To Professor Ng Gee Wah, when he mentors someone, it goes beyond structured one-off or short-term work reviews.
Instead, he pictures it as a journey, sometimes lasting years, where he walks along mentees to support them in their careers by sharing his life experience and knowledge.
Q Team’s engineer Goh Yong Wee can testify to that approach.
He first got to know Prof Ng as his Innovations module lecturer at the National University of Singapore (NUS) back in 2016, where he was studying Engineering Science.
As one of Singapore’s foremost experts in the areas of data analytics, information fusion and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Prof Ng supervised Yong Wee’s final-year-project (FYP) which was related to AI, then went on to suggest that he apply to HTX after graduation as he would be able to advance in the field of AI.
Prof Ng is now Yong Wee’s boss and mentor.
Said Yong Wee, who had impressed the Police with a prototype he built for SPF to accurately classify cases ahead of time, “As a mentor, he is engaged and walks the journey with you, every step of the way, whether it be a project or a piece of research.”
Yong Wee (extreme left) giving a presentation on the Network Asset Discovery code to HTX CE Chan Tsan (far right) at a tech sharing event in 2020 as Prof Ng (middle) watches his mentee (Photo: HTX)
Building a Good Relationship
On what makes a successful mentorship, Prof Ng mused, “It’s not a one-time interaction, it’s a process of building a relationship over time and grooming someone to be successful in his or her career.
It’s not a one-time interaction, it’s a process of building a relationship over time and grooming someone to be successful in his or her career.
“You can only have a successful mentorship when both parties, the mentor and the mentee, are open. It takes two hands to clap. The mentor can then provide advice, when it comes to work as well as the bigger picture, based on the road he or she has walked through, while the mentee is open and receptive.”
It certainly goes beyond formal meetings or performance reviews.
The relationship-building could take place over coffee or tea. For Prof Ng - who loves jogging and hiking with his three children who are aged 12 to 22 - he has even invited his mentees to join him for hiking activities.
In one instance, when he went to the United States for a work trip, he made the effort to drop in on a DSO scholar who was studying at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.
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Prof Ng with Q Team engineers and Yong Wee (extreme right) (Photo: HTX)
“It’s so much more impactful than asking ‘how are your studies?’ over e-mail,” he said. “This is all part and parcel of an enjoyable process of getting to know your mentee. By knowing each other, the conversation flows better.”
Advice Beyond the Technical
As a scientist who has won multiple awards for his work in AI and data analytics, especially in the transformation of Singapore’s defence systems, Prof Ng’s technical guidance is invaluable.
For instance, when HTX was first formed, Prof Ng brought over a wealth of experience in the field of artificial intelligence and data analytics from his time at DSO and shared his insights with the pioneer Q Team engineers.
Prof Ng and Wei Lin, Q Team engineer, in discussions for enhancements to the Online Cyber Hunter (Photo: HTX)
But it’s not just technical. He also gives advice on how organisations and teams work.
Yong Wee shared that when he joined HTX, his inclination as a perfectionist when it came to doing projects would be to fully test everything before moving to the next phase. Prof Ng advised him otherwise.
Said Yong Wee, “He told me to push out whatever we have as soon as possible so that the steam of the project doesn’t die. I realized that what might be important to me as a coder might not be important to the end-user. If we push out prototypes fast, we get a response, the project moves along, we iterate more, and things go faster. So, I’m learning to adapt to a more effective working style.”
About Prof Ng Gee Wah
Prof Ng is Distinguished Member of Technical Staff (DMTS) at DSO, Singapore’s largest defence research and development organisation where he has worked for over 20 years. Currently, he is attached to HTX as Director of Q Team where he mentors the 18 staff in Q Team, a crack team of engineers including Yong Wee who conduct cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research.
Over the years, he has mentored many young engineers not only at HTX and DSO, but also at NUS where he is an Adjunct Professor, lecturing in Control, AI, Machine Learning and Robotics.
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