On 25 September 2021, NUS Business Analytics Centre (NUS BAC) held its annual Business Analytics Centre Symposium (BACS) online. This annual event brought together like-minded people with a strong interest in relevant fields of Business Analytics (BA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and was accessed by close to 700 attendees and featured over 100 capstone projects. It also marked the culmination of NUS Master of Science in Business Analytics (NUS MSBA) students’ journey, where they showcased the capstone projects that they had worked on with industrial partners in real business problems over the past few months.
Shaowei Ying, Senior Partner at NCS, APAC’s leading technology services company, commended, “I was certainly impressed with the quality of presentations and the passion of the students. They were able to do elevator pitches, conveying the highlights of their work in a short period of time. Having the event virtually worked well and it was well organised.”
4 speakers, namely Mr. Ian Wilson, Chairman of NUS BAC Advisory Board, Professor Andy Rose, Dean of NUS Business School, Professor Mohan Kankanhalli, Dean of NUS Computing, and Associate Professor James Pang, Co-Director of NUS Business Analytics Centre kickstarted the event by sharing synonymously in each of their speeches their gratitude for the partners who had created internship opportunities for the NUS MSBA students, despite facing challenging times themselves due to the pandemic. This continuous support had led to 100% of students securing internships for another consecutive year. Mr. Ian shared, “Every student is hired, with many being hired incredibly quickly, even during these very difficult times.” “Furthermore, industry partners had spent time interacting with students during weekly online seminars, innovation challenge and some had also taken up roles as mentors to students during their stint with the respective companies to complete their capstone projects. These interactions are very important to our students as you’ve made their journey more meaningful and interesting. Thank you very much for the great partnership!”, added James.
Dean Rose emphasized, “One thing that has not changed is our commitment to ensuring our students the best education possible.” He reiterated that the NUS MSBA programme is jointly supported by both NUS Business School’s and NUS Computing in equal partnership and despite disruption to face-to-face teaching, restrictions were overcome with technology. Dean Mohan echoed his sentiments, highlighted the students’ huge potential for success and encouraged all students to use their education and knowledge to do good in the society. “Pay it forward to help not just yourselves but also the larger society and the future generation of students,” concluded Dean Mohan.
5 students emerged top of their cohort, namely, in no order of merit:
- Chen Xianxi (Project Title: Who To Cross-Sell To – Analytics For Customer Targeting)
- Chia Zi Hsuan, Jason (Project Title: Predicting Surgical Durations With Data: A Two-Step Machine Learning Approach)
- Li Wenqian (Project Title: Efficient Approximation For Shapley Value In Federated Learning)
- Lim Chun Han (Project Title: Image-Based Scene Localization In Singapore)
- Wang Huijuan (Project Title: Outlier Detection Based Suspicious Customer Detection For Non-Corporate Bank Customers)
As a pharmacist, Jason was motivated to leverage machine learning to improve and believed his unique two-step approach to prediction and a conceivably deployable final model in the healthcare setting is what led him to win one of the Outstanding Capstone project award. “I am elated and humbled that the judges thought highly of my capstone project. In addition, I am grateful to my MSBA Professors and capstone supervisors for their unwavering guidance.” He also wished to encourage aspiring Business Analyst and the current NUS MSBA students to seize every opportunity to learn as the field of business analytics is constantly be evolving.
Li Wenqian acknowledged that while she might have been slightly luckier in others to get the Outstanding Capstone Project Award and that her topic on Federated Learning is new to the industry, she was just as impressed with how interesting her classmates’ projects were and greatly appreciated the guidance Professor James offered during her capstone internship.
Each of them was awarded the Outstanding Capstone Project Award, and received a trophy and cash prize money of $500.
The NUS MBSA programme is currently the number 1 ranked programme of its kind in Asia, according to the QS Ranking and it continues to grow from strength to strength. Supported by NUS Business School and NUS Computing, it is designed to equip students who take the NUS MSBA programme with the tools to resolve complex business problems and apply data science techniques across a whole range of industries. These skills are highly sought after both locally and internationally.
Application for AY2022/2023 opens on 11 October 2021.
Sign up for our upcoming information session on 27 November 2021 to find out more.