| Looking back.... 15 years... where did I start... |
[Jan. 3rd, 2009|07:38 pm] |
While chatting to Jeff online on the last day of 2008, we re-visited the topic of interests and being normal...
I don't think I'm ever normal. I have always follow my interest.... Although my interests are weird... I did things that nobody wants to do and created an unchallenged playing field. I only do things that I find is fun and it is funny that what's fun to me is hardly fun to others. Perhaps having no elder cousins helps a lot as set my own standards - I am the standard.I always believe that if opportunity don't knock on my door, I find another door or knock it myself...
So in many cases, what most of my friends see as good things happen to me, I created them. I made myself ready for my own creation.
At the foundation are 5 things: endless supply of enthusiasm, perseverance, perpetual learning, doing what others don't want to do, going the extra mile.
Then I asked Jeff, "You know where's my starting point that leads up to today?" "No idea man, you never talk about it" he said, which begins this monologue of describing my last 15 years from the age of 15...
It began by holding a thankless and unwanted position back in NCC when I'm in secondary 3 as an administration specialist, an uncontested position, but a position that puts me in the very spot of information flow. I'm the only one in the school who has all the name lists. Then I see the value of information and knowledge, so I continued as a CLT. I want to know how the system works and the 1st rule I learned was "Know the rules well and break them properly."
My 1st task was to read all the directives I can lay my hands on. Then I held many appointment in camps... PC, OC, DyS1, S1, AG1, DyS3... I'm only the only officer that had failed the most trainees but through all these I know how army works in general.
Concurrently I was in poly... I did what I can and got the top marks for genetics. I showed my lecturer that I'm interested in what I do and it happens that her officemate then was the lecturer who will teach me molecular biology in 2nd year who is also my direct supervisor now, so she knows me even before she taught me. I love molecular biology and I really want to learn more, so I keep going back to her for more reading materials if possible. In the end, I got my distinction for molecular biology also. She became my supervisor for a mini-project and got my distinction for that also.
Then there was a biology essay writing competition at that time. I entered that competition and got consolation prize, fighting with the rest of other poly and JCs. I'm the only person from poly who got a prize in 5 yrs.
I did my final year project under the same supervisor. By then, I've completed my computing diploma, doing it part time, so I can use my programming skills in my project, which is unheard of. That got me my distinction for my final year project. Hence, I turned out to be the only person in my cohort to get distinctions for both projects. From then on, I knew I like science.
In army, I went back back poly every few months for visiting etc. During army, I did my advanced diploma in computing. At about that time, my links with NCC got me to know a guy who became my 1st employer. At that time, 1 of the CSMs whom I've trained when I was in poly was then the current CLT OIC. Yes, somehow NCC was the start of many good things for me. Although it is a good platform, I cannot compete on my weak areas like physical or going for airborne courses. Even if I were to improve on them, I will not go very far. I compete on my strong areas as an administration officer where nobody even want to be near.
Then India had a massive earthquake in Gujarat. Someone had an idea that NCC has a lot of manpower and we can do fund-raising. Something new... So we did it... The CLT OIC automatically becomes the project chair and I'm the operations director. It was under Pasir Ris Citizens' Consultative Committee. The project manager was a guy called Arthur Chan, director of a company. He saw my performance and asked me what's my plans after army. I told him my plans to further study and he asked me to join him for something if I had the time. So after ORD, he became my employer - the wireless project at United Square.
I went to Melbourne after that. I kept my interests in IT and biology. On biology side, my BSc; IT side, I joined MUCSA (Melbourne University Computer Students' Association).
There are lines of activities that I run, the start of the line is myself. I won't say that there is luck or I'm very lucky for every line that leads somewhere, there are tens of lines that I've created and died. They do not exist today, though some of these non-existent lines twined into the current line. Like in MUCSA, I started off an AI special interest group that didn't get anywhere. I have heaps of projects that failed, heaps never even took off an inch. However, in this AI-SIG, I managed to give 2 lunchtime talks to computer science students on AI. The AI-SIG line died but it got weaved into another line - when someone in CS department wanted to start AUSCC (Australian Undergraduate Students' Computing Conference) I was in the name list.
The papers were peer-reviewed and I publish my 1st paper there. It's about the project that I did for my advanced diploma in computing. I tried to work on that project but never got anywhere except that publication, so that's another dormant line.
Then I carried on and became the secretary for AUSCC steering committee. We did another 2 conferences in RMIT and ANU. That line is dead now too - AUSCC only lasted 3 years. That's already my 1st year of my PhD.
In my PhD, a lot happened also. I used to have an IT supervisor. He was giving me a lot of negative comments and doesn't think I will or deserve to pass my PhD. In the end, I have to remove him. He challenged me to write up my literature review and 1st data chapter and submit to his named experts to comment on my scientific rigors. We are in a deadlock and I took his challenge. I send it to 4 of his named experts, only 1 replied - Professor Thomas Rindflesch from NIH. This was his comment...
Maurice,
In general I think your dissertation demonstrates scientific rigor regarding natural language processing for biology. Although it is a matter of style, I think it would be good to discuss the contribution of your work at the beginning of the introduction, rather than at the end of the review of the literature. I would also recommend that at this point you expand the discussion just a bit regarding the use of a generic system. You need to emphasize the significance of your contribution. As for the system itself, you need more detail about finding SVO. This is crucial in supporting the accuracy of protein-protein interactions. For example, it's not clear whether the S, V, and O have to be contiguous. Whether they are or not has a significant effect on accuracy of results. You may want to look at two of my papers related to you work. I've attached a copy of the first one; the other is readily available through PubMed. Good luck on your dissertation.
-Tom Rindflesch
When this happened, I was in University College as a resident adviser already. I got this email when I was in a conference in Sydney with my supervisors from Zoology. When I came back to Melbourne, I explained the whole thing to Genevieve and Annie Mitchell (another RA). They thought I did the correct thing. I further send my 2 chapters to 8 other experts, only 1 replied - Professor Jonathan Wren, an associate editor of Bioinformatics.
Maurice:
Interesting work, and it seems promising. I think you need to benchmark it on some more datasets. Try to get ahold of some of the BioCreative and KDD Cup datasets - they're good for benchmarking protein-protein interactions. You also need a discussion on context. Some interactions are context-specific. For example, insulin increases glucose concentration in cells. Insulin decreases glucose concentration in the bloodstream. So it depends upon your perspective.
Also, it will be very valuable and informative to benchmark it on a large dataset - millions of abstracts. Small datasets are nice & neat and all the rage, but researchers get excited when the possibility arises that some system could possibly be applied to massive datasets with reasonable accuracy. Achieving 90% precision & 80% recall sounds impressive, but if it's only from evaluating 50 abstracts, it's not. So I think you need to perform a few scale tests to see how scale affects F-score.
Good luck!
That was dated 12/10/06. Jonathan's comments helped me to get that chapter published.
In 2005, I took a test and got my sports nutritionist certification. Then I wrote a proposal to the CEO of that organization, International Fitness Association, about an advanced certification which have to demonstrate in-depth understanding of the issues... like writing a review paper. He accepted my proposal wholesale. And for that, I was the 1st and only current examiner for IFA and awarded a life-long tenure as a "Senior Fellow" styled as "Fellow of the IFA". That's why I can use "FIFA" behind my name.
In end October 2006, Melbourne University had an open house in Singapore. I was introduced to my current director by Professor Derek Chan, Deputy Dean of Science in Melbourne University. After a few round of discussion on the bioinformatics curriculum, my current director, Dr Thomas Chai, asked me to apply to them. That's Jan 2007. I was evaluating the bioinformatics programme in SP. For that, I wrote a proposal to Thomas as well.
In 2005, I also started 2 new lines of things. I joined Firebird Foundation as a member and joined the newly formed Melbourne Python Users Group. I pushed for an industrial/academic hybrid journal for Firebird database and Python respectively. No reply from Firebird side.....
A newly joined guy who happens to be the founder of MUCSA in 1998 back then, picked up the email for the Python journal. We rounded up some people and started the current The Python Papers with him as EIC and myself as AE.
In Dec 2007, when I went for interview in SP, it happens that SP wanted to start their health and wellness programme with a sports science component and told SP principal that I am the current examiner for IFA. Bingo... Do I know this will come my way back in 2005? Obviously not.
And my stint in UC gave me the contacts to many academic visitors. Some of whom I can meticulously name-drop. All these twined up in the best deal HR will give me.
In March 2008, TPP editorial committee decides to have 2 Editors-in-Chief styled as co-EICs and I became the other co-EIC. I revised my linkedin profile to reflect that and in July 2008, the academic chair of Republic Poly emailed me about starting a S'pore Python User Group and a Python conference in S'pore. I said ok... And now I am, organizing the S'pore Python Conference for 2010 with the assistant director of Sch of IT in RP... not so much as a junior lecturer in SP but as EIC of the only Python periodical in the world today.
Well... this is my last 15 yrs in a nutshell.
This path that I walked out is a graveyard of dead projects along the way - put one step in front of the last.
So you see how and why I can get so much scholarships? By the time I did it, I already have 8-10 yrs of experience of opportunity seeking and creating... |
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