IEEE Fellow Low Teck Seng wants nothing more than to change the way in which university students learn engineering and technology, something he’s been doing for some time.

As the founding head of Republic Polytechnic (RP) in Singapore in 2002—a four-year technical college offering diplomas in engineering, information technology (IT), and applied sciences, as well as specialist diplomas for continuing education students—he has had the unique opportunity to change the way in which students learn.

“At the rate that content and knowledge are developed today, I think we must emphasize the process of learning, rather than content delivery,” Low says. Traditionally, students sit passively in lecture halls and listen and take notes, a process Low characterizes as content delivery. With his problem-based learning (PBL) approach, students at RP create their own content by learning through solving problems.

For his work at RP and the Data Storage Institute (DSI), a think tank in Singapore he founded in 1992 dedicated to promoting research and development partnerships in data storage technology, Low recently received the country’s highest civilian honor for technology, the National Science and Technology Medal. (IEEE Member Kay Das, the director of R&D at the Singapore facility of STMicroelectronics, based in Geneva, received the medal at the same time.)

RP operates on the principle of PBL, where students learn by solving problems in small groups rather than by being lectured to in huge halls. Professors teach by posing a challenging problem, and students learn by gathering the information for solving it. The teachers are available to answer questions and supervise the work. For example, in a course on communications technology, students are asked to design an e-mail system that combats spam, or unwanted commercial e-mail. This requires students to understand how e-mail works, identify what they know and, more important, what they don’t know—and then collaborate with classmates for a creative solution and produce a finished report. As students progress in their chosen major, the problems and projects become more specific and often require lab work. The institution operates on a “one day, one problem” approach: teachers give students a problem in the morning, and students prepare a presentation of their work in the afternoon.

“The key to PBL is changing the students’ mindset about how they learn,” says Low. “PBL requires individuals to be more responsible for finding solutions on their own, and it changes tremendously how they work, even without them realizing it.”

Low’s school with its learning method also offers students majors in new disciplines. One such major is in new media—the intersection of art and technology—which presents students the arduous task of designing a video game. Students can also earn degrees in biotechnology, materials science, and automation electronics. RP also introduced hybrid specialist continuing education programs to meet the needs of today’s multidisciplinary workers. For example, RP offers diplomas in a course of study that meshes IT security and wireless communications or biotechnology enterprise. A student is required to take 90 learning units—one unit equals three hours of class time—to earn a certificate..

The concept of PBL is not new. It was introduced at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., Canada, in 1969 and has been used by dozens of learning institutions around the world, including Stanford University in Calif. and the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.

Low’s work at RP represents the first campus-wide implementation of problem-based learning in Singapore. The introduction of PBL came relatively easily, because Low started from scratch and didn’t have to adapt existing instructors, facilities, and curricula to the PBL philosophy.

RP, which became the island nation’s fifth polytechnic institution, now has approximately 2000 students. Its first class will graduate in 2006, and the school is expected to grow to 14 000 students once a new campus is completed in 2006. The polytechnic will center around 11 identical learning “pods.” These pods are 40-meter square, nine-story buildings with rooms that can be converted into an infinite combination of laboratories, offices, study spaces, and lecture rooms depending on what’s needed. The campus will be tied together by a wireless network that lets students study in the surrounding city park, which has an amphitheater and sports grounds.

“We hope with our totally wireless environment, learning will flow out from the university into these natural spaces,” Low says.

Industry Shift
Long in the habit of searching for better ways to accomplish well-defined goals, Low is known for changing the way institutions—and sometimes entire industries—think and operate. At DSI, Low worked to put Singapore on the data storage research map because it was clear that the nation could no longer compete with China and other Asian countries that have lower labor costs in manufacturing items such as hard disk drives.

At Low’s prodding, Singapore’s manufacturers, once the source of about half of the world’s hard disk drives, shifted their focus to researching new technologies for storage devices. (Singapore still manufacturers about 25 percent of the global market for hard disk and optical drives, generating approximately US$20 billion annually.) “For Singapore to survive and continue to be prosperous, we must capitalize on science and technology,” Low says.

Just last year, DSI developed the world’s lowest-riding head-slider mechanism in high-density magnetic disk drives. This tiny device flies the data writing and reading head of the disk drive as close as possible to the surface of the data storage disk, doubling its storage capacity.

DSI, sponsored by Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology, and Research and with an annual operating budget of approximately US$20 million, studies technology trends and sponsors R&D projects in academia, research institutions, and the private sector.

After earning a bachelor and a doctoral degree from the University of Southampton in the UK in 1978 and 1982, Low joined the National University of Singapore (NUS) as a professor of electrical engineering. After founding DSI he returned to NUS in 1998 as dean of engineering, where he initiated four new multidisciplinary laboratories on concurrent engineering and logistics, biomedical engineering, large-scale systems, and information storage materials. NUS is now one of the top 10 universities for engineering and IT in the world, according to The Times (London) Higher Education Supplement. Low left NUS in 2002 when he was asked to start RP. Today, he also serves as the chair of DSI’s local advisory committee, which is concerned with technology matters within Singapore.

Engineering Success
Low cites his involvement with the IEEE as a key to his success with DSI and subsequently, with RP. He has served as chair to the Singapore section, Region 10 (Asia and Pacific) director from 2001 to 2002, chaired the IEEE’s Audit Committee in 2002 and the Strategic Planning Committee in 2003 and 2004. In addition, he has also been the vice president of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society and was named an IEEE Fellow in 2001 for “leadership in the development of technology for magnetic data storage.”

“My network of friends in the IEEE has been a tremendous help to me by sharing ideas of where storage device technology is going, as well as how to approach education,” Low says. “The IEEE’s value goes beyond just information and publication of papers and journals. I think the importance is in the people you meet.”

Low recalls a 1992 IEEE Board of Directors meeting in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, when his evident excitement over plans to start a research institute led another member to put him in touch with a renowned expert in data storage technology, David Thompson, from the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. Thompson, also an IEEE Fellow, agreed to consult for DSI from his California office and served as chair of the organization’s scientific advisory board.

“DSI has Low’s personal stamp all over it,” Thompson says. “Low is an internationalist with friends all over the world, so the center has much more of an international flavor than if it were a homegrown center. It might be the best funded storage research center in the world, because he was able to line up government support from the start.”

Low has also changed the mechanics of the way the IEEE runs its meetings. As Region 10 director, he transformed how information is transferred at the biannual Region Executive Committee meetings. Instead of binders chock-full of paper copies of agendas, drafts of motions, and other documents, attendees now receive all the supporting material on CDs.

Low’s dedication to the IEEE is matched only by his devotion to his homeland, Singapore, a city-state slightly less than 700 square kilometers, with a population of approximately 4 million people.  “Singapore is a very vibrant place; if I were to make a comparison, it’s a combination of California and New York. There’s a lot of technology being developed like in Silicon Valley, but on the other hand, it is a bit like New York City, because it is a big financial hub like Wall Street,” he says. “It’s the best of both places.”

Beyond education and engineering, Low says his ambitions are, “to drink good wine and play golf.” He boasts a wine collection of 1500 bottles and a golf handicap of 13, which he lists on his official biography on RP’s Web site.

 For more information on RP, visit http://www.rp.edu.sg . Learn more about DSI at http://www.dsi.a-star.edu.sg.