01 Aug 2022
Thirty-six young talents armed with a keen passion for science and technology will be embarking on a new phase of their lives: pursuing their undergraduate studies with the DSTA Scholarship. The talents were among 93 award recipients at the Defence Scholarship Awards Ceremony held at the Istana on 29 July 2022.
Speaking at the ceremony, Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen highlighted that with the challenges Singapore faces as a small nation, it is the people in the defence community who play the most vital roles in securing and safeguarding our sovereignty.
“We can only surmount these vulnerabilities and challenges through exceptional commitment, resilience and innovation, whether as a soldier, scientist, engineer, doctor or administrator,” he said.
Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen at the Defence Scholarship Awards Ceremony.
The DSTA Scholarship offers recipients the opportunity to pursue their undergraduate studies in science and engineering at renowned universities worldwide. They will then return to the defence technology community with diverse career opportunities in either DSTA, DSO National Laboratories or the Centre for Strategic InfoComm Technologies.
DSTA Scholarship recipients with DSTA Chief Executive Mervyn Tan (front row, third from left) and members of DSTA’s management.
Among the DSTA Scholarship recipients are brothers Michael and David Ng, who grew up with similar interests in science and technology. In fact, their interests brought them into the world of defence tech during their secondary school days, when they participated in activities such as our Young Defence Scientists Programme and even took on various internships with us.
Their most recent experience was in 2020, where they both interned at DSTA’s Information Programme Centre, and got to work on an image classification project to distinguish software-generated images from genuine images captured with a camera.
DSTA scholars Michael (left) and David (right) will be pursuing Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and Engineering Science at the University of Oxford respectively.
“We had the opportunity to leverage tech like artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop our own algorithms from scratch, and through that I gained an even deeper interest in tech applications,” shared David.
Michael added: “These experiences over the years have been incredibly eye-opening, and allowed us to realise that the defence tech community offers a vibrant environment for us to learn and grow.”
Even as the brothers embark on their own academic paths in separate countries, they shared that they are looking forward to return to Singapore and collaborating on interdisciplinary projects.
Scholarship recipients across various types of Defence Scholarships.
The ceremony also saw the presentation of the SAF Scholarship to six recipients; the Public Service Commission Scholarship (Engineering) – Defence and Security to four recipients; the SAF Merit Scholarship to 19 recipients; the SAF Engineering Scholarship to six recipients; the Defence Merit Scholarship to 15 recipients; the SAF Medicine Scholarship to six recipients; and the SAF Dentistry Scholarship to one recipient.
Interested to embark on the DSTA Scholarship journey too? Find out more here.