Darren Ng is a Year 4 Computer Science student under the Renaissance Engineering Programme (REP) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). After his internship with the Information Division, he was offered the DSO Merit Scholarship.

This is his story.

14-year-old Darren would not have thought that he would be a Computer Science student today. When he first interacted with programming in secondary school, he was taught to memorise the language instead of fully understanding how things work. Without the fundamental principles of programming, his appreciation of the subject was dampened. This underwhelming experience haunted him all the way to university where he originally intended to pursue a degree in Aerospace Engineering.

That all changed after he attended an introductory module on computer science during his freshman year with NTU REP. The professor challenged the students to build a python application that recommended food options in NTU based on several criteria such as location, cuisine, and price. This experience made him realise that even simple programming could be used to provide meaningful solutions! With this newfound appreciation, Darren thus decided to specialise in computer science.

After his first internship as an Artificial Intelligence engineer with another organisation, he was ready for more. As such, when he heard about the great internship experience his friend Yi Xue had with DSO, he decided to embark on his own journey with us.

Tailored, not Typical

Out of the 8 projects offered in the internship, Darren decided to go with the most novel one – The Meme Observatory and Generator where he got to learn about software engineering in a fun way.

With the goal of identifying potentially harmful messaging, Darren and his team of two other interns worked towards developing an end-to-end automated meme generation system that could analyse a large volume of internet memes while also detecting trending topics. The application would then automatically generate relevant and humorous memes that could potentially counter or blunt any harmful messaging.

Through this project, Darren got the chance to analyse research publications and apply code bases in order to train and deploy machine learning models. They would then connect images and text, enabling the generation and ranking of internet memes. He also learnt to develop full-stack web applications to serve these machine learning models.

Meaningful, not Menial

The main learning objective was to develop the core machine learning technology and models necessary to develop an intelligent system that understands text, images and cultural nuances/context as a whole. There was also a greater motivation behind this project. Internet memes are currently a rich representation within the digital space. This project also established how such applications can contribute to our nation’s defence and national security, with the ability to provide early detection and subsequently provide capabilities to counter harmful information campaigns targeting Singapore.

“I hope that through this project, interns like Darren can be inspired by the deeper sense of purpose that permeates all the work that we undertake at DSO, as a national laboratory.”
_{– Dr. Eugene Siow, Darren’s mentor and internship supervisor}

In three short months, Darren and his peers were able to apply their machine learning algorithms and demonstrate a full stack minimum viable product around these algorithms. This meant that they had successfully trained their machine to understand memes, and therefore enabling them to detect harmful memes. But it was not all fun and games; Darren also experienced setbacks in his initial application of machine learning.

Thankfully, he was not alone in this journey. His mentor and peers provided the support he needed to thrive and grow.

“Eugene was very supportive, and he gave us room to explore, which I really appreciate. He also motivated us without giving us undue stress.”

Darren also had a room of fellow interns that he could count on.

“Although software developers are usually expected to fix their own bugs, we would help each other out whenever someone faces issues,” Darren recalls.

Job Offer, not Job Reference

Like other DSO interns, the technical knowledge that Darren has gained is applicable to software engineering development for actual defence R&D projects. This gives him the confidence to build software solutions, integrate systems, and transform them into products that will be instrumental in solving the nation’s difficult problems.

Darren’s internship may have ended, but this is just the beginning of his career in defence R&D. He was offered DSO’s Merit Scholarship at the end of his internship and will be returning to DSO as a full-fledged software engineer with the Information Division when he graduates.

Explore your passion through a meaningful and tailored DSO internship and you might be on your way to developing a full-time career in defence R&D just like Darren.

To read more about the DSO Merit Scholarship, click here!