Amazon Future Engineer Bursary Award

(Mentored by Mr Octave Goh)

I did not expect to receive this award as I had very little experience in STEM. In addition, I was struggling to understand the concepts and content taught during the programme. However, thanks to the help of my mentor and teammates who were willing to share, I managed to grasp most of the concepts and eventually was able to contribute to the project.

I enjoyed the process of thinking and ideating as it allowed me to express my creativity freely and be innovative. I also enjoyed being challenged by my mentor to consistently weigh the pros and cons of the idea. It taught me that there will always be a negative and positive impact on a decision.

I hope to learn more about coding in STEM as we were taught basic coding only. I believe that there is so much more to learn about coding than what I have experienced in the programme. Furthermore, coding is now important and essential. Therefore, learning how to code would allow me to not only expand my knowledge but also allow me to keep up with the ever-changing society.

I also hope to apply the soft skills that learnt from this programme, which is also important if I were to become a doctor and contribute back to society by improving human lives.

Lastly, I feel very proud of myself that I am awarded the bursary. I am grateful to my school, mentor and sponsor for recognising the effort I put into the programme.  

(Mentored by Ms Ng Mei Bao)

I’m really honoured to have been chosen for this award! I found the programme extremely enriching and enjoyed myself thoroughly. I have gained much from the programme — friends, knowledge, experiences and opportunities, and it was a pleasant surprise to also be able to benefit from this bursary.

I joined the programme with a group of friends from school and we were lucky enough to be able to work on the topic of Mental Health, a topic many of us hold close to our hearts. With that passion, combined with the STEM skills that we picked up and with the help of our mentor, we came up with a product that we were truly proud of. To me, that is what I enjoy most about STEM. Being able to take our learnings and applying them to real-world problems that we care deeply about. Learning the “How” and “Why” of things around us, delving deeper into the technicalities of world issues, being able to dream and physically concretise those dreams with the appropriate STEM skills.

I think the biggest advice I can give anyone who wants to join STEM programmes like YSAP is to truly be yourself and focus on your interests. When you genuinely feel for an issue, it will shine through in your work. You feel compelled to apply all the knowledge and skills you have gained, and you can genuinely empathise with the recipients of your final product. Seize the opportunities you have and stand on the shoulders of giants, the knowledge from generations of scientists, technicians, engineers and mathematicians that came before you at your very fingertips. Be inspired by the work that has already been done, and then inspire others with the way you put those learnings into action. 

(Mentored by Ms Elisa Chng)

I feel immensely grateful to be a recipient of the Amazon Future Engineer Bursary Award, as well as the opportunity to participate in the Think Big, Youth Science Ambassador Programme. I would also like to thank my mentor and fellow teammates for their constant guidance and support, which motivated me to persevere and continue working hard on our project.

I was able to learn more about people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in our society through first-hand interviews, which allowed me to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their day-to-day challenges. Afterwards, workshops were conducted to further our STEM skills, which helped us create an effective STEM solution that would benefit people with ADHD. For instance, after learning how to utilise CoSpaces, a virtual reality (VR) tool, we created some VR scenes that simulated how people with ADHD may perceive certain situations differently.

In addition, we were also taught invaluable project research skills, which gave us a clear framework of the steps involved in our project. Furthermore, we attended a workshop on oral presentation skills, where we learnt how to display and present our product in a concise and engaging manner.

However, not everything was smooth sailing. We ran into multiple issues with the coding of the STEM components, which was frustrating to rectify, especially if the problem was out of our control. As the programme was held during COVID-19, most of the workshops were conducted online, it can get tiring to be on computers. Despite this, we persevered and constantly improved our product with advice from our mentor. Although this project occupied a notable portion of our free time during the holidays, I feel happy and fulfilled, and I am certainly looking forward to pursuing more community projects in the future.

(Mentored by Mr Octave Goh)

I am thrilled to be able to receive the Amazon Future Engineer Bursary Award after participating in the Think Big, Youth Science Ambassador Programme 2021. Through the programme, other than learning STEM-related content, I learnt critical thinking and problem-solving skills. I especially enjoyed applying STEM skills that we have learnt into real-world contexts, such as using them to innovate and improve the quality of our target audience’s life. I hope to learn deeper about each STEM topic and gain a better understanding of their applications so that I can help people in need.

(Mentored by Ms Ng Mei Bao)

First of all, I would like to thank Amazon and Science Centre Singapore for giving me the opportunity to win this bursary. I am very grateful to have gotten this experience and this opportunity, and I learnt a lot from it. I am now more confident in leading my friends in group projects, and my interest in STEM has grown deeper too. I enjoy the diversity of STEM, as there is a wide array of choices to choose from, such as programming a Micro:bit or Thunkable software.

Through this programme, I learnt new skills and discovered my passion for STEM. I hope to be able to apply this knowledge that I have gained and give back to my community, such as what we did in the programme. In the future, I hope that we can develop this application further or even design new ones to help those in need. After going through this programme, I am more certain to pursue a career in IT, specifically in coding or programming websites and applications. Thank you once again for this wonderful opportunity. 

(Mentored by Mr Lim Meng Hwee)

I feel very happy and grateful for receiving the bursary. I felt happy because the effort I put into the process of being chosen for the AFE Bursary Award paid off. I also feel immensely grateful for all who have supported me on this journey and have believed in me.

I enjoy STEM in general, from what I have done in school to what I have explored in the Youth Science Ambassador Programme. However, I especially like the science and mathematics aspect of STEM, mainly because I have done Science and Mathematics for a long time, so I am more used to these. I hope to be a primary school teacher that teaches Mathematics and Science. This is because I would like to pass on my knowledge of these two subjects to other people and share my passion for these two subjects with others. However, I would like to learn more about the engineering part as engineering is new to me. I strive to gain a deeper knowledge of it, and I hope to be good at it in the future. 

(Mentored by Mr Lim Meng Hwee)

I am truly honoured to have received this award because I knew of other candidates who were better than me in many aspects such as critical thinking, presentation skills and STEM knowledge. One part of the programme I particularly enjoyed was the training and prototyping process.  Although it took quite some time for me to grasp the 3D-modelling techniques during training, I am glad to have been able to successfully use those 3D-modelling skills to build our prototype. The process was truly a fruitful and memorable one!

Although it was really a pity that we could not carry out the programme at the Science Centre due to COVID-19, I am truly grateful for the opportunity to experience such an amazing and inspiring programme and to have made many new friends on the virtual platform. I hope to be able to learn more STEM skills like coding and application designing in the future, which I did not have a chance to learn due to time constraints and limited vacancies for the training.

I hope to be a teacher when I grow up so that I can educate the minds of the younger generation and hopefully inculcate the interest in STEM in them which might inspire them to achieve greater heights. 

(Mentored by Mr Lim Meng Hwee)

Thank you for giving me the honour of receiving the AFE Bursary. I am grateful that I have been given

the opportunity to be involved in the YSA programme. Through this programme, I have learnt many skills, for example, design thinking, critical thinking and online presentation skills.

What I enjoyed most from the programme was learning about the VR world and how to code it. Because when I code, it challenges me to think about the logic of the sequence of each block. If I get a chance to learn more coding in the future, I would like to challenge myself to try not using block codes and use inline codes instead.

I am pretty interested in the topic of psychology too. When I am older, I want to get a job as a psychologist and probably try to create some VR programmes for my patients to help them to understand themselves better.

(Mentored by Mr Octave Goh)

I am very happy and delighted to receive this bursary. I consider this award to be a recognition for all the effort I had put into our project. Receiving this award has allowed me to develop my own self-confidence and has motivated me to learn more about STEM. 

I most enjoy the problem-solving aspect of STEM. This is because I get a sense of achievement and satisfaction by figuring out a viable solution to the problem. Moreover, learning about different people’s perspectives and altering the product to suit most needs is also very challenging. 

While I was trying to work on my project using Thunkable and Tinkercad, it made me want to learn more about the ”T” – technology and “E” – engineering of STEM. Gaining more knowledge on these two topics will be extremely useful as I hope to be a software engineer. I would like to create software and applications which can help solve problems and have positive impacts on one’s standard of living.

I would like to convey my sincere thanks to Mr Thou, my school teacher, who supported me throughout this journey. I am also grateful to Science Centre Singapore and Amazon Web Services for providing me with an opportunity to participate in this programme.

(Mentored by Mr Octave Goh)

It is extremely thrilling to receive this award as a stepping stone to fuel my learning further in the area of STEM. I would like to extend my greatest gratitude to all the mentors, trainers and tutors who have rendered assistance throughout this worthwhile journey. Keeping the future of STEM in mind, I hope that this award will continue to inspire me and all the people around me to uphold our enthusiasm in related studies.

STEM encompasses four main disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics which further branch into vast fields of specific studies. While my knowledge on the topic still lacks some depth, STEM has allowed me to be a critical thinker, an innovator and a problem solver while applying academic-related knowledge to real life. This is what I find amusing and thus what I enjoy about STEM.

Fundamentally for STEM, I hope to find out how I can expand my experiences and learning opportunities for all four realms of knowledge. However, I would be particularly interested in exploring the biochemical field, especially relating to medicine. This is because biochemistry is a study that I have heard of on multiple occasions, but I have never actually looked into it.

Frankly speaking, my goal for the future is still quite unclear. Throughout the years, I have gained some interest in the biomedical field for knowledge-based enrichment, but I am also keen in exploring how “lower-value, labour-intensive” jobs can be modified to make such jobs more valuable and sustainable when coupled with technological aid. Even when certain opportunities do not seem sophisticated or advanced enough, it is important to note that the outlook for humanity is constantly changing and that with technology in our hands, any opportunity will be made valuable.