Student Featured: Modulation & Coding Dept, PhD Student (Under AGS Scholarship) Hi everyone, my name is Ernest Kurniawan from Indonesia. I graduated from Nanyang Technological University in 2003 with Bachelor of Computer Engineering First Class Honours Degree, after which I worked for 2 years as System Engineer in SSPL Singapore. I am currently pursuing my PhD in NanyangTechnologicalUniversity, School of Computer Engineering under A*STAR Graduate Scholarship program. I am attached to Institute For Infocomm Research as a research student, in which I get the chance to join group discussions with my fellow colleagues from Wireless Communication Department. Personally, I find working in the institute both interesting and rewarding, mainly due to all the friendly and helpful colleagues who are always open to share ideas and determined in achieving the best possible outcome. Moreover, my research interest, which is in modulation and coding techniques for next generation wireless communication systems, has made the institute an ideal place for me to develop my career further in R&D field. It is really amazing to see how wireless communication technology has evolved and how it influenced our day to day life. In the institute, we are dealing with the development of latest cutting edge technology, ranging from theoretical studies to system test bed implementation. At present, I am involved in the project on cooperative communication. It is a widely accepted technique to improve system performance of ad-hoc or relay networks. The idea behind cooperative communication is to exploit the broadcast nature of the transmission, where every node who "hears" the transmission can cooperate with each other to help the receiver detect the symbol more reliably. Despite its theoretical promises, there are still a lot of challenges to implement this technique in a real system, including how to decide which nodes to cooperate with, how to allocate bandwidth to different cooperating nodes, how to manage the cooperating nodes (either centralised or distributed), and a lot more. It is truly a wonderful experience for me to work on this project with such a competent and highly qualified team. As for my advice to those of you who would like to do research, know that one most important thing in research is determination. Research is not about a career, it is about lifestyle. And also know that: "In order to be successful, you need to have dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen." Frank Lloyd Wright  I was at the ICICS conference in Bangkokin Dec 2005. 
This was also taken during the conference. On my right is Simon, my friend from Malaysia. The person on Simons right is his friend.
Student Featured: Adrian Tan Eng Choon, RF & Optical Dept, PhD Student (Under AGS Scholarship) I am Adrian Tan Eng Choon. I grew up in a rural township somewhere in Penang. In 2002, I graduated from NUS in Electrical Engineering. Inspired by my lecturers to do research, I joined CWC (pre-Institute For Infocomm Research) as staff, and then later, as student under the A*STAR Graduate Scholarship. Luckily, the institute proved to be a good place to learn the ropes of research. In fact, it played a crucial role in my formative years as a budding researcher. My research interest mostly evolved from the research projects I did here: Ultra wideband (UWB) antenna, circuit and system. In 1994, I was offered a rare opportunity to pursue secondary education in Singapore. The quality of education I went through in Singaporehas been rigorous, tough and of high quality. Singapore is a clean, orderly and convenient place to live in, with a public service the envy of the world. Two things that strike me as unique in Singaporeare: the red and white double-decker SBS buses and the HDB housing estates (blocks of flats, community centre, town centre, hawker centre, NTUC Fairprice, McDonalds, etc.). I think a research student needs to acquire the following key attributes to do good research perseverance, analytical and openness. On perseverance, one needs to have the never say die attitude when facing research problems that seem insurmountable. On analytical, research requires a lot of mathematical modeling of physical phenomena, one must sweat it out to get the analysis right. On openness, one needs to be open to others when describing ones research topic, and listen to others. Openness in discussion may lead to collaborations between researchers, and this is probably the best way to solve research problems, and learn from each other. I mostly read and travel in my free time. My advice to people considering studentship in Institute For Infocomm Research is: Give it good consideration because it has a good research and development environment for students to grow.  On holiday Spring-time Hokkaido Japan May 2005  On holiday Late autumn in the Canadian Rockies October 2005.
Student Featured: Tan Yih Han, Director's Office, PhD Student (Under AGS Scholarship) It has been a year since I took my first exploratory steps in research. The one year research attachment in the media processing department came to a satisfying end in August, culminating in a presentation at an International Telecommunication Union joint video team standardization meeting in Austria. The attachment was eventful and time well spent as it revealed to me the time and effort required for graduate studies. In the video processing group, we work on source coding and delivery of video; by removing redundancy in video sequences, we reduce the bandwidth required for their transmission. During my year long attachment with the group, I worked on optical flow computation and scalable video coding. In July, I traveled to Austria for the 77thMPEG/ 20th JVT Meeting.Participation at standardization meetings was particularly illuminating. These meetings not only opened my eyes to the level of creativity and technical competence required to make significant contribution to cutting edge technology, they are also good opportunities to learn about the industries and the nature of products they are seeking. This is extremely helpful if you aim to do research that makes an impact on the industry. While trying to convince a auditorium of experts that your algorithm is great can be petrifying, it was good learning experience to have your work critiqued by experts in the field. Apprehensive yet full of hope and expectation, I begin my graduate studies in August this year; into uncharted waters where it takes much more than doing well in examination. There will be days when you are sucked into the vortex of unproductivity, when time flies by while you fail to do any productive work. There will be crushing disappointments when experiments fail. However, I am certain that these are setbacks that can be overcome. Im extremely grateful for the guidance, support and encouragement from the generous and highly competent staff working in the research group; Im well-equipped to begin my doctoral research. Everyones journey through grad school will be different. I look forward enthusiastically to experiencing mine.
 This is a picture taken this year with my lunch group. I am the 3rd person from the right of this picture. (dark brown t shirt) | 
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