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Our alumni
from Annual Report - 2020
by NUS-CDE
Reconnecting
with our alumni
Our graduates and alumni may have left the school, but their ties with us continue to deepen. Besides empowering them a strong start in realising their career aspirations, we keep abreast of their growth over the years and celebrate their achievements.
Annual Engineering Alumni Awards 2020
The Annual Engineering Alumni Awards recognise the accomplishments and contributions of exemplary Engineering alumni. This year, three of our alumni were recognised for their outstanding achievements.
Although we were unable to celebrate their awards at the annual Engineering Alumni Gala Dinner due to COVID-19 restrictions, we extend our heartfelt congratulations to the Annual Engineering Alumni Awards 2020 winners.
(From left to right) Mr Ngien Hoon Ping, Ms Eng Se-Hsieng and Mr Tai Xu Hong.
Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award: Mr Ngien Hoon Ping, Chief Executive Officer (Supply Chain Business) of FairPrice Group.
Outstanding Engineering Young Alumni Award: Ms Eng Se-Hsieng, Senior Vice President of SkyLab Services.
Mr Tai Xu Hong, Director and a Co-founder of Momentus Research and WOW Kampung.
NUS Engineering alumnus behind first NUS-supported unicorn
PatSnap, a startup founded by NUS alumni Jeffrey Tiong and Guan Dian, has secured
US$300 million in Series E funding.
This brought PatSnap’s value over
US$1 billion to become the first
NUS-supported unicorn.
PatSnap provides businesses with market intelligence and patent insights through their global patent analytics database and search and visualisation software tools.
Co-founder Jeffrey Tiong, a Biomedical Engineering alumnus, had the idea for PatSnap while he was on an NUS Overseas College (NOC) internship in Bio Valley (Philadelphia) in 2005. Tasked to search for technical information on patents during his internship with a medtech company, he found the process to be messy and difficult despite his training in biomedical engineering. That experience gave him the inspiration to build his own patent and technical intelligence search engine.
He co-founded PatSnap after graduating in 2007, with incubation support from NUS Enterprise. Guan Dian, an NUS Computing alumnus with NOC experience in Silicon Valley, helped to build the brand’s presence in the Chinese market.
Today, PatSnap has about 10,000 customers, including Dyson and Spotify, and employs more than 700 employees in Singapore and its regional headquarters in London and Toronto.
PatSnap co-founders Jeffrey Tiong (left) and Guan Dian (right). (Photo: PatSnap)
