- Plenary Sessions [Day 1 - complete this section]
- My key learning points from each session…
- Importance of Water - Dirty and Clean
There is a need to protect water resources for the benefit of economic growth. Water cleanliness affects economic growth. Given a scenario where people have no access to clean water, but only supplied with contaminated water, the bacteria and germs in the contaminated water would cause its consumers to fall sick. The illness would spread. This will affect the economy as businesses and operations have to close due to the outbreak of the disease. Therefore, economic crisis.
- Revolution of Microelectronics Technology
There are a total of 9 important ‘O’s that are important to the revolution of Microelectronics Technology. They are Bio, Radio, Auto, Info, Nano, Hydro, Audio, Video and Energy. The first letters of each of the “O’s spell out the word “Brainwave”. The revolution of Microelectronics helps to improve lifestyles, such as inventing more advance systems or gadgets that makes the process more convenience or to enable the blind to see. As Microelectronics Technology revolve, researchers are able to build smaller and more effective gadgets.
- Biomedical Engineering & Technology
Nano technology is commonly used to improve lifestyles and health, such as removing freckles to beautify or to clean and purify water. It is also used to change the colour of the contact lenses and to sanitise and filter off the microbes on masks. Nano is of DNA size. A concept of Nano is that smaller size of a fix volume equals to a large surface area, which enables more energy, where high strength is to light weight. This concept is applied in Nano technology.
- IT for Animation by Prof Seah Hock Soon
Animation involves Math, in terms of calculation, geometry and calculus. 2D animation requires skilled artists, animators and advance technology, but is very costly and time consuming. On the other hand, 3D animation also requires skilled artists, animators and advance technology, but less manual drawing is needed, it is less time-consuming and requires a lower budget compared to 2D animation.
- Disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, and why gravity is even more important than you think?
Sea-level rise is and will not be the same everywhere, and some of its factors are climate change and gravitational-pull. Sea-level is ‘self attracting and loading’ from melting glaciers. Water near glaciers are gravitationally attracted to it, as it has a bigger mass. When the glacier melts, due to the reduce in mass, the water flows away. At the same time, the solid surface also rises. Gravity is even more important than I thought as this will cause the sea-level to rise the highest at the farthest from the glaciers. Singapore is in Southeast Asia, which is far from the melting glaciers. Therefore, we ought to plan and prepare ourselves for the day when sea-level at Singapore rises tremendously.
(B) Deepest impression...
The plenary sessions that leaves the deepest impression on me are the ones by Prof Ng Wen Jern on the importance of clean water and by Asst Prof Emma Hills on melting glaciers, rising sea levels and why gravity is significant. I enjoyed these plenary sessions and was drawn to the topics as firstly, both speakers were extremely engaging, and I was interested in these areas of engineering and research.
