17
July
2018
|
17:53
Asia/Singapore

Seen and heard this week

 

Seen and heard this week is a weekly column highlighting thought leadership from the NUS community

 

In a commentary in The Business Times on 11 July, NUS Business Associate Professor Mak Yuen Teen said that effective regulatory enforcement is important for the development of capital markets, with each regulator required to play its role. When shareholders and other stakeholders provide substantial evidence on alleged misconduct by companies, regulatory bodies should take such complaints seriously and carry out their own investigation, he said, adding that stakeholders who find their efforts in reporting possible misconduct going to waste will stop doing so, to the detriment of the market.

Principal investigator of Cooling Singapore — a research initiative studying the urban heat island effect — Assistant Professor Winston Chow from NUS Geography shared in The Straits Times on 12 July that a number of innovative measures are in place to lower the outdoor temperature in Singapore. This is demonstrated in the Marina Bay Financial Centre which has structures of varying heights to capture wind. However, he stressed that such measures have to be contextualised to specific sites and conditions. Asst Prof Chow added that the urban heat island effect had thus far been undervalued and that there are many benefits to managing it properly, such as energy cost savings and enhanced greenery.

It was reported in The Straits Times on 13 July that for the first time, the Institute of Systems Science (ISS) at NUS made its annual Learning Day part of the nation’s month-long SkillsFuture Festival. The fourth iteration of the Institute’s Learning Day featured eight emerging skills — data analytics, finance, tech-enabled services, digital media, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, advanced manufacturing and urban solutions. Mr Khoong Meng Chan, CEO of ISS, said that there is a pressing need to have more digital talent in every sector of the industry. Companies are digitalising their solutions to real-world problems and require their employees to have the skillsets for jobs of the future, he added.

Read more about the NUS community in the news.