Day 5 — Presentation
[to be updated]
On Day 5, each team presents the two deliverables it has built during the week: the 3-page research proposal and the poster (91 cm H × 150 cm W). After the presentations, we talk about what to do next if you want to keep doing research, and close with the surveys.
Schedule
All sessions are at NUS Innovation 4.0.
| Slot | Activity | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 2 hr | Final presentations | Lecture hall |
| End of day | Outro: what comes next | Lecture hall |
| End of day | Post-survey and closing | Lecture hall |
Deliverable: the presentation of the proposal and poster.
Final Presentation
Each team gives a short presentation of its proposal and poster to the room. AI Singapore staff evaluate the proposal against a provided rubric, and they will ask questions to check how sound it is. Be ready to answer clarifying questions about your assumptions and plan. A complete and clearly told story counts for more than polish.
Use the poster as your notes for the pitch, and walk the audience through it in the same order as its blocks. A good pitch covers:
- Problem: what goes wrong today, and for whom.
- Gap: what the existing literature has not answered.
- Research question: the specific question the proposal asks.
- Approach: how you would answer it, and how you would know if you were right.
- Expected contribution: what the field would know or have afterwards.
Expect questions about feasibility: whether the data exists, whether the plan fits the constraints, and what happens if the hypothesis turns out to be wrong. Agree beforehand on one person who is ready to answer those, so the team does not talk over itself.
Outro: What Comes Next
The programme ends today, but the proposal you wrote can be a starting point. Some ways to keep a research interest going:
- Email a professor whose lab fits your idea. Read two or three of the lab’s recent papers first. Then write a short email with a specific ask (a research assistant position, a UROP project, a meeting to discuss the idea), and attach your proposal to show that you have already thought through a problem.
- Apply for structured research programmes. UROP, final-year projects and research assistant positions are the usual ways in as an undergraduate. Your proposal and poster are concrete things to show when you apply.
- Keep the reading habit. Follow the venues listed in the reading advice, and keep your Zotero library alive by adding papers as you read them.
- Join a community. Reading groups and communities such as Singapore Youth AI are a good way to keep reading with other people and to hear about new opportunities.
- Turn the proposal into a real project. If your team is still interested in its idea, ask your mentor whether they would supervise a small version of the experimental plan.
If you would like to join future iterations of this programme, register your interest here.
Post-Survey and Closing
To wrap up the programme, mentees and mentors complete the post-programme self-assessment and the mirrored inter-rating surveys. These are the counterpart to the Day 1 pre-survey. We use them to see how the programme can be improved.