Theme: Pass It Around

If its worth spreading, its worth passing it around. Join us in the journey as our speakers pass around their knowledge, ideas, thoughts, actions and movements in hopes that it grows into something bigger.

University Hall Auditorium
University Hall, National University of Singapore, 21, Lower Kent Ridge Road
Singapore, 119077
Singapore

Atima Joshi

A teacher in an international school, she initiated “Travelling Pencils”, a movement to encourage kids and parents to donate stationery that’s in excess to be flown to schools with lesser funds. People are also urged to donate a portion of their airplane baggage allowance to be used to transport the stationary.

Guan Wei Lee

Guan Wei is the founding President of the “Orchestra of the Music Makers”, a volunteer - run orchestra with a membership of more than 100 music enthusiasts. Membership is open to all, and the orchestra is managed and run by its own volunteers out of their love for music. OMM is special because its musical direction is set by its young members, and it uses music for philanthropic and charitable work. Despite being only slightly more than 2 years old, OMM has helped to raise more than $1.7 million for charity via its fundraising performances, and has also received the 2009 HSBC Youth Excellence Award in recognition of its musical excellence. Apart from managing OMM, Guan Wei spends his spare time as an engineering undergraduate at NUS.

Andie Ang

Andie is a primatologist; a graduate student at the NUS Evolutionary Biology Lab and a recipient of the Ah Meng Memorial Conservation Fund and Jane Goodall Institute (Singapore) Primate Research Grant. She is interested in the ecology and evolution of primates, their natural history, and in particular, conservation biology. She is most well known for her research efforts on the banded leaf monkey, a species native to Singapore. The banded leaf monkey is locally critically endangered, with only 40 individuals left in the wild.

Adrian Cheok

Adrian David Cheok, Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NUS and a Full Professor in Keio University, Graduate School of Media Design. Amongst numerous high quality academic journals, keynotes, exhibitions, he was featured in worldwide broadcasts on his research such as CNN and Discovery Channel. In addition he was the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and prizes such as the A-STAR Young Scientist of the Year, Hitachi Fellowship, SCS Singapore Young Professional of the Year, Microsoft Research Award in Gaming and Graphics, C4C Children Competition Prize, Integrated Art Competition Prize, Creativity in Action Award, Mindtrek Award, and was awarded Young Global Leader 2008 by the World Economic Forum.

Asanga Gunawansa

Dr. Asanga Gunawansa holds a Ph.D. in law from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and a LL.M in International Economic Law from the University of Warwick. He is an Attorney–at- Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Prior to joining NUS in May 2007, Dr. Gunawansa was attached to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as a Legal Officer. During the period 2001 – 2005, he was attached to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) as a Legal Officer. At the UNCC, with a group of international lawyers, Dr. Gunawansa helped process the largest war reparations claims handled by an international commission to monitor, assess, restore and compensate for environmental damage and damages to natural resources resulting from the 1991 Gulf War. At UNRWA, DR. Gunawansa was involved in drafting and negotiating construction, infrastructure development, trade, and other commercial contracts entered into by the agency. During the period 1993 – 2000, Dr. Gunawansa was attached to the Department of the Attorney General of Sri Lanka as a State Counsel. During this time he appeared for the government and many public sector entities in Sri Lanka in commercial and civil litigations and arbitrations. During this time, he was also seconded to the Ministry of Finance and the Road Development Authority of Sri Lanka as a Legal Consultant.

Kevin Lim

As a cyberculturalist, Kevin studies the co-evolution of network and culture. With an academic background in communication theory, his research has ranged from Control & Anti-Control in Internet-Regulated China, to Social Capital among Online Non-Profit Organizations. He currently works at the National Art Gallery (Singapore) as AD in Strategy & Experience. He can be located at @brainopera.

Kristine Mette

Mette Kristine Oustrup is the founder of Qi Global, a global network of thought-leaders in design, innovation and sustainability. A graduate in International Business and Marketing, Kristine originally joined the start-up phase of fashion group St Martins and later went to Hong Kong as Head of Special Projects for global lifestyle brand DIESEL. Her next adventure, as co-founder of the French trend agency Style-Vision in 2001, involved working with high-profile brands such as Chanel, Philips Design and Firmenich, while building bridges to other international trend agencies. Kristine invented the Style-Vision Round Table events held twice a year at the Grand Hotel Cap-Ferrat in the South of France, supported by the Financial Times newspaper. She also created the Mood Consumption Theory, later Elemental Experience Design (EED) merging Western and Asian thought and design processes into one flexible design and marketing tool. With her innovative ideas gaining more and more recognition in countries such France, USA and China, she was appointed “Goodwill Ambassador of Copenhagen” to represent and promote her country of birth.

Rajen Makhijani

is an award nominated screenwriter and management consultant. Four of his screenplays have been produced into motion pictures in Hindi. For a television movie of his, he was nominated in the ‘Best Scriptwriter Award - Overall Category’ in Indian Telly Award 2005. Rajen has been a Management Consultant for 10 years, with firms such as ECS (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers) in India, McKinsey in Singapore and lately with Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Consulting in Singapore. Rajen is an alum of the Indian Institute Of Management Kolkatta, (IIM). Rajen has worked across India, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Bahrain. He lives with his wife and 2 sons in Singapore.

Daniela Plewe

Daniela Plewe is a popular professor of a University Scholars Programme Module at NUS,called CyberArts. Since 1991, she has developed and produced media projects which were internationally exhibited and won several awards. Exhibitions and collaborations include Harvard Law School, MIT Media Lab, Ars Electronica, Canon Art Lab Tokyo, ZKM Karlsruhe, UCLA, School of Visual Arts NY, ISEA, Transmediale, ACM Multimedia, and others. She holds a PhD. on transactional uses of interactive media from the Sorbonne Paris 1.