Liu Peng, MSBA alumnus, AY14/15, currently pursuing PhD at NUS, received the Best Graduate Researcher Award 2020 organised by Faculty of Science, NUS on 15 July 2020.

The award aims to promote and recognize the research excellence of graduate students in the Faculty of Science, NUS and only one Best Graduate Researcher Award is given annually. There are 7 departments and each department has 30 PhD students who could be nominated for this award.

Peng was nominated by Associate Professor Chen Ying for demonstrating outstanding performance in his research while fulfilling his commitments to family and full-time work. Working under Professor Chen Ying and Professor Teo Chung-Piaw for 4 years as a part-time PhD candidate, they have finished one paper which is now under the review in Annals of Applied Statistics, and Peng is working on two more papers where he developed multiclassification for unstructured data such as news as well as videos.

Professor Chen Ying sang praises of Liu Peng in his recommendation letter. “I have had ample opportunity to observe his excellent research ability. He exhibited great initiative, creativity and the strong ability to solve problems. I am confident Mr. Liu Peng would prove himself to be an outstanding researcher in his future career.”

Liu Peng was motivated to pursue a PhD to obtain a better understanding behind the various AI/ML algorithms. “What differentiates a truly experienced data scientist is the ability to explain why certain techniques do or do not work, and the intuition on how to improve the performances in real world modelling. Entering the PhD program gives me an opportunity to learn lots of technical, most often theoretical, aspects of statistical estimation as a whole, which is a good next-level enrichment for my personal learning and growth after the MSBA journey.” Liu Peng shared.

He chose to pursue the degree on a part-time basis so that he can stay close to the industry and conduct relevant applied research. While he was working in hospitality, he did a joint research with his co-supervisor Professor Teo Chung-Piaw. The solution they came up with focused on improving limousine services using predictive analytics and optimisation, helped the company save up to S$3 million yearly with improved service level.

Liu Peng shared that it was a great honour to be a recipient of the award, “This is a recognition to my endeavours on applied research for the past few years. There are many fellow students within the department who are serious researchers in their respective areas and deserve the award much more than I do. I guess the competitive edge in my application portfolio is more on promoting and embedding research best practices and state-of-the-art techniques within the day-to-day operations in industry.”

As a recipient of the Best Graduate Researcher Award 2020, Liu Peng received a cash prize of S$500 and a certificate of recognition.