CHUA CHEE KAI CALLS HIMSELF a true-blue NTI/NTU thorough bred. The associate professor who helms NTU's School of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering (MAE) said, “NTU holds many memories for me. I spent time here as an undergraduate, followed by graduate research. Now I am the MAE Chair.” That is a milestone for NTI pioneers! One of their own is holding a top post in the alma mater. Academia was not Chee Kai's first job. After graduation, he worked as a manufacturing engineer at Hewlett Packard (HP) where he did his industrial attachment.

“HP was a nice place to work but I was inclined towards academia,” said Chee Kai. He seized the opportunity to do research when the famed aerospace conglomerate Grumman International set up a computer-aided design and manufacturing centre in NTI. That was a stepping stone to joining the School of MPE as a lecturer. Chee Kai is aware of his far-reaching influence as an academic. He said, “It excites me to be able to mould Singapore's future leaders.”

Chee Kai is one of several NTI pioneers who returned to their alma mater to teach. They derive great satisfaction from imparting their skills and knowledge to students the way the founding NTI lecturers did. Low Kay Soon is a case-in-point. The associate professor worked on the first made-in-Singapore micro-satellite. The 106 kg satellite was designed and built on campus. Named X-SAT, the project was successfully launched into space in April 2011. It captured its first image of Singapore a month later. “It was satisfying to impart this know-how to students,” said Kay Soon who is the NTU Satellite Research Centre Director. The X-SAT project has foreign partners. They are India Space Research Organisation, German Aerospace Centre and South Korea SaTReCi.

Now, Kay Soon is supervising undergraduate and postgraduate students to build a 6-kg nano-satellite. His Satellite Research Centre focuses on satellite engineering research, in particular nano-satellite technology, remote sensing and communication applications.

There are other NTI pioneers at NTU. Peter Loh Kok Keong, who obtained his PhD from NTU, teaches at the School of Computer Engineering. He develops and teaches courses in software engineering, computing innovation.