Poly students develop game to teach cyber security

After scoring nine straight As at the O levels, Mr Kuriakin Zeng enrolled in a polytechnic.

Nine years later, he became the first student from his polytechnic to graduate from Harvard, with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Computer Science from Harvard College.

Later, he attained a business certification with high honours from Harvard Business School.

"I thought Harvard was out of my league, but it was my lecturers who believed in me and read through my essays... They even took the extra effort to write recommendation letters for my applications," he said.

Now 31, Mr Zeng has co-founded two companies - Cloudsolutely, a technology consultancy that drives innovation within small- and medium-sized enterprises and non-profits in Asia-Pacific, and Teleo, a team collaboration app that maximises workflow.

At Cloudsolutely, he is a partner, sales and product manager. At Teleo, he is a software architect and product manager.

Though what he does now seems different from what he studied in polytechnic, the Diploma in Electrical & Electronic Engineering graduate said the course taught him grit.

Mr Zeng said: "There were nights where I spent working on projects, but I think it was worth it... I also met a lot of people in school whom I still keep in contact with up to today.

"The systematic thinking and quantitative reasoning from engineering comes in handy even if you are not directly in the engineering industry."

He was offered an internship while in polytechnic, but Mr Zeng chose to lead 28 students to install electrical fixtures and a community hall for the underprivileged in the Philippines.

"I got to apply what I learned, but at the same time, I learned about civil engineering, which is outside my specialisation," he said.

He did not complete his first diploma because he had failed some subjects as he had no interest in the course, having taken it on his parents' advice.

He decided to complete his national service first, then opted to go for a different diploma programme, in Green Building and Sustainability, at another polytechnic.

That move ended up being the right one - from scoring C6 in mathematics at the O levels, Mr Ganesh Kunasehkaran, now 28, graduated from his diploma course this year with a near perfect cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.97 out of four points, winning the Course Gold Medal and the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew Award in the process.

Spurred to apply what he had learnt in school, in his second year, Mr Ganesh and five other coursemates entered a competition to design a sustainable community space for the Sky Park at City Square Mall.

Called the Green Sparks Competition, the competition was jointly organised by the Building and Construction Authority and City Developments Limited.

The team wanted to create a space that promoted a more inclusive society, and incorporated elements such as the Big Ass ceiling fans, which are regulated by temperature sensors, an energy meter display to raise awareness of the need for energy conservation and a solar tube that combines natural lighting and LED lighting among other features.

"During the competition we made use of Ecotect Analysis (an environmental analysis tool that calculates if the building is getting enough shade), which we learnt in a module, Green Building and Simulation, in school," Mr Ganesh said.

The team came in third in the competition, and it was an extremely rewarding experience for Mr Ganesh.

"I would say we had the upper hand because we had learnt about green elements in school, but we lost to the architects in terms of design," he said.

He added that, having taken an engineering diploma, he now has "versatile, analytical and critical skills that have a demand in the market".

His advice to incoming students: "Think about your career path. When you are in a polytechnic, you are also getting a taste of the industry."