TECH EXPERTS

Dr Hamid Saeedipour is Principal Lecturer (Industry) at Republic Polytechnic. With more than 25 years of experience in the aircraft industry and academia, Hamid is an expert in the area of aerospace and mechanical engineering design, smart MRO systems and composite structure repair. He also provides innovative engineering solutions to industry and is currently principal investigator of several industry-application projects.  Prior to joining Republic Polytechnic, Hamid held various roles, including associate dean, deputy director, aircraft designer and lecturer, with organisations in UK, Iran, Malaysia and Singapore such as Avcen Limited, University of Science Malaysia, and Taylor’s University. He has also been Adjunct Faculty/Supervisor for Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), Newcastle University and University of Glasgow in Singapore since 2012. Hamid received the Most Innovative Project Award from JEC Group (France) in 2015, was conferred the Crescendas Medal for Outstanding Applied Physics Research from Institute of Physics Singapore (IPS) in 2017, MOE Outstanding Innovator Award 2018 and PST ExCEL Innovation Champion Award 2018. He wrote chapters of 2 books and profiled in IES book (2020): “Who’s Who in Engineering, Singapore”. Hamid received his PhD & MSc in Aerospace Engineering from Manchester University, BEng (1st Class Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran University and MBS Post-Graduate Certificates in International Business and Finance from Manchester Business School. Hamid has over 100 publications in aircraft design, composite repair, MRO systems, aviation management & engineering education. He supervised final projects of over 20 PhD/MSc, 80 BSc & 140 diploma graduates at 9 universities & polytechnics.

Dr Danica Damljanovic is an entrepreneur, and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) expert with over 16 years experience in AI and NLP, and over 5 years in entrepreneurship, and has worked with the SRI team that developed Siri, and in Recordsure analysing human-to-human conversations. As an internationally recognised scientist Danica has published more than 50 publications, and a book on text analytics, cited over 1600 times. Danica is a founder and CEO of Sentient Machines, that is on the mission to improve human communication using AI - Danica's belief is that AI, used to positively assist humans, is stronger than AI or humans working independently. Utilising AI to empower people to both learn faster and enhance their lives meaningfully is Danica's passion. Danica received her PhD in AI on the topic of Natural Language Interfaces for Querying Ontologies from the University of Sheffield in 2011. It was here that Danica developed the FREyA system which was scored as the best question answering system against the DBpedia knowledge base (structured Wikipedia) in the QALD-1 Challenge 2011. Her interests have always been transitioning cutting edge research methods into practical applications.  Danica started her career as a software engineer, and has, in parallel, researched various areas of AI, mainly focusing on NLP, dialogue systems, topic detection, semantic web, ontologies, question answering systems, and conversational agents.

Dr Mabel Wang has more than 20 years of R&D experience in food science & technology, gaining substantive academic and industry expertise in functional food product and process development. She published approximately 10 peer-reviewed international scientific journals and book chapters. Having worked in food & beverage companies like ADM Cocoa and Yeo Hiap Seng (YHS), her R&D expertise is proven by many successfully commercialised products, which range from healthier Asian drinks, calcium-fortified soymilk and industry chocolates for Singapore, China, Asia Pacific countries, Europe, Middle East, Canada and USA markets, etc. She set up an in-vitro glycemic index (GI) assessment facility in Temasek Polytechnic in 2013. As Domain Chair (Food Technology), she led a R&D team to develop functional food products, especially low GI food products (e.g., noodles, breads, steamed buns and beverages), and conducted sensory evaluation and shelf life study projects for food industry. Having worked closely with local food SMEs, she was recognised and appointed by Enterprise Singapore (ESG) as SkillsFuture Mentor from Nov 2018 to July 2019. 

Dr Sun LingLing heads the Healthcare Engineering Centre at the School of Engineering in Temasek Polytechnic. She leads a multi-disciplinary R&D team on developing innovative healthcare devices; such as microfluidic and biosensor based point-of-care systems for disease diagnosis, flexible and wearable sensors for healthcare monitoring, and novel devices and materials for antimicrobial applications. As a Principle Investigator, Dr Sun has been awarded numerous R&D funds by National Research Foundation, Ministry of Education and Tote Board, and has completed more than 10 R&D projects together with the team since 2012. Under her leadership, the team has been awarded IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Awards 2016, MOE-Innergy Award (Silver) 2017, MOE-Innergy Award (Gold) 2018, and MOE-Innergy Award (Bronze) 2019. Dr Sun received her PhD in Microelectronics from Nanyang Technological University in 2003. Prior to joining Temasek Polytechnic, she worked as a senior engineer at System on Silicon Manufacturing Company and a research fellow at Nanyang Technological University.

Howard is the cofounder of Enverse, a data analytics company focusing on providing actionable insights for the energy and manufacturing industry. As the cofounder of a startup, Howard is actively involved activities relating to customer development, product development, and software engineering. He has experience in evaluating the business problem of the client and customise a best-fit and applicable engineering solution to meet their needs. He has 10 years of experience in the energy, software automation, system integration, and data analytics space. Throughout the 10 years of his career in the energy sector, he has worked in the entire energy supply chain from the business perspective, and the energy delivery from the engineering perspective. He has experience building technologies to support projects for power generation, power distribution, and power consumption. Coming from a system integrator background, he is capable of advising customers on end-to-end system architecture from conceptual level to engineering level. 

A/Prof Daniel Blackwood has more than 30 years of experience in corrosion and electrochemistry research and development. His current research focus areas include localised pitting corrosion, corrosion modelling and microbial-influenced corrosion. He is currently Associate Professor and Deputy Head for Education in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, National University of Singapore, where he has been since 1996. A/Prof Blackwood obtained his PhD degree in Electrochemistry under Prof Laurie Peter at University of Southampton in 1986. He was a postdoc at University of Utah where he worked on developing FTIR techniques for exploring the electrochemical interface. In 1989, he received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to work at Bundeswehr University Munich on conducting polymer vapour sensors. In 1990, he joined the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell Laboratories as a project manager in the aqueous corrosion section, where he worked on a number of industrial projects for both government agencies and commercial companies. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and a member of the National Association of Corrosion Engineers and the International Society of Electrochemist. He was also Chairman of the Corrosion Association Singapore from 2000 to 2009.

Samuel Aw currently heads the Formulation & Nutrition Science Technology Centre at Republic Polytechnic. He possesses both academic and industrial expertise in food formulation, processing and packaging. He has worked with many food companies for the past 25 years in the area of product, process and packaging development. Samuel had set up the Food Packaging Laboratory for Singapore Polytechnic and was instrumental in the training of food packaging technologists in Singapore and ASEAN countries. He also worked in Nestle R&D Centre and Alfa Laval South East Asia, Convenience Foods & Packaging Division.   Samuel obtained an MSc in Packaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA. He was also a Kikkoman Award Prize winner under the Advanced Diploma in Food Technology, Singapore Polytechnic.  

Dr Susmita Bandyopadhyay is currently Senior Lecturer (Industry) at the School of Applied Science in Republic Polytechnic, leading a dynamic research team in her department. She has over 20 years of research experience in synthesis, analysis and formulation of novel chemical compounds for various applications such as antimicrobial, insecticidal, feed, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, with special interest in the development of light-activated compounds. Her research interests include natural antimicrobial agents for various applications including food, packaging, paint, coating, fabric, and other consumer products; formulation of feed from agro-biproducts; formulation of pharmaceuticals, cosmeceuticals and nutraceuticals; and functional product development for applications such as mosquito larvae control, insect repellent. As Principal Investigator, she has secured numerous research grants and is actively involved in scientific research addressing global and national issues related to public health, such as creating a more affordable treatment for cancer for the public, more effective and safer control of mosquitoes to fight against the mosquito-borne diseases, and novel disinfection technology for high contact surfaces. Her invention was granted a PCT patent in Singapore and Australia. Dr Susmita shares her knowledge and expertise with local SMEs to help them develop innovative products or solutions through consultancy projects and technology licensing. Her projects have won several external and internal awards such as MOE Innergy Award and Republic Polytechnic’s Most Innovative Project Award. She is also a recipient of “Outstanding Innovator Award 2018” from MOE. Dr Susmita holds a PhD in Chemistry and has postdoctoral research experience at University of California (Santa Barbara).

Dr Gu Keyu has a BA in Agronomy and PhD in Plant Genetics and Breeding from Nanjing Agricultural University of China. Prior to joining Republic Polytechnic, he has various positions at the Institute of Molecular Agrobiotechnology (IMA) and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), National University of Singapore. As a senior Post-doctoral Fellow, he published about 20 papers as first authors or co-authors in journals such as Theoretical and Applied Genetics, Plant Cell Report, Nature, Molecular Plant Pathology, BMC Research Notes, Plant Science, PLOS ONE, Plant Cell, Biotechnology for Biofuel, BMC Plant Biology, MPMI etc.  His current research interests are in vegetable growth promotion and heat/drought stress tolerance, substrate-based hydroponics production, plant disease resistance, and hydroponic plant nutrient recipe formulations etc.