Singapore which has allowed me to grow and evolve into who I am today and to raise our son while maintaining his Indian roots.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? Someone once said to me, when I was an undergrad, “To make technology realisable and affordable, it is necessary to cut any slack in the entire algorithm pipeline and make optimum use of all the available computing resources, which is essentially what embedded systems is all about”, and that really opened my eyes to edge computing. That person was Prof Thambipillai Srikanthan and years later, when I approached him again to work on my PhD, he was focusing on computer vision on edge computing platforms which has immense potential in a wide variety of use cases. Hence, the challenge of optimising something that is inherently computationally complex for edge computing and the tremendous possibilities in this technology, inspired me to take up this area as my field of research.    Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? I think the biggest challenge is staying abreast with the latest in this fast-evolving field. Science and technologies are advancing at such a high speed, both in computer vision, which is now driven by deep learning techniques, as well as edge computing platforms and technologies.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I joined the SMAT team in 2017 after completing my PhD. My main focus has been to develop light-weight computer vision and deep learning algorithms for processing traffic surveillance videos on edge computing platforms. For the three years that I have been on this project, it has been like a roller coaster ride! We have come a long way from taking our research in embedded computer vision and AI (artificial intelligence) in the research phase to conducting field trials at the NTU campus, with our smart sensors on the lamp posts operating 24/7.   I share this journey with a fantastic team. My colleagues, who are also researchers, set the highest standards for themselves which pushes me to be better every day. The students who have interned with us also motivated us to refine our work and try out new methods to improve our technology. Having started the field trial, I am no longer just working in the lab but out in the open, debugging our sensors on the NTU lamp post, under the Singapore heat! It’s been a really satisfying and rewarding experience to be a part of this end-to-end process.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? AI and ML (machine learning) is changing so fast and there is a lot of hype around the developments. So, while continuing to work on exciting end user applications with computer vision or AI on the edge, I am also very keen on sharing my knowledge with others. I hope to find opportunities to facilitate learning and demystify the technologies so that more people can adopt and innovate in this area too, solving problems they want to solve.   (We wonder if there’s anything else we don’t know about this super mum…)    Q: What is something about yourself that would surprise most people who know you?  I guess it would be that I actually love to spend my morning just lazing around

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   We have with us Niklas Forchhammer from the Design for Autonomous Mobility (DAM) team.   Niklas is a researcher and industrial designer from Germany. Just like most of us, it wasn’t apparent to him what he wanted to do when he was growing up. In fact, he was quite a rebellious kid in school and always a troublemaker. Needless to say, academic achievements were not at the top of his mind during his school years. It was only after his apprenticeship when he came to the realisation of his interest in design and started to work towards the goal of being an industrial designer and later, a researcher in this area.     Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am an industrial designer from the DAM team. In DAM, we create design concepts for TUMCREATE’s research on the mobility system DART, a concept for future public transport system. This involves the vehicle and infrastructural elements of the mobility system. We consider every touchpoint the user has with the system, which is not limited to physical elements but also extends to all interfaces such as guidance systems. Subsequently, we come up with solutions to improve usability and travel experience for all users.   Good design concepts are created based on comprehensive research and analysis to holistically discover the topic and define a problem. Therefore, I also conduct various research, especially user research and user testing for future mobility, and translate the outcomes into design concepts.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? During my master’s thesis, I chose to come to TUMCREATE in Singapore to get an impression of future mobility and use its mobility system research as a case study for my thesis. Throughout my four-weeks stay here, I was very impressed by Singapore’s vivid multiculturism and applied technology usage. I did not hesitate when I was offered the opportunity to join the DAM team as an industrial designer.   Originally, I have planned to stay for only one year but in a blink of an eye, I have been here for almost 3 years. I adapted well to some of Singapore’s big-city attributes like the excellent infrastructure, culinary opportunities and the various entertainment options. Still, I am often surprised how certain spots are able to give off a sense of that village spirit where everyone seems to know each other. Many scenes in my neighbouring coffee shops are basically the same as you would see in a Bavarian beer garden or village pub. Also, despite being a busy city, I really like the friendliness of the people here especially the hawkers. I have a favourite food court auntie who will always greet me with a “good morning, hamsum” and we would chat a little until my breakfast set is ready. Although, I’m still figuring out what does “hamsum” mean.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I completed an apprenticeship before I went to university. It was mostly manual work of building and installing things and from there I’ve learned a lot about craft skills and the different types of materials. After some time, I realised I want to be a part of the design process instead of just the implementation stage. I started to look at studying either mechanical engineering or architecture so that I can have a greater influence on the design of things in our environment. In the end, it was my brother who suggested that I should apply for industrial design courses and as usual, he was right. I really enjoy what I am doing now.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? Well, there are many…  A major challenge of industrial design is that you usually face something called “wicked problems”. Wicked problems are problems which do not have just one optimal solution, due to an uncertain problem definition and an interplay of multiple stakeholders with different interests. For example, even if you solve a problem perfectly for the user with a product that is of great usability and excellent quality and checks all the ethical requirement boxes, other stakeholders might disagree with your design proposal because it does not provide the best business opportunities for them. The designer then has to find a balance between the requirements to suit everybody’s needs, which is rather difficult.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I started at TUMCREATE as an industrial designer and my responsibilities started with, as some might call it, the standard design tasks like ideation, visualisation and prototyping. Over time, I was able to expand my work in the direction of scientific research, including publishing scientific papers and the opportunity to present at an international conference. The cool thing is that the papers thematised the design concepts developed and are therefore the perfect supplement for me as a designer.   My scope has also expanded to supervising research teams on a few projects. One of them was a project that looked at designing future stops for autonomous vehicles. We studied the various user needs, by taking into account persons with disabilities and the demands and opinions of transport users, and developed a blueprint of a stop designed for the future autonomous transport in Singapore. This includes having interactive interfaces available that could provide additional information for the commuters about their journeys. Currently, I am also working on proposals based on recent research, in hope to collaborate with key industry players and bring improvements to Singapore’s public transport system through real life application.   Q: What

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   We talk to Dr Alok Prakash, Principal Investigator of the Sensing and Management for Agile Transport (SMAT) team.   Alok grew up in a small city in India, called Bokaro Steel City, where true to its name, is famous for its steel manufacturing plant – a fun fact that Alok proudly shared with us. Growing up, Alok was such a fan of Sci-Fi movies that he never missed a single one of them, especially the ones with the word ‘Star’ in it. Admitting to being a ‘tech nerd’, he is always ready to lecture anyone on the latest and upcoming gadgets when given the chance. He also confessed to being a frequent Carousell user in order to keep up with his hobby of changing his phone every month. That is definitely a hobby that only a passionate ‘tech nerd’ will have!   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am a Senior Research Fellow (SRF) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the Principal Investigator (PI) for the SMAT team within TUMCREATE since February 2018. Similar to other PIs in TUMCREATE, my work encompasses a diverse range of tasks such as research management, administrative tasks for the team, liaising with national and international academic as well as industry partners and planning, coordinating and overseeing the several ongoing field trials within the NTU campus and beyond. As an SRF in NTU, I also guide PhD students in their research. Additionally, I also lead the hardware design and prototyping team within SMAT that is responsible for maximizing the performance of low cost, low power edge computing platforms used in our sensors through sophisticated mapping and optimization techniques.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? After finishing my undergraduate degree at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Dhanbad, India, I was looking for an opportunity to pursue higher studies overseas. I had applied to several Universities in the US and received an acceptance offer from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I was over the moon to have received the acceptance letter so imagine my disappointment when I realized that I would have to secure a massive loan even to apply for a US VISA. This was when one of my friends, who had been working at NTU as an intern, advised me to try for a Masters/PhD position in NTU. Since the application deadline had already passed, I was offered to come to NTU as an intern first with a possibility of starting my PhD from the subsequent semester. I accepted the offer and I still remember the exact date that I landed in Singapore, 2nd August 2007.   Thirteen years later, in retrospect, it was one of the best decisions of my life and it has been the most enriching experience. During the course of my PhD, I had an opportunity to visit the UK for three months as an intern and I missed Singapore so much! Ever since then, I have made it a point to not stay away from this country for more than two weeks at a time or I’ll be homesick.    Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I have always been enticed by gadgets and electronic items used in our daily lives. Growing up in India, though we did not have access to many, I was always trying to collect and fix them when something did not work as expected; sometimes successfully, at other times not so much. When the time came for me to select my major for undergraduate studies, I decided to pursue Electronics Engineering which was in line with my passion. My PhD and post doc research topics continued in this direction with a sharper focus on low power embedded computing platforms that are ubiquitous in devices around us.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? With the advent of smartphones, the capabilities of embedded systems have grown many fold. There has been a tremendous growth in their computing power in the last five years alone. However, while the hardware capability has grown almost exponentially, the growth in the accompanying software needed to make optimal use of all this computing power has not kept pace. As such, we have a situation known as ‘design-productivity gap’ that necessitates more work on topics such as automated partitioning, mapping and optimizing algorithms to make the best use of the underlying hardware.   At the same time, the unprecedented rise in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) applications, which were traditionally deployed on much more powerful platforms, but currently geared towards embedded systems such as smartphones and IoTs, now demands more sophisticated mapping and optimization strategies to ensure high performance without violating their strict power and thermal constraints.     Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I joined the SMAT team as a research fellow at the start of TUMCREATE Phase 2 program in 2016. My primary focus at the time was to develop automated techniques for mapping complex applications, such as the novel computer vision and AI applications that were under development in SMAT, on low cost and low power embedded computing platforms while ensuring high performance. I was promoted to become the PI of SMAT in 2018, just a few months before a critical review of the program, which significantly broadened my responsibilities almost overnight. It was an excellent opportunity for me to stretch myself beyond research and learn several other useful skills like leadership and management.   Since then, SMAT has developed several state-of-the-art AIoT sensors

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   It’s a pleasure to have Penny Kong, from the Design for Autonomous Mobility (DAM) team, with us for this interview.   Penny is a Singaporean researcher in our multinational research institute. As someone who was born and raised in Singapore, other researchers tend to look for her for recommendations of local places and activities, only to find out that they have visited more sights and places than her! A graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in Architecture, Penny also shared with us some of her likes for arts such as dance, photography and films.   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am a Research Associate with the DAM team, where we have a slightly different take, compared to the engineering perspective, on autonomous vehicle (AV) research. We follow a human-centred design approach so our research places people and the local context as its foundation and builds a narrative from there. Working with both qualitative and quantitative data, we try to understand the needs, desires, backgrounds and abilities, among other characteristics, of the people we are creating the future transport system for. In a way, we act as advocates for the user, which in this case are the passengers and potential passengers. All that information is combined with technical knowledge on subjects like manufacturing processes, aesthetics, human factors, and psychology and translated into design solutions for the module, infrastructure and human-machine interface.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I would say I meandered into design, and more specifically, industrial design. I was not the kind of person who always knew what they wanted to do when they grew up. As a kid, I did love reading, writing, drawing, and playing with Lego… the kinds of activities you might associate with creative or artistic types, but prior to university, it never occurred to me to pursue design professionally.   I was studying hospitality when I started a part-time job as a theatre usher. During one of the events when I was on duty, Tim Brown, the CEO and president of international design agency IDEO, happened to be the speaker. It was the first time I’d heard of human-centred design, design thinking and the like. By then, I was probably in my first- or second-year doing architecture at NUS. That talk really sparked an interest in human-centred design and user research for me. It was a couple more years and a bit more meandering after that talk before I landed at TUMCREATE, where I started doing research in design.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? One of my challenges is distinguishing research for design from research about design. The former is about applied projects where we explore the problem and context to design a solution, while the latter is about producing knowledge for the field of design itself. It means I always need to be conscious of the intention behind the work I do so as not to conflate research questions, methods or results for either of them. Another challenge lies in the interdisciplinary nature of design and design research. For example, we draw from human factors research to inform design development and use social science methods, like surveys or interviews, so it is important to understand how to apply the various research methods and knowledge to my own work. It is something I’ve enjoyed learning about in the past few years!   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I joined the DAM team in 2017. My focus is on investigating the preferences, expectations and acceptance for AVs, using the concept of DART, in Singapore. At the same time, I’m doing my PhD on emotional design for AV human-machine interfaces, where I look at how we can craft mobility experiences to evoke certain emotions for the diverse group of people who take public transport. One of the projects that I have learned a lot from was the organisation of the Singapore edition of a global dialogue on driverless mobility. It was really rewarding being able to engage with the community while collaborating with both our local co-organisers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and the global organisers from Missions Publiques, who are based in France. We got a lot of insightful data from the dialogue, which we’re now writing a paper about. Another project I’m proud to be a part of involves defining the standards for future AV deployment in Singapore, where I’m coordinating a small team comprising various stakeholders from academia, industry and more.   I think mobility is a core part of modern life and AVs would have a huge impact on many levels. There’s the micro perspective of looking at how people will interact with AVs, and there’s the macro-level changes in society and the urban fabric. I’m really happy to be a part of this global discourse on mobility research.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? I have two big goals I want to accomplish at the moment. One is to work on improving my command of German, which I started learning last year, and the other is to complete my PhD. I am in the final stages now but there is still a lot I want to do. In the longer-term, I would like to continue working on how we shape people’s experiences with mobility and technology, in Singapore and beyond.   (We challenge Penny to try and describe her field of work to young children who might be interested in her field.)    Q: How would you describe

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   Dr Jordan Ivanchev, from the team Area-Interlinking Design Analysis (AIDA), joins us in our interview.   Jordan grew up in Bulgaria, a small country in Eastern Europe, where he described as a place filled with rich history, beautiful traditions and warm, kind-hearted people. Besides being active in various sports, Jordan is an airplane enthusiast who gets really excited when it comes to flying, or anything that can fly, be it an airplane or a spaceship. In his free time, he would unwind with a group of friends or sits in front of a piano, playing his favourite tunes.    Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am currently a senior research fellow heading the modelling efforts for our traffic simulator, CityMoS. I have also been part of the Cooling Singapore project, since its beginning in 2016, where I model mobility-related aspects of human behaviour.   I majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for my bachelor’s degree in the Jacobs University in Bremen. After that, I received a master’s degree in Spacecraft Technology and Satellite Communications from the University College London (UCL) and a PhD degree from the Technical University in Munich (TUM).   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? I like to say that I came to Singapore because of a lucky misunderstanding. The job advertisement that I applied for only mentioned TUM and I assumed the position was in Munich. At the end of my interview, my interviewer said, “Let me tell you a little bit about Singapore”. I got a little confused and asked why that would be necessary and he simply told me that it was because I would have to live in Singapore. That was when I realized I had to move to Singapore for the job!    Despite my initial shock, I didn’t really hesitate much. I gladly took up the challenge, ready for an adventure, when I was offered the position. I remember vividly that he described Singapore to me as the “Asia for beginners”, which I later found to be quite an accurate description. Living in Singapore has massively enriched my perception of the world. Here, I have met and interacted with people from different cultures, made new friends, worked with great professionals and started a family of my own.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I have been blessed with a few great teachers along my education path, as early as middle school, that have shaped the way I think, reason and approach and define problems. These individuals, together with my father, have taught me that math is not only a universal tool that can be used to tackle challenges from almost any domain but also a universal language that has the power to seamlessly connect on a very deep conceptual level with people from anywhere in the world. I find it quite romantic that something so abstract, rigorous, and formal can be used to create elegant and intricate solutions for complex problems that reemerge from different academic fields and aspects of life.    I started off my research career in the field of machine learning, which is a small subset of the vast field of mathematical modelling. Although he has quite a peculiar personality, I have to say that Juergen Schmidhuber is one of the most inspirational contemporary thinkers in the field and in artificial intelligence in general. I believe that many other machine learning practitioners of my generation were also attracted to the field by his thoughts, ideas, and his unique way of presenting them.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? As a modeller working at the boundary between product and stakeholders, the biggest challenge has always been to convince the users of the value that comes with the application of our models. I believe that defining model performance metrics is a crucial part of research nowadays and that it is best tackled when both researchers and users work on it together.   Being able to synthesize all information defining the performance of a model into a single number is truly an art that requires a lot of experience and in-depth understanding of both the research field and real world context of the problem, be it financial, social, political, or environmental.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I joined TUMCREATE in 2013 and am probably one of the people who have been with the company for the longest time! After finishing my doctorate thesis in 2016, I assumed a more versatile role that included being involved in other work on top of my research. I participated in forming collaborations with other entities, initiating new projects and mentoring students. Most of my work revolves around our traffic simulator, CityMoS, where I design models that depict commuter behaviour in different scenarios thus bringing more realism into our simulator and providing better accuracy for decision makers.   In 2017, I also became part of the Cooling Singapore project, providing my expertise in mobility-related modelling. I got a chance to work together with fellow researchers and professors from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich) and NUS (National University of Singapore). I believe that the project was a great way to do something meaningful for Singapore.   One of the best aspects of working in CREATE is that you are surrounded with people from world-renowned universities. I immensely enjoyed working with Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli from Berkeley on our common project, BEHAVE, that dealt with studying the

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   Our interviewee today is Srikkanth Ramachandran, a research fellow from the Electrification Suite and Test Lab (ESTL) team.   To pursue his passion in sustainability, Srikkanth Ramachandran decided to pack up his bag in Chennai, India and move to Munich, Germany for a Masters in Power Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Having moved from places to places, one thing that always remain is his conviction in incorporating sustainability in every walk of his life. He even invested in 10,000 kgs of personal carbon credits from emission reduction projects to offset his 2020 emissions. With the on-going pandemic, he has managed to cut even more personal carbon usage and extend the use of the credits! Besides being committed to the environment, Srikkanth is also an avid cyclist and a cricketer.   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am a research fellow in the ESTL team of TUMCREATE and my expertise is in Life Cycle Assessment. I have completed my Master of Science in Power Engineering at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and will soon be defending my PhD thesis at TUM as well. My primary focus is the estimation of emission reduction potential of electric buses in Singapore. We also estimate the emission mitigation that Singapore could realise by importing renewable energy.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? The thirst for exploring new opportunities and challenges drove me to seek my Master Thesis prospects outside of my comfort zone in Germany. This is why I landed in Singapore and there has been no looking back ever since. I took to Singapore like a duck to water. The climate conditions, which is pretty much like my hometown, and the cricket culture here helped me feel at home immediately. Singapore offers so much in terms of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. It keeps reminding us of how limited our knowledge on the diversity of people is, and how much more there is to learn. For a foodie like me and my wife, who I met here, this little red dot is a delectable dream.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? Sustainability has always been my forte and it was inspired and inscribed in me by my parents who practised minimalism and the 3Rs, reduce, reuse, and recycle, at home. Any project that I did during my childhood always included an environmental perspective. This led me to do my Masters in Power Engineering where the theoretical concepts of sustainability were fortified. With the present scenario of accelerated global warming, even daily news articles and basic understanding of the issue could keep one motivated to achieve far more in this field.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? The assessment of emission reduction potential of alternative technologies forms the crux of my research. This kind of work is very data driven. Though generic data is available in literature, these are not country specific and adopting them to each country is a challenge. Even when we adopt the data, validation of the results becomes impossible which slightly reduces its reliability. We generally overcome this by being open about the data sources and follow a robust and standardised methodology along with sensitivity analyses.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I have been with TUMCREATE for almost 8 years and have associated myself with the company at various capacities. I started as a research assistant in 2013 and graduated to a research associate later that year. In my PhD thesis, I have built models to estimate the bio-energy potential in ASEAN and the emission reduction potential of its use in the transport sector using life cycle assessment.   Currently, I am a research fellow and I work on assessing the sustainability and emission reduction potential of transport electrification and renewable energy import for Singapore. This can help to objectively quantify the emission savings that an electric bus fleet in Singapore can offer and really show the impact of such change. By assessing renewable energy imports, we can identify low carbon renewable energy import options that are best suited for Singapore.   Having guided a few students along the way and worked on various cross-collaboration projects and publications has made my journey here stimulating and wholesome. TUMCREATE offers the right environment and like-minded colleagues for me to stay inspired and ride through this path.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? Singapore has become my second home, and it is tough to think beyond it for the near future. I would like to be a part of the projects that help Singapore achieve its sustainability goals. In the long run, I would like to contribute to society through knowledge-share. Also, I wish to see myself being involved in policy-making to help develop directives for tackling climate change at the highest level.   On the personal front, I am gearing up to finish the Tour De Bintan cycling challenge by 2021!   (Who does Srikkanth think would be a great teammate to tackle the challenges in climate change with him?)   Q: If you could have any fictional character as your research teammate, who would you choose and why? Marvel’s Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man! I am hoping to combine his technical prowess and wealth with my knowledge and steadfast desire for a sustainable future. We could work on scaling up his arc reactor to provide sustainable electricity to cities or even countries. It might be fictional but working with someone like him

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   We talk to Dr Tobias Massier, Principal Investigator of the team Electrification Suite and Test Lab (ESTL).   Moving to a faraway country was never a thought that has crossed Tobias’ mind. He has always been very connected to home and his Bavarian culture, which he made sure to stress that it was more than just beer, sausages and pretzels! He later developed an interest in Scandinavia and studied both the Swedish and Norwegian language, and even considered moving there to escape the summer in Germany. Ironically, he ended up in Singapore, where it’s humid for most of the year, though the air-conditioned buildings made up for it since they are rare in Germany. Being in Singapore for almost eight years now, he can hardly imagine living in another place again. Indeed, home is where the heart is.   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I have been with TUMCREATE as a principal investigator since January 2013, leading the ESTL team which was known as RP 8 – Energy Management team back then. We are working on concepts for electrifying road transport in Singapore and integrating it into Singapore’s power system. My duties comprise a broad range of tasks from doing research, to initiating new collaborations and acquiring funding, to administrative tasks for the team. I am also involved in external research projects.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? I would say I was in the right place at the right time. In 2012, TUMCREATE was looking for a principal investigator for the newly formed RP 8 team. I had a few doubts in the beginning but I knew that such opportunity would not knock twice so I decided to give it a go, while not planning to stay for more than two to three years. True enough, I was not well prepared at all and the first few months were quite tough to be honest. Eventually, things started to fall in place, and I started to meet the right people, including my wife whom I have two lovely little cherubs with today!   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I’ve always been interested in numbers, logical thinking, mathematics and electricity. Funny story, I’ve damaged quite a few of my father’s consumer electronic devices and erased some of his audio and video tape recordings when I was young. My parents eventually bought me an electric model railway just to draw my attention away to something else.   It fascinates me when completely new things emerge and have the potential to change our lives, or when inventions that were presumed to have lost their potential and value suddenly see a resurrection. For instance, the first electric car was invented almost 150 years ago but it was only until recently when people began to re-consider the invention as a promising alternative to internal combustion engine vehicles.   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? I guess, for most researchers, the challenges are similar. To me, it is important that the research has an impact outside academia. The pressure to publish high-quality papers and receive citations is high, but it is also important that your findings are considered by decision-makers or get to be developed and implemented. That said, I am happy that a method I developed in my PhD thesis was implemented by a leading electronic design software company. Also, ESTL is currently involved in some projects that have the potential to make valuable contributions to Singapore, which is really exciting!   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… When I started in 2013, it was the first time for me to lead a team. My team was very small with just three research associates and one of them was on a short-term stay. All of them had already been assigned their research topics, so there was little room for me to incorporate my own ideas. Despite being a small team, it was quite a challenge to manage. However, over the years, I became more confident and managed to acquire additional funding. I initiated additional research topics such as charging strategies for electric vehicles, including battery ageing, renewable energy supply options from other Southeast Asian countries and balancing fluctuations of solar power with the help of airconditioned buildings or the batteries of electric vehicles. Eventually, the team grew to more than ten people and it is progressing really well now.   Today, ESTL’s work comprises the electrification of public buses in Singapore, new control strategies for electric grids, and integration of renewable energies, smart devices, including batteries, and IoT models. I also provide guidance to my team particularly on writing research proposals and publications and approaching other institutions for potential collaborations.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? I don’t think I would be moving away as Singapore is a convenient and great place to raise children. Workwise, I want to continue to work with my team as they are all highly talented researchers and we are involved in great projects right now. With TUMCREATE Phase 2 ending in the near future, I could see myself in a follow-up project that goes in a similar direction as to what we are doing.   (We know how busy a scientist can be, what will they do if they have an extra hour to spend?)   Q: If you have one extra hour of free time a day, how would you use it? Sleep. I can’t say that I am getting enough of

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   We have Meng Xie, research associate from the team Rapid Road Transport (RRT), with us today.   Meng Xie has started living in different cities to study at a young age of 13. Being exposed to different worlds at such a young age, she learned to appreciate the many things in life and really likes traveling, food and music. She mentioned that one of her best decisions was to take up violin. Known to be full of life, she likes to keep herself active by taking jogs and swims and she always tries to dip her toes in areas that she finds interesting such as dance, movies, philosophy and psychology.   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… Hi, I am Meng Xie, also known as Sophie by my peers, and I am from the team RRT. I got my bachelors in Highway and Bridge Engineering at Southeast University and my masters in Transportation Systems at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).     I am interested in dynamic public transport priority, V2X communication techniques, simulations, and modelling. My research focus is on proactive transport management, which makes use of the V2X communication techniques to optimize the usage of road space between public transport and private vehicles.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? The cultural tolerance and the beautiful sunny weather! From my experience, Singapore is one of the few countries that embraces different cultures and seeks a neutral balance among them, and I really appreciate this a lot. Also, the sunny weather is so wonderful that you can almost, always enjoy summertime here. It’s also a good spot to travel around Southeast Asia.     I was not that into fitness before but after coming to Singapore, I got more into it and even participated in a half-marathon! It started at midnight around Marina Bay and jogging with a backdrop of the skyline and lights, while enjoying the chilled weather, allowed me to experience a different side of Singapore. I have lived in Singapore for about three years now and so far, I am enjoying my life here a lot.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? I guess the ‘nerdy girl’ in me is always interested in stuff that cannot be explained easily. How did some things happen? Why did it happen in one way but not the other? What is behind the phenomena? I always have questions like these. I cannot really say if it were just someone or something that inspired me but instead, I would say that it was because I have always been someone who is curious and sceptical about how things work.    Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? Well, to be honest, there are quite some challenges in research. When you’re doing a research, it’s also like a process of self-reflection in getting to know who you are, what you can achieve, what are your limitations and what are the areas that you have never explored before. This is exciting but also challenging because it’s even harder to figure out. Apart from that, you also need to deal with your inner struggles on any self-doubts along the way such as questioning if your research makes sense, will it truly make a difference and is it applicable in real life.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I joined TUMCREATE as a research assistant in 2017 and I have learned a lot from my colleagues during then. After finishing my master thesis, I was lucky and honoured to join RRT as a research associate and started to focus on my research project on Virtual Right of Way. This project is a cooperative dynamic bus lane system that aims at improving bus operation while minimizing potential negative impacts on private vehicles. It creates a flexible bus priority lane that is only activated on demand with the advanced information and communication technologies, which can maximize the usage of road space. Recently, I am preparing for this concept to be conducted in a field trial and I’m really excited about it.   Sometimes, research can get frustrating when I meet some obstacles along the way, but it is nice to have other fun researchers around which makes things easier. I have made some nice friends with my time here in TUMCREATE.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? For sure, I would like to accomplish my research targets in my PhD study. After that, I want to use what I have learned to help others in ways that I can. I always think that we are really lucky if we are able to learn what we are interested in and further apply it to contribute to the world and people. On the side, I would like to keep on playing the violin and hopefully I will make more progress in the near future.    (There are so many fictional inventions created in books and shows, which might be a scientist’s favourite?)    Q: What fictional invention would you like to see happen in real life and why? Definitely the invention of Time Machine! I would love to observe and experience life in different time dimensions and periods. How do people think there, what do people eat, what are the entertainments they have? Do infinite dimensions really exist in which everything is different? If so, will there be one where animals will be able to talk and will there still be unbreakable barriers among

At TUMCREATE, as we prepare to conclude our research in Phase Two – Towards the Ultimate Public Transport System, we would like to highlight our researchers who continue to make significant contributions to the programme. Through our interview series, People behind the Science, we talk to our researchers to discover more about them and their stories.   We talk to Dr Daniel Zehe of the team Area-Interlinking Design Analysis (AIDA).   Besides holding the role of a computer scientist, Daniel can be considered quite a chef as well. Outside of work, Daniel loves to dabble in culinary and come up with innovative creations. He proudly shared that he once made and designed chocolate in the shape of a penguin and even concocted a dish, shaped like the German flag, with mashed potatoes, red cabbage and meatballs!   Q: Tell us about yourself and what you do… I am Daniel and I am currently a research fellow in the AIDA group. I have a master and bachelor degree from the Otto-von-Gericke University Magdeburg, Germany in Computer Systems in Engineering and received my PhD from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2019. Before joining TUMCREATE in Singapore, I was finishing my master thesis with an industry visit to draw my thesis at BMW Research and Technology in Munich.   My main field of research is the optimization and tool-chain development of agent-based simulation software as well as the related aspects of cloud computing. On a day-to-day basis, I am working on the design and coherence of the CityMoS mobility simulation platform. This includes meeting with full-time developers and modelling experts to discuss implementation strategies and performing implementations on CityMoS. It involves larger design decisions that require an overview of the entire simulation toolchain.   Q: What made you come to Singapore, and how has it been like living here? During my master studies, I developed two plans for myself. One was to stay in research and the second was to spend some time abroad. My research interests back then consisted of simulation and electrical engineering and the promise of TUMCREATE Phase One, research on the electrification of transport and use of simulation, was a perfect fit. The fact that I could also pursue a PhD at the same time was a bonus, at that point of time I wasn’t even planning to do a PhD!   Since living here in 2012, I have never regretted my decision. Not having winter and snow is a really nice benefit. Living here has also changed my view of my home country’s beauty. I became more appreciative whenever I go back and the small things that seemed normal before mean much more to me now.   Q: Who or what inspired you to be in your field of research? Being from a generation that was first to have access and use of the internet regularly at a young age, the workings behind such an integral part of my social upbringing intrigued me a lot. The fact that I could experiment with the inner workings without the fear of actually breaking anything or causing real damages since it is just a software, allowed me to be curious and explore more in this area. Having an interest in areas like physics or chemistry when growing up would probably be much harder and more dangerous than writing codes!   Q: What are some of the challenges for you in your field of research? As in all areas of research, disseminating information and solutions to everyone who will directly or indirectly benefit from them is challenging. Showing that problems exist and that we, as computer scientists, can improve and make things better with our research is a tough thing to do as the problems are quite complex and abstract. Especially in computer science research, the research questions and solutions are very much hidden in plain sight. For example, on a normal day, an average smartphone user can come across so many fascinating computer science problems that have not been optimized or improved and they don’t even realise that the problems are there. This makes people less receptive to want improvements.   In my main field of research, software development and cloud computing, the optimal usage of resources can prove to be a challenge too. It is never easy to know what is the right approach to use the resources efficiently since it depends on many factors. This is when creativity and experience are necessary to assemble different algorithms in the right order to make them behave in the way required for the given use case.   Q: Tell us about your work and journey in TUMCREATE… I have been with TUMCREATE since 2012. First as a research associate during my PhD, and now as a research fellow. Since joining TUMCREATE during its Phase One, I have been involved in various projects namely EVA, the electric taxi prototype, and CityMoS, our City Mobility Simulator. Being a part of the EVA project team and presenting the prototype at the Tokyo Motor Show will always be a great memory for me. It was a great culmination of the team’s hard work and sweat.   Today, my work includes the architecture and vision of CityMoS such as coordinating the implementation work for CityMoS and other software tools. This includes turning the abstract research work, bachelor thesis or final year project of our students, finishing their master or bachelor studies with a stay at TUMCREATE, into features that enhance and add value to the CityMoS platform.   Q: What are some of your plans in the future? My intermediate plans are to keep working on the simulation tools that we have been developing in AIDA. It would give me great pleasure to see CityMoS being used to facilitate decision making that can bring actual differences in people’s lives.   (A computer scientist and an avid cook, lets see what other skills Daniel would like to have.)   Q: If you could easily pick up a new