Curious Learners in the Global Crossroads of Singapore

Singapore has long been a busy global port. Today the former British colony is also a bustling city-state with four official languages and about 6 million people living in an area slightly smaller than New York City. It’s also home to one of WPI’s newest project centers.

An initial team of four students went in D-Term 2024 with Jennifer Rudolph, the project center director and professor in the Department of Humanities and Arts. That successful pilot paved the way for three Interactive Qualifying Project teams in D-Term 2025.

“Given Singapore’s rapid rise as a tech hub, establishing a center here felt like the natural next step,” Rudolph explains. She plans to bring a full IQP cohort of six teams by 2027, expanding partnerships across the country.

The first partnership began with the National University of Singapore (NUS), where WPI students enroll while completing their IQPs. Students work with the university’s Engineering Design and Innovation Centre, a project-based program that pairs student teams with industry partners.

“What intrigued NUS about WPI is our emphasis on social science, societal stakeholders, and ethical concerns,” Rudolph says. “Their projects always have stakeholders, but NUS typically focuses more heavily on technological prototyping. We saw a lot of room for productive collaboration.”

This past year WPI and NUS students worked on the same project but approached it from different perspectives. Partnering with the National Gallery Singapore, they explored how to expand Strength Through Art (stART)—an emotional literacy program rooted in art.

Before traveling to Singapore, biochemistry major Emma Gemmill ’27 says she and her teammates researched how emerging digital technologies could support health and wellness. They studied haptic sensors for tracking heart rate and examined how AI and video games can boost self-esteem, reduce loneliness, and build problem-solving skills.

Eventually they focused their project on how to attract college-aged students to the stART program. They interviewed and surveyed dozens of NUS students, many of whom acknowledged the importance of good mental health and lamented that it’s not often approached in fun or creative ways. Then it clicked for Gemmill and her team: “We had that background research about video games and people said they want something fun and engaging, so let’s find a way to use our research and build off of what students feel they need.”

Their final recommendations centered on creating an event that Gemmill likened to a hackathon. Students who sign up would get “daily or weekly challenges that involve mental health and art.” It would be a low-key, yet engaging and creative way for students to explore their own emotional well-being.

The project may have felt approachable, though presenting it was anything but. As enrolled NUS students, the WPI team faced the same rigorous final presentation process as their NUS peers. “It’s an hour-long presentation with a big audience,” Rudolph says. “Two faculty who haven’t worked with the students act as examiners—and they ask a lot of challenging questions. The prep our students put into the presentation paid off. They shined.”

Although intense, the experience proved invaluable, Gemmill says. “We presented on the first day of our final week, so we had time to incorporate the examiners’ feedback into our final paper.”

Academic rigor is part of what’s earned NUS top rankings among global universities, and that prestige helped convince Marshall Wo ’25 to join the pilot team going to Singapore in 2024. In addition to being a strong mechanical engineering student, Wo has long been an avid tennis and soccer player. As he pursued extracurricular activities at NUS and explored the city beyond campus, the Rhode Island native realized how at ease he felt in Singapore. “My family is from Hong Kong, and Singapore has many different cultures—Chinese, Indian, Malay—but everyone speaks English,” he says.

That diversity is reflected in Singapore’s vibrant food scene, and clusters of outdoor food stalls, known as hawker centers, are located throughout the city. “Some days I’d just hop on the train to try a new food stall,” he laughs.

The seven weeks he spent in Singapore in 2024 turned out to be only an appetizer for Wo, who has now returned to NUS to pursue his PhD in biomedical engineering. He is, as many have been before him, a curious learner exploring the global crossroads that is Singapore.