Normal (Tech) student turned SIT don among 167 MOE scholarship and award recipients

His passion for computers drove him to persevere through a longer education path

- Gabrielle Chan

Computer games like MapleStory and Counter-Strike first sparked 16-year-old Ernest Tan's curiosity about how computers communicate with each other.

This fascination drove him to persevere through a longer education path as a Normal (Technical) student.

"Academically, I was quite weak. Ironically, my weakest subject was mathematics," the now 37-year-old assistant professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) said.

But he enjoyed what he was studying, he said. "I just wanted to do the best that I could."

Nearly two decades later, he is now a lecturer in SIT's infocomm technology cluster, working on research and teaching undergraduates.

Prof Tan, who completed his doctorate in computer engineering at NTU in 2020, said he was not discouraged by the longer journey.

"It's purely passion," he said. "If I have to go a longer route to have my education, I'll just have to take it as part of the journey."

After completing his N levels at Ang Mo Kio Secondary School in 2004, he pursued a Nitec Communications Technology course at the Institute of Technical Education. He then studied engineering at Singapore Polytechnic and later at NTU.

"Even when I first started university as an undergraduate, I had no idea if I could graduate," he said.