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BrightSparks Draws Strong Turnout of Over 600 Attendees at Its First In-Person Fair Since 2018

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The BrightSparks Scholarship & Higher Education Fair 2024 attracted over 600 attendees, exceeding expectations for its first physical event in five years.The scholarship fair introduced the overarching theme, ‘Live Big’, anchoring the event as a catalyst of academic possibilities with 15 exhibitors, including Changi Airport Group, Crimson Education, Defence Science and Technology Agency, and the National Council of Social Service.

SINGAPORE, Aug. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — BrightSparks, Singapore’s leading scholarship and higher education portal, announced the success of its Scholarship & Higher Education Fair 2024, held on July 27th at Summit 2, Suntec Singapore. This year’s event marked the anticipated return of a physical, face-to-face fair after a five-year hiatus bringing together a vibrant crowd of over 600 participants.

The fair’s theme, ‘Live Big,’ was introduced to inspire attendees to pursue limitless academic and professional possibilities. The event was a comprehensive platform for students and parents to connect with leading scholarship and higher education providers.

During the fair, participants engaged with professionals from diverse industries, received expert guidance on navigating scholarship applications and gained valuable networking opportunities with higher education and scholarship providers.

“We are heartened by the strong turnout at the BrightSparks Scholarship & Higher Education Fair 2024,” said Vinay Dua, Managing Director of Kariera Group Singapore. “The return to an in-person format provides attendees with a valuable, hands-on networking experience, connecting them with a wide array of opportunities and resources essential to empower them in their scholarship and higher education journey.”

The event featured 15 exhibitors and a series of insightful seminars. These included sessions from Changi Airport Group on scholarship and career opportunities, highlighting how individuals can make magic happen in every aspect of the business. In a panel discussion, Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) Scholars shared their scholarship journeys and work experiences, showcasing opportunities for growth and achievement.

In addition, attendees also gained valuable insights about making a positive impact in the social service sector and learned about the opportunities provided by Social Service Scholarships administered by the National Council of Social Service. Crimson Education also offered essential tips on applying for scholarships to top universities in the United States and United Kingdom.

“I attended the BrightSparks Fair to learn about the various scholarship opportunities being offered,” Granwyn Tan, a second-year Junior College student, shared. “The DSTA and CSIT scholarships are particularly appealing because of my background in engineering and computer science. These scholarships align well with my interests and career goals, as they focus on advancing technology and cybersecurity in Singapore. I am eager to contribute to the technology sector and deepen my knowledge in these areas.”

BrightSparks remains committed to enabling students to achieve their academic aspirations and providing comprehensive resources to navigate scholarship and higher education pathways. The success of this fair reinforces a strong foundation, further solidifying its vision as Singapore’s top scholarship and higher education portal with more exciting offerings to come in the future.

For more information on exhibitors and what they had to say about the fair, refer to Annex 1.

-END-

About BrightSparks

BrightSparks (https://brightsparks.com.sg/) by Kariera Group Singapore, is Singapore’s # 1 Scholarship and Higher Education portal. This portal offers Junior College (JC), Polytechnic, and Undergraduate students a wealth of information to meet their scholarship and higher education needs.  Established in 2004, the portal has since evolved into a cutting-edge platform that links aspiring scholars to an array of scholarship opportunities, allowing them to research, compare and apply for scholarships. BrightSparks also organises scholarship events such as the BrightSparks Fair, which provides students with the opportunity to interact with scholarship providers directly and gain valuable insights through exclusive seminars. It also publishes the biannual BrightSparks magazine that features scholars from various scholarship providers and produces the annual BrightSparks Scholarship and Education Survey Report.

Annex 1

Exhibitor Testimonials

“The BrightSparks physical Fair is essential for showcasing the diverse higher education pathways and scholarship opportunities available to students in Singapore. It offers invaluable face-to-face access to a wealth of information and resources, including details on university programs, career opportunities, scholarship criteria, and application tips. This direct engagement fosters trust and provides clarity that online sources often lack.

Moreover, the Fair is a hub for dynamic interactions and information exchange with reputable partners who are deeply knowledgeable about the educational landscape. These experts offer personalised advice, answer specific questions, and provide insights that help students and parents navigate the complexities of the admissions process. This hands-on approach empowers families to make well-informed decisions about their educational paths, ensuring they are equipped to pursue their academic and career aspirations with confidence. Ultimately, this will play a pivotal role in enhancing the standards of higher education in Singapore and nurturing the future leaders of the country.”

Joanne Gao, Country Manager, Singapore, Crimson Education

“We were pleased to interact with the attendees at the BrightSparks Fair and share about how they could be part of SkillsFuture Singapore and Workforce Singapore to contribute to and drive the growth of Singapore’s jobs and skills landscape.”

-SSG and WSG Scholarship Team

Featured Exhibitors

Changi Airport Group

Changi Airport Group (CAG) is the manager of Singapore Changi Airport, a leading air hub in Asia and one of the world’s most awarded airports.

As airport manager, CAG performs the key functions of airport operations, air hub development, retail and commercial activities, infrastructure development and airport emergency services. CAG also manages Seletar Airport, and through its subsidiary, Changi Airports International, it takes Changi’s presence beyond Singapore’s shores through consultancy projects and investments in foreign airports.

Employing about 1,800 staff across its diverse business functions, CAG was named the ‘Most Attractive Employer’ by Randstad in 2016.

National Council of Social Service

The National Council of Social Service (NCSS) is the umbrella body for over 500 member social service agencies in Singapore. Its mission is to provide leadership and direction in enhancing the capabilities of our members, advocating for social service needs and strengthening strategic partnerships, for an effective social service ecosystem.

The Social Service Tribe is a group of like-minded individuals, comprising of over 20,000 social service professionals working in over 500 Social Service Agencies, who share a vision of empowering everyone to live with dignity. Together, we make lives count.

EHL Hospitality Business School

For over 125 years, EHL has pioneered the methods of Swiss hospitality education and set the standards of excellence in this field. Today, we combine the Swiss values of academic rigor and industry practice with creativity and innovation for modern hospitality management degrees that prepare graduates to lead the future of the industry and the world. 

Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies

The Centre for Strategic Infocomm Technologies (CSIT) is a technical agency in the Ministry of Defence that harnesses cutting-edge digital technologies to meet Singapore’s security needs. 

CSIT is a member of the Defence Technology Community

Land Transport Authority

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) spearheads land transport developments in Singapore. We plan, design, build and maintain Singapore’s land transport infrastructure and systems. We aspire to strengthen Singapore’s land transport connectivity and integrate a greener and more inclusive public transport system complemented by walk and cycle options. We harness technology to strengthen our rail and bus infrastructure and develop exciting options for future land transport.

The land transport network has transformed significantly since the inception of LTA in 1995, with more than 160km of expressways spanning the island, an MRT network of more than 200 km, 120 km of cycling paths, and increasingly varied commuting options.

East Asia Institute of Management

East Asia Institute of Management (EAIM) had its genesis in 1984 as Informatics Software providing professional and vocational training in information technology. The company was restructured in 2001 to offer academic degree programmes and renamed East Asia School of Business. Consistent with our founding vision to be a world-class educational institution, we put in place, at the onset, robust structures, systems and processes, and established both the Academic Board and the Examination Board to ensure academic rigor of our programmes and integrity of our examination system. Over the years, EAIM continues to grow from strength to strength. Today, we are a private education institution (PEI) in Singapore, offering a comprehensive suite of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across major disciplines. In addition to our Diploma and Advanced Diploma programmes, we are collaborating with universities from UK, to offer Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree programmes. Our range of programmes includes Hospitality & Tourism Management, Business Management, Accounting, Finance, Business Information Systems, Marketing, Medical Bioscience, Psychology and many more.

 

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OceanBase Receives Honorable Mention for the Second Consecutive Year in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report

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SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — OceanBase has once again been named as Honorable Mention in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (Cloud DBMS), marking the second consecutive year it has received this recognition.

OceanBase offers scalable distributed database for data-intensive transactional and real-time operational analytics workloads, with ultra-fast performance and high compatibility across major global cloud infrastructures, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud. Operating across more than 30 regions in Asia, Europe, and America, OceanBase has already served over 2,000 customers, such as SAIC Volkswagen, DiDi Global, vivo, Pop Mart, Haidilao, Kwai, Trip.com, GCash, DANA, and PalmPay.

Over the past year, OceanBase has made significant strides in the Southeast Asian market. In December 2024, Starpay, a leading financial technology company in the Philippines, announced a partnership with OceanBase to leverage its cutting-edge distributed database solutions.

OceanBase hosted the inaugural OceanBase INFINITY tech conference in Jakarta, Indonesia in June 2024. During the event, the company announced strategic partnerships with leading local resellers to better serve customers in the Indonesian market.

According to Gartner’s latest DBMS market data in the Magic Quadrant, “the overall database management system market grew by 13.4% in 2023, reaching $103.2 billion“, up from $91 billion in 2022. The DBMS segment remains one of the fastest-growing areas within the software market, alongside analytic platforms, networking software, and supply chain management software.

In May 2024, OceanBase was also recognized as an Asia/Pacific Customers’ Choice and also named a Strong Performer in the 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Cloud DBMS report.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, 18 December 2024

Gartner, Voice of the Customer for Cloud Database Management Systems, 24 May 2024

Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER, MGAGIC QUADRANT and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

About OceanBase

OceanBase is a distributed database launched in 2010. It provides strong data consistency, high availability, high performance, cost efficiency, elastic scalability, and compatibility with mainstream relational databases. It handles transactional, analytical, and AI workloads through a unified data engine, enabling mission-critical applications and real-time analytics.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.oceanbase.com/

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Matwings Technology Raised Series A Funding of Tens of Millions USD to Redefine Protein Design

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‘Beyond Structure, Predicting Function’

SHANGHAI, Dec. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Recently, Shanghai Matwings Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Matwings’), a global leader in AI-driven protein design, announced the successful completion of Series A funding rounds, raising tens of millions of USD, led by Qiming Venture Partners.

Matwings is pioneering a new frontier in protein engineering with its proprietary AI-based general protein design platform, AccelProtein™, which directly predicts protein functionality beyond the structural data. By predicting functionality, AccelProtein™ offers a new approach for acquiring high-functioning proteins.

AccelProtein™ is built on the Pro-PRIME model, a breakthrough developed by a collaborative team led by Professor Liang Hong at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. After years of research focused on data collection, curation, and optimization, the team developed the Pro-series – an AI framework for protein design. Their work, titled “A General Temperature-Guided Language Model to Design Proteins of Enhanced Stability and Activity” was recently published in Science Advances.

A featured case of AccelProtein™’s impact is the design of a specialized Glycosyltransferase enzyme, which is used in the production of EPS-G7, a core material for pancreatitis screening. Within just 4 months, Matwings increased the enzyme’s total glycosylation activity by 7 times, enhanced product specificity from 60% to 98%, and reduced hydrolytic activity by 33%. These improvements cut down the cost of EPS-G7 by 90%.

In another application, Matwings successfully engineered a super alkali-resistant affinity ligand (a nanobody) for affinity chromatography, improving alkali resistance by 3 folds, binding capacity over 100%, and heat stability by 8℃. This innovation saved millions of USD in CMC costs for a Matwings client. Additionally, scale-up production to 5000L has been successfully completed. Such advancement enables low-cost affinity chromatography purification a viable option for a wide range of biologics, bringing more cost-effective solutions for drug production.

Since 2021, Matwings has successfully delivered over 30 protein-engineering and enzyme-mining projects either proprietary (e.g., Enterokinase, Carboxypeptidase B, KEX2 Protease, Maltogenic Amylase, Subtilisin, Protein A, PETase, T7 RNA Polymerase, and phi29 DNA Polymerase) and co-developed with our stakeholders. These projects span across various applications, including drug innovation, in vitro diagnostics, nutrition and healthcare, food and beverage, and green energy.

About Matwings

Matwings, founded in 2021 by an elite team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is one of the earliest companies to focus on AI protein models.

Matwings is dedicated to moving beyond directed evolution methods to design and engineer functionally optimized proteins by leveraging a proprietary, pre-trained, AI-based general protein design platform with 780 million curated full-length protein sequence data, including nearly 500 million private data.

This cutting-edge technology platform, AccelProtein™, enables us to engineer proteins and uncover or de novo design novel proteins with significantly improved properties, including stability, activity, affinity, yield, etc.

To date, Matwings has successfully engineered more than 30 proteins either proprietary or co-developed with its stakeholders, and more than 40 ongoing projects across various applications in pharmaceutical industries and synthetic biology industries, e.g.  key enzymes and proteins for CMC, innovative Biologics, synthetic biology and more.

Matwings is actively seeking global partnerships to jointly develop and commercialize new products.

Contact Information:
Email: info@matwings.com
Website: https://www.matwings.com/en/ 
Tel: +86 158 2106 5410
Paper Link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr2641 

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Agoda Highlights Tokyo as Top Global New Year’s Eve Destination

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SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has announced Tokyo as the most popular destination for New Year’s Eve, based on accommodation searches. This marks a shift from last year when Taipei held the top spot. Following Tokyo, the list includes Bangkok, Taipei, Pattaya, and Osaka, showcasing a diverse range of preferences among travelers.

The data highlights a perpetual interest in Tokyo, a city known for its unique blend of tradition and modernity. Travelers are drawn to its vibrant celebrations, cultural experiences, and iconic landmarks. Bangkok and Taipei, too, continue to be favored destinations, offering rich cultural festivities and lively atmospheres. Pattaya and Osaka also make the list, appealing to those seeking beachside celebrations and culinary delights, respectively.

Agoda’s data reveals Tokyo’s prominence not only on a worldwide scale but also within Japan. Domestic accommodation searches have increased by 23%, with Tokyo leading as the preferred destination, followed by Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, and Okinawa Main Island. For Japanese traveling abroad, the destinations primarily considered are Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, Pattaya, and Hong Kong.

Hiroto Ooka, Associate Vice President North Asia at Agoda said: “Tokyo’s rise to the top of Agoda’s New Year’s Eve destination list is a testament to the city’s global appeal. Whether you’re celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tokyo, Osaka, or anywhere else in the world, Agoda is ready to help you find the perfect spot to ring in the New Year.”

As travelers prepare for their New Year’s Eve plans, Agoda offers a comprehensive selection of over 4.5 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities, all available for seamless booking. Download the Agoda app for the latest deals or visit agoda.com/deals.

 

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SOURCE Agoda

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