The BIE blog committee is going to cover on Major Project as the juniors(year two) will be doing that next semester. WOW. That's fast! Hence, one of them caught up with Mr Chua Kee Kiat, who is the project supervisor and to ask him to explain what are the BIE Major Projects all about. 

Interview with Mr Chua Kee Kiat 

By Arco-Iris

Can you tell us more about Major Project?

From April 08, all L3.1 students eligible to take MPSIP will be doing their final year project from the first week of the semester to 19 weeks. There will be a detailed briefing to all students before the end of the coming semester (date will be advised later). The first 12 weeks is considered as MP (Major Project) phase followed by 7 weeks of SIP (Students Internship Programme) phase.

Note: There will be no break in between so please do not plan for holiday during the entire 19 weeks of MPSIP.

What are the four areas? The description of these three areas?

There are 4 technology areas that students can choose from as follows:

Biomedical Instrumentations: Include hardware/firmware/software projects that deal with biomedical instrumentations such as bio-signals acquisition and processing, development of medical devices/instruments, audiometry and assistive devices for hearing impaired, image acquisition and processing etc.

Bioinformatics: Software developmental projects that deal with (not limited to) data mining of biological databases, protein structure prediction and comparisons, chemical/biochemical molecules visualization etc.

Medical Informatics: Software developmental projects that involves applications of IT in medicine such as computerized patients records, data exchange and conversion etc.

Audiometry : (note from editoral head: This is the new technology area offered. ) Projects that involves teh application of audiometry like audiometer, hearing aids, etc.

Is there any industry collaboration?

At the moment we are in the process of discussing some project collaborations with I2R (Institute of Infocomm Research) for collaboration in the Bioinformatics area. We also have request from the Audiologists society in Singapore to develop hardware/software projects for them in the Biomedical Instrumentations area.

Is it the first time that BIE students are sent over to applied science for their MP?

Yes. Therefore we only select the top students with the right attitude and motivation for the attachment to ASC.

 Any criteria/requirement to be met if the future MP students want to choose to be attached to other place (e.g. applied science) instead of engine?

The criteria/requirement will defer from time to time depending on the nature of the attachment and scope of work. But generally the students should be self motivation, have good initiative and interpersonal skills and good character. 

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Interviews with students 

Interviews with the seniors who were doing their MPs during the last semester and in the VACATION as well while the rest of us lay asleep in our bed snoring. =P

 Two of the seniors, Bo Hong and Seow Ye, were the first batch of students to be attached to applied science for their Major Project. Their area is Bioinformatics. 2 of our bloggers caught up with them to tell us more about their MP.

Interview with Bo Hong and Seow Ye

 By Emo-witch and Toyol

What are you doing for your MP project?

Bo hong: Our MP project is about Molecular Strain Typing of Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. It is a gram negative bacteria that causes noscomial infection in hospital.

Tell us more about your MP project?

Bo hong: Molecular strain typing is one of the epidemiological studies for bacteria outbreak in hospital. For our project, we will be using a strain typing method to identify VNTR (Variable Number Tandem Repeat). There are a total of 7 potential VNTR primer designed for the bacteria. They will be screened through a total of 50 local clinical and 8 America Type Culture Collection isolates. In short, we will be using PCR based molecular strain typing method to find out the novel genotype of the isolates.

How did you make your decision on what project to embark on?

Bo hong: I did not know my project title until I receive my email from my MP supervisor from Eng School. In fact, the selection of yr 3 MP project could not be chosen by you but rather it is picked by the school. Particularly I am interested in biological research; hence I put my choice under Bioinformatics category.

So far, what do you enjoy about MP and what do you not enjoy?

 Bo hong:by a mere description of my MP project, it is fun but it is also stressful.

It is fun because we get to know a lot of people here. They are willing to share their knowledge and even joke with you. By doing this project, we also get to know and learn things that are not available in our course subjects. It is a fruitful experience as we are able to learn from experts and troubleshoot the problems ourselves. What's more is that we get to do more hands on experiment that are seldom done in our course due to timetable.

MP of course, is a stressful subject itself. Why? Because it is PBL (Problem based learning) if I can say. We have to do research ourselves and troubleshoot the problems that we encounter in our experiments. No one is able to help you to complete the experiments. Well, MP supervisor can only give you suggestions. However, most of the things have to be done on our own.

Who is your supervisor? And how do you find him?

Bo hong: We got 2 supervisors. One is from Eng sch and another is from Applied Science. Our supervisor from Eng sch is Mr Tai Min Hooi. Although he is not in charge of our project such as discussion regarding experiments etc, however he visit us regularly to AS research centre to find out how we are coping with the project and give us some moral support.

Our MP supervisor, Dr Quek is from Applied Science School. He in charge all our experiments and conduct meetings regularly to find how the progress of our project. He is one of the nice supervisors if I can say. If we encounter any difficulties he is willing to listen and provide suggestions which are useful to our experiments.

How far have your project supervisor helped you with your MP?

Seow Ye: Every time we encountered problems with our project or experiment, we will seek Dr Quek for advises and suggestion. Instead of him giving us the direct answers he will give certain ideas that aid us in answering the question thus allowing us to brainstorm and research on our own, which will let us learn further and answer the question we did not know initially.

From a value of 1-10, rate your teamwork and explain why you gave that rating?

Seow Ye: We give ourselves 7 out of 10, because we find ourselves quite cooperative with each other during the whole MP period. Cooperative as in we will seat down together to discuss and analyse with the results we get from our experiments and decide what to do next. Although sometimes we had communication breakdown which make us 'quarrel' a few times.

How is the overall environment different in the Applied Science Labs as compared to the Biochemistry labs in Engineering?

Seow Ye: Applied Science Research Labs is definitely better equipped as compare to our Biochemistry labs in Engineering. The Research Lab demonstrated the major research activities for Chemical and Life Sciences in the school. It comprises various laboratory facilities such as a Class 10K lab, Bio-Safety Labs and various specialized research labs for Traditional Chinese Medicine, Proteomics...etc. The Centre is well equipped with necessary supporting laboratory equipment and advance instrument such as Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer (LC-MS) and Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time-of-flight Mass Spectrometer (MALDI TOF TOF) for various research activities. There are designated Chemical and Microbiological project labs that provide a real life research environment for students with different technical background and who are involved in research work under Major Projects (MP).

If you have another chance, is there anything you would like to change for your MP?

Seow Ye: Nope, I'm satisfied with everything.

Any advice you want to give to your fellow BMIE course mates who will be embarking on their MP in the years to come?

Seow Ye: Students must have a positive learning attitude, must be keen to learn more things. As Major Project (MP) is a PBL subject, so students are required to do the research on their own; keeping a positive learning attitude help a lot.

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Now, coming to the students who were doing their MP in Engine School itself. One of our bloggers managed to catch up with two of our seniors, Faizal and Siddique, to tell us more about their MP which was in the area of Biomedical Instrumentation and Bioinformatics respectively.

By ApRiCoTs

Interview with Faizal (Biomedical instrumentation)

Which area of project did u do?

 Biomedical instrumentation(best cat for me ah)!

Who was your supervisor?

My supervisor was Mr H S Sathish.

How do you find your supervisor?

 I found my supervisor to be helpful and motivating to work with. He sincerely wants the project to succeed as he will have this gleeful expression whenever new parts work. It is priceless. :D

Were you able to work well with your groupmates?

 I was able to work well with my groupmates, See Khee and Bernice. Fun times...

What did you do during your free time when attached to the project?

 Kao, cannot ask this question! haha.. Actually no free time ;). Wahha! (off the record: Go gym, go eat at different canteens(that is why must go gym), sleep!)

How do you benefit from the MP??

 I benefited a lot from the project in terms of engineering skills. I've learned stuff from labs that are damn useful. Going out to find our own components is also something u don't learn in class which helps open your mind to different things. Like we don't have to follow certain 'standard' procedures of using what components or methods to do something. For example, when de-soldering, it's better to use a wick instead of a soldering pump. It does a cleaner and faster job. I guess you'll learn a lot of simple stuff but it depends on how you perceive it and look at it as a learning experience. Hey, you get to do a lot of experiments on your own, so yeah!

Any funny incident??

 Funny incident.. hmm.... i guess blowing up capacitors and resistors? Once when my group and I were working on our power supply regulator, something keep blowing up and smoked the whole place. We assumed it was the capacitor but when we checked after a couple of times, it was the resistor! So I guess we had a couple of our own private fireworks for that period.

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Interview with Siddique (Bioinformatics)

which project did u do?
I'm currently doing a study on proteomics entitled 'Development of Optimized Protocol for Analyzing Cellular Proteins of Fish'

who was your supervisor?
My supervisor is Dr Raja

how do you find your supervisor?
We're extremely glad that Dr.Raja was attached to us as our supervisor.He's an extremely influential person.He has a lot of contacts that he used unsparingly to help us in our project

were you able to work well with your groupmates?
My group mates (Derrick, HuaLun and Bernard) have been helpful and I must add that they are a talented bunch of people. We would have never been able to come through this far in our project without every individual's relentless effort

what did you do during your free time when attached to the project?
During our free time, we continued with the project report and further research.In this project, there is no ending to attaining a better result.There are always ways to further enhance our result.However, as with all lab based experiment, time is the only problem that we faced

how do you benefit from the MP??
The MP had taught us a lot. Especially in terms of learning independently and researching.And not to forget patience and teamwork.Through all the failures that we faced, its been a very stressful yet a delightful learning journey.

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That's all for it! And already, some of us year 2 have start asking around and being kan chiong in forming our own groups. Ahhh... gonna get prepared for the Big MP next semester.

Amy more enquires about MP, you may contact Mr Chua Kee Kiat for more information.

Ciaoz~ =)