Is your robot vacuum cleaner spying on you? 👀 Assistant Professor Han Jun and his team, led by Computer Science PhD student Sriram Sami, discovered that Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) sensors on such devices could potentially be used to eavesdrop on private conversations. Their work won them the Best Poster Runner-Up award at the 18th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2020). Congratulations!

➡️ nus.edu/3gqF6H6

CONGRATS to Associate Professor He Bingsheng and his collaborators for winning the IEEE TPDS 2019 Best Paper award!

Their Gradient Boosting Decision Tree algorithm, ThunderGBM, can achieve a speedup of 40 times as compared to current state-of-the-art approaches. Check it out below!

➡️ nus.edu/33VT3rL

Have you started your Christmas shopping? 🎄🎅 Our Masters in Computing students and alumni - Dao Xiong, Harish, Srivatsan and Joy - are looking to revolutionise the gifting process by making sure people receive the gift they truly want, with Gratify Gifts (https://gratify.sg/), a start-up they launched this month.

Gratify aims to make the gift-giving process environmentally friendly, and reduce wastage caused by unwanted gifts. Harish tells us how gift recipients get to keep, swap or donate the gifts received with their start-up below!

➡️ https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=5335151226502999

GOOD NEWS: For their outstanding scientific contributions to computing, NUS Computing Associate Professor He Bingsheng and Provost's Chair Professor Abhik Roychoudhury were named Distinguished Members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's largest and most prestigious society of computing professionals! 🥳

This year, ACM named a total of 64 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. These innovators have made contributions in a wide range of technical areas including data science, mobile and pervasive computing, artificial intelligence, computer science education, computer engineering, graphics, cybersecurity, and networking, among many other areas.

➡️ https://www.acm.org/media-center/2020/december/distinguished-members-2020

ICYMI: Keen to grow your own veggies at home? 🌱Team superFARM (https://superfarm.sg/), comprising NUS Computing graduate Lim Hui Qi, NUS Architecture Masters’ graduate Toby Fong and NUS Arts and Social Sciences graduate Ong Jun Ren, are looking to promote sustainable food consumption through home-based farming. The team will design modular, scalable farming units that can fit into homes here and allow homeowners to grow their own veggies!

Theirs is one of 115 projects under the NUS Resilience and Growth Innovation Challenge that NUS is supporting, to celebrate its 115th anniversary this year.

Read more about superFARM’s innovative idea below!

➡️ nus.edu/3r4lzRM

Can algorithms save patients from life-threatening diseases? 🦠 NUS Computing Assistant Professor Vaibhav Rajan and his team have developed a computer algorithm that can be used to effectively identify subgroups of a disease, and help patients battle diseases such as cancer, with more targeted treatments. Read more about their work below.

➡️ nus.edu/2IZdUmw

Mark your calendars, NUS Computing's Technology Webinar Series will return on Thurs, 7 Jan!
The World Health Organisation called COVID-19 the "first pandemic in history" which utilises both social media and various forms of technology to convey accurate information and to keep people safe. Join us as we discuss how tech can be used to mitigate misinformation in 2020, and beyond.

Panellists:
🎤 Dr Lim Ser Nam, Research Manager, Facebook
🎤 Associate Professor Kan Min-Yen, NUS Computing

Moderator:
🎤 Associate Professor Terence Sim, NUS Computing

📌 Topic: How technology can mitigate against misinformation
Technology aids the creation and spread of misinformation; can it also provide the remedy?

🗓️ Thu, 7Jan
⏰10am – 11am
➡️ Sign up here: http://bit.ly/techmisinfo

Our InformationSystems PhD student, Ahmad Asadullah, won the Kauffman Best Student Paper Award at ICIS 2020!

The award recognises innovative research on information systems that are related to entrepreneurship. Read the full story below!

➡️ nus.edu/2KJ2VOP

Ever return from a trip with a bunch of photos & videos, but only vague memories of those captured moments?

📲 Enter LiveSnippets, a voice-based journaling app that lets users dictate thoughts about photos & videos, & saves them as a stack of editable multimedia snippets.

➡️ nus.edu/38xpvlo

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄🎅 All we want for #Christmas is a busy campus with everyone (safely) back again! #oldnormal

In 2017, ingenious hackers stole 10GB of info on a North American casino's high-rollers via an unlikely device: a fish tank. 🐠 😱

From TVs to thermostats and other digital assistants, IoT devices are estimated to grow to 50 billion in number by the year’s end. However, security experts are also concerned with the security of these devices. NUS Computing Assistant Professor Trevor E. Carlson and his team developed a solution to deal with such attacks. Find out how he did it!

➡️ nus.edu/38CGwL7

We’re closing this year with great research news! Our Asst Prof Reza Shokri has been selected by Intel’s Private AI Collaborative Research Institute to head a project on heterogeneous decentralised learning. Congrats!

➡️ nus.edu/38KzCn1

NUS Computing's Computer Science Research Week returns in Jan, with a series of online talks by renowned computer scientists from around the world. Don't forget to register!

🗓️ 6-8 Jan, Wed to Fri
⏰ 9am - 5.30pm daily
➡️ Sign up for free at researchweek.comp.nus.edu.sg
All are welcome to join.

Happy New Year! 🎉 Finally! Fingers crossed for a much better year ahead.

#NUSComputing's Computer Science Research Week begins today! Registration is free for all.

🗓️ 6-8 Jan, Wed to Fri
⏰ 9am - 5.30pm daily
➡️Sign up for free at researchweek.comp.nus.edu.sg
All are welcome to join.

Don't miss our webinar on tech & misinformation taking place tomorrow!

Panellists:
🎤 Dr Lim Ser Nam, Research Manager, Facebook
🎤 Associate Professor Kan Min-Yen, NUS Computing
Moderator:
🎤 Associate Professor Terence Sim, NUS Computing
📌 Topic: How technology can mitigate against misinformation
Technology aids the creation and spread of misinformation; can it also provide the remedy?

🗓️ Date: Thu, 7Jan
⏰Time: 10am – 11am
➡️ Sign up here: bit.ly/techmisinfo

A clean sweep at the ICPC - International Collegiate Programming Contest Jakarta Regional Contest 🥇🥈🥉Kudos to our NUS Computing teams for the great work! 😎

➡️ nus.edu/2JXgIRO

Want to intern at a start-up in 2021? The NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme is now open for applications!

➡️ Apply at bit.ly/NOCApplyInfo
Application closes on Mon, 25 Jan

Join the e-ASK NOC session to find out more:
🗓️ Date: Wed, 13 Jan
⏰ Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm
➡️ Register at bit.ly/eAskNOCJan2021

For full-time NUS first-year students who enrolled in AY 2020/2021, you may consider joining the Friends of NOC (FoN) network for updates on the latest NOC happenings, events and internship opportunities with start-ups. You may also apply now for the NOC Singapore programme for Jul 2021 intake.
➡️ Friends of NOC: bit.ly/JoinFriendsofNOC_Jan2021
➡️ NOC Singapore: http://enterprise.nus.edu.sg/educate/nus-overseas-colleges/programmes/singapore

Here at NUS Computing, we welcome you back to school with...'poetry' 😎:

Uncle Soo be lookin'
For mobile signals in a Faraday

Like you lookin’ for
Your motivation on the first day 😜