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Mr Darren Nathan
Darran completed his secondary education at Woodlands Secondary, where he obtained 7 ‘A1’s at the ‘O’ Level Examinations. He had represented his school in National Air Rifle Competitions and was also a Prefect, Class Committee Member, and Computer Club Committee Member. He had also taken part in the Singapore Mathematical Society Mathematical Olympiad where he obtained a Bronze prize. As a result of his consistent academic excellence, he was awarded the Edusave Scholarship for the four years of studies.
Darran’s keen interest in computer technology and NgeeAnn Polytechnic’s cutting-edge research centres as well as strong links with the technology industry attracted him to join the Electronic & Computer Engineering Programme there. Continuing to dazzle in academic excellence as well as in ECAs, he was awarded the ExxonMobil Scholarship for his studies there. In the three years, he achieved an outstanding 26 distinctions and 3 ‘A’ grades. He also won 6 Module Prizes and 2 Semestral Most Outstanding Performance Prizes. At the end of his diploma course, he was conferred the three most prestigious achievement awards in NgeeAnn – the Creative Technology Gold Medal for being the Most Outstanding Graduate of the Electronic & Computer Engineering Programme, the Lee Kuan Yew Award for being one of the top three Best Technology Graduates, and the Ngee Ann Kongsi Gold Medal for being the Overall Most Outstanding Graduate of NgeeAnn Polytechnic. In addition, he was also awarded the Diploma with Merit, the Motorola Prize, Maxtor Prize, and the Citibank Prize.
Besides academic achievements, Darran also has an impressive ECA record. He was a peer tutor, a NgeeAnn representative at the Polytechnic Forum and the Prime Minister’s Reception at the Istana, and took up leadership roles in various committees. He was selected for overseas industrial attachment at the Speech and Image Processing Laboratory of the Dieburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany. And, he was selected for a trip to COMDEX Fall ’99 in Las Vegas, USA. For his active participation in extra-curricular activities, Darran was awarded the Gold Certificate of Achievement in ECA.
Darran has taken particular interest in the projects he continues to be involved in at Ngee Ann. His final-year project, involving the creation of an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation system software simulation, won a merit prize at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s final-year project competition. It was showcased at the international exhibition & conference event, BroadcastAsia2001.
After graduation, his keen enthusiasm for R&D led to him continuing to undertake projects at the DSP/DAB Technology Centre of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. He was the lead architect and developer for the project "Development of an Intelligent PC-based DAB Receiver", which incorporated several world-first features such as network streaming, audio/data recording, and intelligence behaviours, which have as a result planted a flag for Ngee Ann as being a leader in digital broadcast technology. This device was exhibited at BroadcastAsia2001, as well as at CeBIT 2001 in Germany. The industry partner for this project, Digital Wireless Systems, has received an initial order of 10,000 sets from a UK-based consumer electronics company. Continuing to build on his knowledge in DAB technology, Darran has been a coordinator for other projects at the DSP/DAB Technology Centre involving the decoding of DAB Data Services and an e-learning over DAB pilot test. He has also co-organised and given lectures in DAB courses for industry.
In spite of having to fulfil National Service obligations, Darran has continued to move further into advanced research. He served as a co-Principal Investigator for a project on Software Defined Radio (SDR), where he led an international effort aimed at developing a new architectural paradigm for modern broadcast and communications systems. Partners in this project include NP, NTU, Aberdeen University (Scotland), Fraunhofer Institute (Germany), as well as several independent consultants in the UK and France. This project was funded by the NSTB. The concept of SDR involves developing communications devices from a whole new perspective – one that emphasizes defining the device behaviour in software to run on general purpose hardware. The work being done has been envisioned to bring Singapore’s international standing to a new level to mark Singapore’s strength as being a worldwide leader in communications and broadcast technology, and seed an entire industry based around the Software Defined Radio concept.
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