Singapore 100 Women in Tech 2020

The Singapore 100 Women in Tech (SG100WIT) 2020 initiative celebrates women who have made significant contributions to tech in Singapore.

Join us to congratulate the two women from A*STAR who have made it to the inaugural SG100WIT list. Hear their stories and uncover how they have made a difference in tech so as to inspire more girls and women to join tech or develop their careers in tech.

Dr Yang Yinping, Senior Scientist, Principal Investigator & Group Manager, A*STAR’s Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC)

Teaching a computer to negotiate with a human or understand sarcasm could sound like science fiction, but this is precisely what Yinping did. Working in the area of sentiment analysis and social technologies, she and her team created highly-differentiated tools, such as a suite of sentiment analysis capabilities that could, when presented with linguistic information (say, a blog post or a social media message), help stakeholders understand the nuances of emotions that these messages convey, including the ability to accurately sense sarcasm. Cracking this Holy Grail opened the door to many interesting applications.

With COVID-19, her team’s social listening platforms are now being used, helping key stakeholders understand the sentiments of the general public (and across the world) with timely, accurate, and informative insights.

Dr Savitha Ramasamy, Scientist, Group Leader, A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)

Dr Savitha Ramasamy is a data expert who focuses her research on data mining, artificial neural network and artificial intelligence. She has been awarded the position of Senior Member by IEEE for her significant contributions and performance in technology (an estimated 100 publications in top international journals and conferences with about 1600 citations.

This also led her into the development of predictive maintenance solutions that helps Singapore Airlines avoid unscheduled aircraft component repair works (thus avoiding operational disruptions). Dr Savitha’s research also extends into healthcare applications aimed at chronic disease management that results in health care resource optimisation. Even while immersed in her research work, she takes time to mentor and supervise several PhD students from NUS and NTU.

Check out other articles in our Women in Science series here.