News: A bumper crop of accolades for our students

By Kimberley Wang, Manager, Media and Publications, Communications and Outreach

The LKCMedicine community rounded up the year with a bumper crop of accolades last December, doing the School proud. Our students and alumnus emerged winners in competitions ranging from a hackathon to a national award for junior doctors, bearing testament to the School’s excellence in medical education.

McKinsey x NTU Hackathon

A team led by LKCMedicine PhD student Jayanth Kumar Narayana came in tops in the inaugural McKinsey x NTU Data Science Hackathon. Held in December 2022, some 400 participants comprising undergraduate and PhD students from various NTU colleges and schools tested their data science skills against a start-up’s real-life business problem with the mentorship of McKinsey consultants and data scientists. The objective was to get students interested in applying theory to real world problems, including medical problems.

The LKCMedicine-led team won the top prize for addressing and proposing a translatable solution for the problem “Why do customers stop using the app developed by the client and what can we do to bring back customers?” The team proposed a novel solution involving intelligent feature engineering followed by a simple regression model to identify reasons for drop-in customers. They also proposed possible solutions and showed the effectiveness, in terms of customers gained, using a probabilistic mathematical model.

National Outstanding Post-Graduate Year 1 Award

Dr Elsa Wee (Class of 2020) won the Ministry of Health’s National Outstanding Post-Graduate Year 1 (PGY1) Award 2022, which was announced on 27 December 2022. Her PGY1 posting was with the National Healthcare Group. The award recognises doctors who had demonstrated consistent outstanding performance throughout their PGY1 training in the areas of patient care and medical knowledge, and displayed desirable attributes of a doctor such as leadership, professionalism, communication skills, and teamwork.

National Writing Competition

LKCMedicine Year 2 student Deborah Lee clinched first prize in the National Writing Competition 2022 organised by SPH Media and the National Youth Achievement Award Council. The competition saw over 300 entries from students of all educational levels on the topic “Towards a Sustainable Singapore: How Youth Can Make a Difference”. The students were invited to share their ideas on how young people can contribute to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Six winners were selected by a panel of judges based on their creativity and ability to present their ideas and solutions. Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policies Mr Heng Swee Keat presented the winners with their awards in a ceremony on 13 December 2022. In her essay, Deborah focused on a lack of adoption of sustainability habits and the high costs of such practices. To address this, she proposed an app called GoGreen with features including a points-and-rewards system, an in-app game and fortnightly challenges that help to gradually encourage habit formation.

Medical Student SIMWars

An LKCMedicine team comprising five final-year students Chan Gerald, Chong Wei Shan Vanessa, Marcus Soon Khai Siang, Ren Yuqi, and Ng Chen Lin put up an excellent performance and came in second in the inaugural Medical Student SIMWars competition. Held at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) on 10 December 2022, the competition was organised by the Society for Emergency Medicine in Singapore Annual Scientific Meeting 2023 Organising Committee and the TTSH Pre-Professional Education Office to promote and cultivate students’ interest in Emergency Medicine through simulation. Three teams, one from each of the medical schools, participated in the competition which tested their medical knowledge, teamwork, and communication skills.

Congratulations to our students and alumnus!