Guide for prospective applicants

Thank you for your interest in joining our research group at the National University of Singapore. We look forward to working together on a research framework focused on the nexus of novel urban data streams, urban analytics, and geospatial data science, a holistic and unique research agenda in Singapore and Southeast Asia and beyond. We continuously welcome motivated and talented prospective researchers from diverse disciplines and countries, who share our research goal of making cities smarter and more (geo)data-driven.

Interested in joining us? This website contains more information and some tips, including answers to frequently asked questions.

What are the general requirements and what makes an application excel

This pretty much depends on the nature of the position and career stage, but in general, here are some of the criteria that enter into consideration when assessing applicants, especially those with academic experience, and may help your application stand out:

• Perceived commitment and fit in our group (e.g. evident from a tailored cover letter with an elaborated narrative that is compatible with our current research agenda and builds upon our recent publications).
• Compatibility/match of the expertise of the candidate with the research developed in our group and complementarity.
• The candidate’s ownership in a line of research and evident momentum in output and novelty in research activities so far and their impact (e.g. publications in leading international journals in the last few years, their citations, and impact/relevance in the broad scientific community). The publication record should be commensurate with years of experience (for entry-level researchers such as prospective PhD students, there is no such expectation but having a paper is a plus).
• Visibility and proactivity in scholarly communication (e.g. having a personal website with up to date information about one’s work and research agenda, as we expect our scientists to be visible, promote the work internationally, and take ownership of their work).
• Evidence of coding/computational level to support the research and an indication of open science practices (e.g. visible from a developed GitHub repository or open-source package, and availability of reproducible workflows and having released open datasets).
• Quality of the written English and materials provided, and communication skills.
• Community engagement and participation in local or international initiatives (e.g. workshops, talks, membership in working groups/societies).
• Evidence of independence, self-motivation, and proactivity.

Why us

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is ranked consistently as one of the world’s top universities. It aspires to be a vital community of academics, researchers, staff, students and alumni working together in a spirit of innovation and enterprise for a better world.

Singapore is a cosmopolitan English-speaking city-state bridging the East and the West. It is considered as the #1 most competitive country and the safest country in the world, successfully attracting talents from all parts of the globe by offering first-class living and working experience in the heart of Southeast Asia, and a very clean and efficient environment and unparalleled infrastructure. Residents enjoy also great food and weather. Overall, Singapore provides a fulfilling professional and personal experience in a liveable garden city.

New researchers joining our group have an opportunity to work on research initiatives in the domains of the Lab (e.g. urban informatics, digital twins, 3D GIS, street view imagery, crowdsourced data, GeoAI, data quality and harmonisation, and GIScience) as part of existing or upcoming projects, and will have a chance to produce high-impact research. At the same time, researchers have flexibility to explore their interests and establish their agenda. Overall, being part of our Lab presents a rare opportunity in Singapore and this part of Asia to be involved in the entire geospatial ecosystem under the same roof: from standardisation and generation of geoinformation all the way to their utilisation and visualisation, while continuously exploring new frontiers in the field such as interface with AI and domains such as urban planning, mobility, energy, and climate.

We believe that our university, college, and research group provide a motivating, conducive, and flexible environment to explore the candidate’s interests, build relevant skills, and develop world-class research required to attain a PhD degree or further qualifications at a research-intensive university such as NUS. Our productive and collaborative setting enables you to integrate your project with existing ones and leverage on our network and other activities to turbocharge your research. Further, our lab provides a nice academic network that grants a front row opportunity to connect and collaborate with renowned international researchers. In addition, PhD students are encouraged to go for exchange opportunities too.

Our small and friendly Lab is located at SDE4, the first newly-built net-zero energy building in Singapore, and the first university building in the world to be WELL Certified Gold.

Our papers are continuously published in top journals and are impactful across academia, government, and industry.

Our department is consistently ranked among the best in the world. Our university is the first and only one in Asia to be ranked within top 10 universities globally (QS).

On a broader scale, Southeast Asia is one of the most dynamic and fastest growing regions in the world, and it offers excellent travel opportunities to have a nice break from research.

But above all, we are a friendly and supportive team of researchers that works on cool stuff together. 😊

Contacting us

You are welcome to contact us. For PhD applications, you can simply apply directly to the school for a PhD with us without getting in touch with us first, but if you wish to do so – you are welcome.

However, before you drop us an email, please familiarise yourself with our work. We make an effort to maintain a comprehensive website with a variety of information (e.g. we have a blog and all our publications are available open access, together with a lot of open data and open-source code) to become acquainted with our work and research agenda, and decide whether it is aligned with your interests and aspirations. If you do so, we will be happy to answer your questions that are not covered by this guide. Please note that while we are grateful for interest, we do not respond to generic applications. At minimum, we expect prospective students to understand what we do and how we do it, e.g. read this page and more about us on our website (here and here) and check some of our papers.

PhD

What is a PhD and what are the expectations

A PhD is a great way to create a new scholar, an exceptional chance for self-development, and an opportunity to contribute to science. It is one of the rare chances nowadays to produce focused, integrated, comprehensive, and cohesive research and conceive a long-term research agenda and set of interests. Above all, it is your journey.

In our group, PhD students have a considerable degree of autonomy, freedom, and collaborative opportunities. Thanks to the PhD programme and collaboration with multiple seasoned researchers in our group and beyond, they also get support in various scientific tasks such as writing, scientific communication, and latest methods. Some of the expectations from PhD researchers during and at the end of their studies are to:

• Achieve independence and excellence in research.
• Become an expert in a specialised domain and attain a unique expertise not many others have.
• Be able to conduct independent research from start to end (from identifying gaps, conceptualisation and planning to execution and communication). In short, become a great scholar.
• Create new knowledge and introduce a significant scientific novelty accepted by the community and be known for it (primarily through impactful publications in leading outlets).
• Collaborate and contribute to the scientific community in various ways (i.e. other forms of output such as open data, open-source software, community engagements…).
• Attain a valuable set of skills, largely domain-agnostic, both hard (e.g. coding, statistics) and soft (e.g. written communication, presenting, project management) that can be applied to a variety of scientific challenges and in various environments.

On a related note, have a look at this nice illustrated guide to a PhD.

To succeed, a PhD student ideally should:

• establish ownership of his/her work, have intellectual and scientific curiosity, be creative, and be excited and passionate about the topic and field;
• have initiative and be proactive about a variety of aspects related to the research (e.g. take the lead in identifying gaps, think of new ideas, and follow relevant conferences and journals);
• continuously develop transferrable skills, be on top of the developments in the field and broader domains, and seek means to contribute and advance knowledge;
• regularly seek opportunities to promote and apply their research;
• revisit and adjust plans, and be open to feedback; and
• be collaborative and establish collaborations, including those beyond disciplinary lines.

How to apply for a PhD

If the above sounds interesting to you, note that we accept new PhD students every academic year. However, research groups at NUS usually do not admit them directly and do not provide stipends on their own. Applications to the PhD programme should be done directly to our College of Design and Engineering, as they are managing the process, and candidates are expected to devise their funding plan (e.g. applying for a scholarship). However, we are happy to provide some help to applicants if requested.

You will find all requirements on the website of the graduate school, such as GRE and English language test requirement, together with the application process and deadlines (there are two intakes each year). Also, the NUS website on graduate admissions is a good starting point to get more information about doing a PhD at our university. Further, you will also find myriads of websites that give a plenty of tips how to polish your materials. But here are some further tips and requirements on our end.

The most important tip is to tailor your application and make it specific to our environment. PhD applications are examined carefully by the department and college. Your application will be given adequate attention, however, generic applications with boilerplate text and those without a clear motivation and understanding of the scope of our work, and those that do not demonstrate research affinity, are typically rejected. Your PhD application reflects your ability and skill to find and digest information, which is an instrumental skill for a researcher to possess.

Therefore, in your application, you need to be clear with your motivation to spend several years in a PhD programme: why do you want to do a PhD, why are you interested in research and in an academic environment, what makes you a strong candidate, what are your career goals, what are your research interests, what are your relevant skills and accomplishments so far, and why do you want to come specifically to NUS and our department and group. Each of these points should be substantiated with some evidence or motivation.

Prospective candidates who did a bit of research on what we do and those that are able to demonstrate their aptitude for research and motivate their wish to join us in particular have a much better chance getting admitted into the doctoral programme. This is most evident from a tailored and research-focused application pertaining to our Lab, university and Singapore.

When applying for a PhD, you need to prepare your CV. In particular, do highlight your computational and research skills in it, and any publications you may have. PhD applicants are not expected to have a rich publication record and scientific output, but a record of any prior research outputs and activities (code, papers, data, internships, thesis, etc. preferably with evidence such as developed GitHub repositories and materials on a personal website) will be valuable. Some of these are instrumental in proving your technical skills, which are essential in our Lab and the College of Design and Engineering.

The CV needs to be accompanied by:

• a brief research proposal and statement of purpose (2-4 pp.) containing a summary of the topics that you find interesting, overview of your previous work, a short literature review that covers recent developments in your area of interest, and an idea and plan for your PhD research. You should be able to briefly formulate existing gaps and think about how do you plan to fill them in the next few years. This does not have to be comprehensive and advanced, as during the initial months of your PhD you’ll have time to work on all that and sharpen your plans, but you should this document as an opportunity to demonstrate your motivation and research skills. Do remember to include other key components in your statement (a common mistake is to overlook including a literature review, contributions, output plan, and schedule) and avoid making your proposal generic (e.g. forgetting to mention the fit for our group, university, and Singapore, as admission/scholarship committees usually turn down such applications). For example, mention why you want to do a PhD particularly here, how does your expertise match our group, what research (i.e. papers) did attract your interest the most and how would you take it forward, etc. In particular, make sure you link the proposed research to a few recent papers of our Lab (identify a few papers that you find most interesting and explain your reasoning). If your proposal gives an impression that it can be submitted also to several other universities, your application will not stand out;
• examples of writing samples (if you have not written a paper yet, you might want to submit a thesis or individual assignment; avoid group assignments as it is not easy to isolate and ascertain your contribution to it);
• a few words about one of our publications with brief ideas how would you take these results further and/or how would you use them for your research; and
• a brief statement how do you envision contributing to our research agenda and group. A PhD is a substantial commitment from both sides for a few years, thus, your fit is no less important than your research finesse.

All the points above should be concise, e.g. a few paragraphs for each aforementioned aspect, so it shouldn’t take much time and effort to stand out. You will find that preparing such documentation is quite beneficial as it will also help you to explore and refine your thoughts and interests.

Finally, we advise to make sure that you write your application in clear and concise English, and that you send your materials in PDF. English is the lingua franca of Singapore, NUS, and academia worldwide, thus, fluency is a must.

We thank you for your interest and time.

Deadlines, supervision, and more information

The application deadlines are usually at the end of the year for the intake in August next year, and in July for the start in January next year. Please start preparing early, and indicate in your application that you would like to be supervised by Dr Filip Biljecki, the PI and PhD supervisor of the group. The supervisor is assigned to the candidate after the successful admission to the PhD programme.

You may also want to read the graduate studies website of either the Department of Architecture (and its FAQ), or the Department of Real Estate (the PI of the Lab is part of both).

After applying

Applications are handed by the administration and graduate admission committee. Do note that we are often not involved in this process nor in admission decisions. Therefore, we are afraid that we do not have an insight in your application status and are not able to keep you updated. However, please rest assured that your application is carefully evaluated and that you will hear back from the university in time.

In the meantime, you are welcome to get in touch with us about other matters.

Funding and scholarships

Funding is a very important aspect of doing a PhD and a common obstacle, and it should be considered as early as possible. While the current reality of academia is that obtaining longterm and full scholarships for a PhD is unfortunately often difficult and highly competitive, securing funding is not impossible. Many of our graduate students and others at our departments have been successful in obtaining it.

An admission to the PhD programme does not imply a scholarship. Most admissions are on a self-funded basis. Some scholarships are awarded at the admission stage, while others may be applied to after the admission.

There are scholarship opportunities to partially or fully fund your PhD journey, and there are external funding options as well. For example, you may want to check the Singapore International Graduate Award – SINGA. Do also check the comprehensive list that we prepared for candidates seeking external funding. For example, if applicable to you, check out the The Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future for a potential scholarship opportunity. There are further opportunities that are not listed on the links above and may be available depending on your particulars such as nationality and residence.

There are also financial aid schemes.

Please note that most external scholarships require a candidate to be admitted to a PhD programme before applying for funding (e.g. providing the letter of acceptance from the university). Thus, we recommend starting as soon as possible. On the other hand, some programmes do not require an admission, rather a letter of interest from a PI or a research group. If there is a match, we’ll be happy to endorse your application.

Good luck!

Visiting scholars (up to 12 months)

We have hosted several visiting scholars in the past few years, including overseas PhD students and senior researchers (e.g. awardees of postdoc fellowships), from a period anywhere from a few months to one year. Such stays have been productive and enriching for both the visitor and our group, resulting in continuous collaborations and publications.

If you are interested – please prepare a short proposal of the research you plan to conduct during your stay in our Lab together with a timeline and other specifics. Further, please select a few papers from our group and describe how your interest are compatible with them.

You are welcome to have a look at our website, recent blog posts, and recent papers, and think of a common overlap or complementary research direction, which will ensure a mutually beneficial research visit. We are excited to learn from each other and have continuous academic exchanges which may continue even beyond the stay here. Fit and match with our research group are quite relevant, as visiting fellowships should be a two-way relationship. We are a small group, so every year, we have bandwidth and space to accept only a few visiting researchers. Thus, we prefer to prioritise those who work on research that is closely aligned with our activities, and ensure a complementary fit and contribution to our projects and team (and vice-versa), and at the same time making sure that you get the most of such a visit for your academic trajectory.

The academic expectations are more or less listed above, but most importantly, we expect a committed integration in our group and an idea of research that matches our agenda and something that you would not normally do if you have simply stayed at your home university.

If you are interested in spending some time with us, contact us with the following information and materials: brief proposal (1 page) aligned with our agenda, CV, desired time period of the stay, and information on the funding scheme that you plan to use or apply for to facilitate the visit.

Unfortunately, NUS does not have funding programmes to support incoming visiting scholars, and most of our visitors have been supported by their home universities, their project budgets, foreign government schemes, or other funding streams.

Visiting scholars who are students need to be enrolled at NUS as non-graduating students, which will organise their residence permit in Singapore for longer stays. The application to this programme needs to be done at least three months before the intended start date, which is done after discussions with us. Thus, if you are interested in a stay with us as visiting scholar, please contact us around 5-6 months in advance.

Research assistants and research fellows (postdocs)

Much of the information on this website may be found of interest as well to those seeking a full-time job (RA, postdocs), but these depend on funded projects. When we have openings, we post them on our website with vacancies, thus, you may want to keep an eye on the website occasionally or follow our social media accounts where we advertise them when they happen. For job opportunities at our university, at other research groups, you may want to check the NUS Careers website.

Postdoctoral research fellows are expected to be moderately independent, and have a demonstrated record of research excellence and a momentum in publishing (i.e. first-author papers in leading venues). In a postdoc job with us, they will spearhead new research initiatives, manage and/or contribute to funding applications, and provide guidance to junior members. Our Lab cultivates an environment that accords a degree of freedom in exploring own research ideas, and fosters careers of postdocs in several ways such as involvements in multiple projects and taking part in strategy development, paving the way for a potential faculty position.

FAQ