MTech Alumni David Low receiving his NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award from Professor Ho Teck Hua, Senior Deputy President and Provost of NUS

Read on as we sat with David Low, Head of Data Science, CardsPal to find out more about his experience as a Master of Technology in Knowledge Engineering (now known as MTech in Intelligent Systems) student and how it has helped him "kickstart his data science career, expanded his network and brought new opportunities to advance his career". David has also recently won the NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award 2021, which recognises alumni aged below 40 who have distinguished themselves in their chosen fields!

1. Where did you work at before enrolling on the NUS-ISS Master of Technology programme, and what was your role?

I was working as a junior researcher at LARC, a joint research centre between Singapore Management University and Carnegie Mellon University.

2. What triggered the decision to enroll for the NUS-ISS Master of Technology programme?

I realised my shortcomings after working as a research engineer for 3 years. Therefore, I was looking to further study and upgrade my skill sets.

3. Describe your NUS-ISS experience. 

Throughout the course, I enjoyed the practical hands-on sessions where we coded and built Machine Learning models. We were also encouraged to participate in competitions and hackathons to apply what we have learnt in class. During the course, I had the pleasure to team up with my classmates and won two hackathons.

4. What do you think distinguishes the Master of Technology degree from other similar programmes?

Personally, I felt NUS ISS programmes put a lots of emphasis on application and case studies which is very much appreciated.

5. Which company did you work at for your Final Year Project (FYP)? Describe the project you worked on and how you delivered it over the one-year.

Together with my course mates, we proposed our own FYP and built a Job Analytics platform that comprised of a bilateral recommendation system and interactive dashboard. We started with profiles and jobs posting crawling from Linkedin and MyCareer Job portal. The data crawled formed the data points which we used to build the recommendation model and analyse the job market.

6. What were some of the key challenges you faced during your studies and how did you overcome them? 

Having to juggle both work and study at the same time is not easy and self-discipline was the key to overcome it.

7. What was your biggest takeaway from the Master of Technology programme?

Personally, I felt the biggest takeaway from the MTech Programme was to kickstart my data science career, starting as a data scientist at GovTech. It turned out to be a very rewarding experience and helped shaped my career trajectory.

8. Looking back, did the experience live up to your expectations?

Definitely, and I would say it exceeded my expectations.

9. Tell us more about your current job.

Currently I’m the Head of Data Science at CardsPal, a corporate venture under Standard Chartered Bank. I manage the data team and am responsible of the data strategy & roadmap to drive organisational success. As a data first company, our team plays an important role to build the infrastructure to enable data-driven decision-making across the organisation. Moreover, we leverage on Machine Learning to better understand our users and help our merchants to improve their sales.

10. How has the Master of Technology helped you in your current role?

Technical know-how, professional network and alumni community.

11. How has pursuing a postgraduate course helped to boost your career, or expand your career options?

Beside the technical know-how, the close-knit community has help to expand my network and brought new opportunity to advance my career and bring in businesses.

On the other hand, I have also witnessed my classmates who became entrepreneurs, data scientist, CTO, consultant, lecturer and some pursue PhD studies in prestigious universities upon their graduation from NUS-ISS.

12. Is there any advice you would like to give to potential students looking for a graduate programme?

Talk to graduates from the programme and get a feel of how they’re doing in their career.

We wish David all the best in his future endeavors!

Find out more about the NUS-ISS Master of Technology in Intelligent Systems Programme. 
Interested in a flexible study option? Learn more about the NUS-ISS Stackable Graduate Certficate Programme in Artificial Intelligence which stacks up towards the Master of Technology in Intelligent Systems degree.