Computing @ SMU
Creating Our Digital Future

SMU School of Computing and Information Systems Dean Professor Pang Hwee Hwa is preparing the School to meet industry demands for technically proficient professionals with a big-picture view.

Faculty Awards & Achievements
Congratulations to our esteemed faculty

for their outstanding achievements and holistic contributions!

✨ Prof Robert H. DENG - Zhongni Distinguished Educator Award 
✨ Senior Lecturer Kiruthika RAMANATHAN - Most Promising Teacher 
✨ Associate Prof TAN Kar Way - Teaching Excellence in Postgraduate Professional Programmes
✨ Associate Prof WANG Hai - Excellent Teacher 
✨ Associate Prof Kyong Jin SHIM - SMU-X Excellent Teacher 

in photo (R-L) with SCIS Dean Prof Pang, at the Appreciation Lunch and Awards Ceremony 2025, jointly organised by SMU Centre for Teaching Excellence and SMU College of Graduate Research Studies.

SMU Centre for Teaching Excellence Awards 2025
Postgraduate Professional Master of IT in Business
SMU Master of IT in Business Ranks 2nd in Asia, 24th Globally

The SMU MITB maintains its ranking amongst 164 programmes across 31 locations in the 2025 QS Global Master’s in Business Analytics Rankings.

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Latest Awards & Achievements 

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August 2025
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) Best Paper Award
was awarded to:
PhD Graduate YANG Zhou
PhD Graduate XU Bowen
Jie M. Zhang
PhD Graduate KANG Hong Jin
PhD Candidate SHI Jieke
PhD Candidate HE Junda
OUB Chair Prof David LO

from the IEEE Computer Society for the paper, “Stealthy Backdoor Attack for Code Models”.

The best paper of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) that was published in the preceding year (2024).

Awards Faculty Research (Publications) Research (Publications) Postgraduate Research (Publications)
August 2025
Honourable Mention
was received by:
Junkai Liang
Zhi Zhang
Xin Zhang
Qingni Shen
Yansong Gao
Xingliang Yuan
Assistant Prof XUE, Haiyang
Pengfei Wu, Senior Research Scientist, SMU Centre on Security, Mobile Applications and Cryptography
Zhonghai Wu

at the 34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 2025), for the paper, “Achilles: A Formal Framework of Leaking Secrets from Signature Schemes via Rowhammer”.

Honorable Mentions 34th USENIX Security Symposium recognise a select group of submissions that rank among the most exceptional in the conference. These distinctions highlight work that demonstrates outstanding technical merit, originality, and potential impact within the security and privacy research community.

Awards Research (Publications) Faculty Research (Publications)
August 2025
1st
was awarded to:
TAM Kai Ze

at SEA Quantathon 2025.

Awards Undergraduate Students at Competitions
August 2025
2024 IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) Best Paper Award
was awarded to:
PhD Graduate YANG Zhou
PhD Graduate XU Bowen
Jie M. ZHANG
PhD Graduate KANG Hong Jin
PhD Candidate SHI Jieke
PhD Candidate HE Junda
OUB Chair Prof David LO

from the IEEE Computer Society, for the paper, “Stealthy Backdoor Attack for Code Models”.

Awards Postgraduate Research (Publications) Research (Publications) Faculty Research (Publications)
August 2025
Best Student Paper Award
was awarded to:
Shiyin Tan
Dongyuan Li
Renhe Jiang
Zhen Wang
Manabu Okumura

at KDD2025 for the paper, "Taming Recommendation Bias with Causal Intervention on Evolving Personal Popularity"

Awards Research (Publications)
August 2025
Best Paper Honourable Mentions
was received by:
PhD Candidate RUAN Shaolun
Rui Sheng
Xiaolin Wen
Jiachen Wang
Tianyi Zhang
Assistant Prof LI Jiannan

at the IEEE VIS 2025, for the paper, “Qualitative Study for LLM-assisted Design Study Process: Strategies, Challenges, and Roles”.

Awards Postgraduate Research (Publications) Research (Publications) Faculty Research (Publications)
July 2025
Winner
was awarded to:
Isaac PUA Jin Lit

at SAP Cloud Accelerated Learning Experience (S.C.A.L.E. 2025).

Awards Undergraduate Students at Competitions
July 2025
Best Paper Award
was awarded to:
Di Zhang
Jian Gang Jin
Associate Prof WANG Hai

at the 16th International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science (CTS 2025), for the paper, "Multi-terminal berth allocation with vessel rerouting and container transfers via shuttle vessels".

This is best paper award for the annual international workshop on computational transportation science. One of the most prestigious conferences on transportation intersects with optimization and computing.

Awards Research (Publications) Faculty Research (Publications)

Recent Undergraduate Students Awards

January 2026
Best Polyglot Hack was awarded to AUNG Ye Thant Hein; Zane CHEE Jun Yi; TAI Wei Sin; Htet Shwe Win THAN;

at the Hack&Roll (NUS Hackers' annual 24-hour hackathon).

January 2026
Top 9 Hacks was awarded to FAN Chong Yee; Natthida LIM; NG Xuan Wei; Sidharth RAJESH;

at the Hack&Roll (NUS Hackers' annual 24-hour hackathon).

January 2026
2nd Runner-Up was awarded to Brandon KOH Wei Sheng; Jeric TOH Bing Hui; SUNDARAM RAMASUBBU Raksha; YIAM Jun Bin; Sidney ANG Yan Jie;

at the Build for Impact 2026 Hackathon.

Recent Undergraduate Students at Competitions Awards

November 2025
1st was awarded to Sathwik CHILUVERU;

at the NCS Sunshine.AI Hackathon 2025.

October 2025
1st was awarded to TAI Wei Sin; Htet Shwe Win THAN;

at the UBS Global Coding Challenge 2025.

October 2025
2nd was awarded to Isaac PUA Jin Lit; Julian Dominic LIAW;

at the UBS Global Coding Challenge 2025.

Recent Postgraduate Research Publications with Awards

January 2026
ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award was awarded to
PhD Graduate YANG Zhou
;

from the ACM SIGSOFT for his dissertation “Towards Robust, Secure, and Privacy-Aware Large Language Models of Code”.

November 2025

Recent Postgraduate Research Student Awards

December 2025
DSO-AISG Incentive Award was awarded to
PhD Candidate LIM Jia Peng
;
PhD Candidate Sidney TIO Xi Rong
;

and is a joint initiative between AI Singapore (AISG) and DSO, designed to inspire post-graduate students to explore research related to large language models (LLMs).

October 2025
2025 Google PhD Fellowship was awarded to
PhD Candidate RUAN Shaolun
;

from Google, in the Quantum Computing category. 

His research interests include Data Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction.

December 2024
2024 ByteDance Scholarship was awarded to
PhD Candidate SUN Zhensu
;

from ByteDance

Recent Postgraduate Professional Alumni Awards

August 2025
2025 Singapore 100 Women in Tech (SG100WIT) List Honourees was awarded to
MITB Graduate LIM Yean Sam
;
Associate Prof SUN Qianru
;
PhD Graduate Ratnadira WIDYASARI
;

Organised by the Singapore Computer Society (SCS), in partnership with SG Women in Tech and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). 

The list recognises and celebrates women based in Singapore who have been inspiring and have made significant contributions to the tech industry.

May 2025
Top 50 Asia Women Tech Leaders 2025 was awarded to
EngD Graduate JEYARAMAN Brindha Priyadarshini
;

at the Asia Women Tech Leaders Award 2025.

Recent Faculty Awards

December 2025
ACM Distinguished Member 2025 was awarded to
Associate Prof Hady W. LAUW
;

from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM has named 61 new Distinguished Members. 

All the 2025 inductees are registered members and were selected by their peers for significant technical achievements and/or volunteer service. The ACM Distinguished Member program recognizes up to 10 percent of the worldwide ACM membership for their technical achievements and/or service to the field.

October 2025
Top Reviewer was awarded to
Assistant Prof Djordje ZIKELIC
;

at the Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2025).

Top 10% of the reviewers at NeurIPS 2025.

October 2025
SMU Teaching Excellence Awards - Recipients was awarded to
Prof Robert H. DENG
;
Senior Lecturer Kiruthika RAMANATHAN
;
Associate Prof TAN Kar Way
;
Associate Prof WANG Hai
;
Associate Prof Kyong Jin SHIM
;

in photo (R-L) with SCIS Dean Prof Pang, at the Appreciation Lunch and Awards Ceremony 2025, jointly organised by SMU Centre for Teaching Excellence and SMU College of Graduate Research Studies.

For the award categories,

  • Prof Robert H. DENG (Zhongni Distinguished Educator Award)
  • Senior Lecturer Kiruthika RAMANATHAN (Most Promising Teacher)
  • Associate Prof TAN Kar Way (Teaching Excellence in Postgraduate Professional Programmes)
  • Associate Prof WANG Hai (Excellent Teacher)
  • Associate Prof Kyong Jin SHIM (SMU-X Excellent Teacher)

The SMU Teaching Excellence Awards recognise and celebrate the significance of teaching as a complex and multi-faceted profession. These university-level awards honour faculty members for their holistic contributions to peer development, student development, innovative instructional approaches, effective pedagogical practices and course design. SMU is also committed to adopting processes that promote gender equity in the recognition of teaching excellence.

Recent Alumni Awards

November 2025
SMU Alumni Awards 2025 was awarded to
Aaron TAN
;
Aditya LESMANA
;
Kelvin CHNG
;
LIN Fengru
;
Seyed Nazhath FAHEEMA
;

at the inaugural SMU Alumni Awards 2025 on 12 November 2025 at SMU Hall, with President Tharman Shanmugaratnam as Guest of Honour. 

Launched in celebration of SMU’s Silver Jubilee, the SMU Alumni Awards marked the University’s highest recognition of alumni achievement. To be conferred every five years, the Awards honour SMU alumni and associate alumni who have distinguished themselves through professional excellence, innovation, and service to society.

September 2025
Impact Leader Excellence Award - Individual was awarded to
Jeremy LEE
;

at the 2025 Sustainability Impact Awards, organised by The Business Times and UOB.

SMU alumnus Jeremy Lee received the award for advancing sustainable household solutions and cutting single-use plastics.

August 2025
2025 Singapore 100 Women in Tech (SG100WIT) List Honourees was awarded to
MITB Graduate LIM Yean Sam
;
Associate Prof SUN Qianru
;
PhD Graduate Ratnadira WIDYASARI
;

Organised by the Singapore Computer Society (SCS), in partnership with SG Women in Tech and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). 

The list recognises and celebrates women based in Singapore who have been inspiring and have made significant contributions to the tech industry.