YL - The mentor

YL was featured recently on his office's internet website.
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Making a Mark as a Mentor

For Dr Lim Yuan Liang, Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS) from the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Emerging Systems Division, mentoring is more than just imparting knowledge. It is about believing in our youth and impacting them in a positive way. He shares some of his experiences throughout the seven years of his mentorship journey.

Yuan Liang has been mentoring students for a long time – so long that one of his first students has now become a colleague. “My very first mentee, a DSTA scholar back in the days when he was just a first-year student in Cambridge, is now a SMTS in our laser group!” he muses.
The student-turned-colleague is none other than Tan Beng Sing, also from APL, who has this to share about the man who was once his mentor: “I have very fond memories of my time as an Industrial Attachment student under Yuan Liang’s tutelage. In fact, my decision to work in APL after I returned from my studies was in part due to the very positive experience I had under his guidance for 10 weeks. Despite my limited knowledge in physics and mathematics at the time, Yuan Liang had plenty of trust in the work that I carried out, and my opinions were also considered seriously. There was mutual respect, and our ‘teacher-student’ partnership actually felt more like one between working colleagues. I can hardly feel any difference working with him then, and now!”

Yuan Liang’s mentoring journey first began in 2000; an active mentor, his students were mostly undergraduates like Beng Sing. There are two others who are now pursuing their PhDs.His passion for imparting knowledge to youth led Yuan Liang to participate in the Young Defence Scientists Programme (YDSP) in 2006. As the YDSP focuses on students of Integrated Programme schools, Yuan Liang relished the opportunity to engage these younger minds at a more formative stage of their education. However, he wanted more: “The duration of these programmes seemed too short for my taste. I believe that ‘real’ research cannot be completed in a short duration, without the proper grounding and background.” He formed this viewpoint while he was pursuing his PhD under the DSO postgraduate scholarship, when he was intensely focused on one particular research area for three years.

His wish came true when he got the opportunity to unofficially link up with NUS High School’s Physics department, through a contact passed to him by his programme director, Dr Teo Kien Boon, PD of Physical Sciences.

“They were only too glad to recommend their students to us, because their principal (Dr Hang Kim Hoo) was very supportive of external mentorship,” he says. NUS High School currently runs a research programme called AXIS, which allows its students to conduct Independent Research in their third and fourth years, as well as Junior or Senior Research Projects in their fifth and sixth years. The programme pairs students with industry mentors from the universities and local research institutions.

Without waiting for the official launch of AXIS, Yuan Liang and APL colleague Dr Phua Poh Boon jumpstarted an impromptu mentorship programme with three students from the most advanced batch of Year Fives. “With Kien Boon’s support, as well as the cooperation of teachers in NUS High, we started immediately. The students would get to be with us for at least a year, which I think is more beneficial to them,” he says.

Yuan Liang says his desire to become a mentor was drawn from his own experience. As an inquisitive secondary school student, he attempted to read further into scientific topics and subjects beyond his syllabus. However, whenever he had difficulties understanding what he read, he wished that he knew a highly trained scientist at the time to explain it to him. He strongly believes in nurturing the intellectual curiosity of children from young.

“After being a professional scientist for so many years, I am convinced that kids have the potential to understand advanced stuff, if only someone would patiently teach them,” he elaborates.

This enthusiasm for mentorship has also led him to actively seek out personal opportunities, apart from programmes such as Research@YDSP and the Science Research Programme (SRP). An alumnus of Dunman High School, he decided to approach the school independently and offer to mentor their students.

Currently, Yuan Liang has a total of 20 students in his mentorship pool – one from Raffles Junior College, six from NUS High (one co-mentored individually, and five with Poh Boon and Dr Lai Kin Seng, Head of APL), seven from Dunman High School, four from Raffles Institution (co-mentored with Kin Seng) and two DSTA undergraduate scholars. He meets this supposedly daunting cohort of students once every two or three weeks. For the younger students of secondary school age, the meetings often take the form of a lecture or tutorial, whereas he usually holds open discussions with the older batch.

He says becoming a mentor has helped him to learn to communicate better. “If you can explain things to secondary school students, you can explain stuff to older folks. At the same time, by trying many different ways to relate to them, the teenagers that I mentor enable me to ‘rehearse’ in advance for when my son grows up,” he says with a laugh. Along the way, he has adopted some of his teenage charges’ tools of the trade, communicating with them through the networking website Facebook, and SMS.

Gregory Lau, a fifth-year NUS High student, says his interactions with Yuan Liang have been very enriching. “I’ve managed to learn a lot from Yuan Liang, as he finds fun ways to present very difficult topics. He also encourages us to conduct self-learning outside of our sessions,” he says.

The mentorship journey however, can occasionally be a bumpy road. Says Yuan Liang, “There are of course moments where it can be difficult, as some of the concepts they have to grasp are quite advanced for them. I could be drumming in concepts from the third-year of university to third-year high school students, and sometimes they can get rather discouraged. I always tell them that they will finally understand if they persevere.”

“I have had my fair share of diverse types of students. On the whole it has been good. It was particularly nice when I received a toy bear and card from two of my YDSP students. Another student also asked me to help recommend books for him to buy and read because he received a book prize. That really touched me,” he says.

Part of his joy is that he also finds himself sometimes learning and discovering new ideas, alongside his mentees. “Thanks to some of my students, part of the solution to a difficult problem for our DSO Big Idea competition submission this year, was inspired from a discussion with them,” he continues.

Yuan Liang says he is now toying with the idea of mentoring students from schools outside of what is considered the “top” academic rung. “Many of these students could have the same potential as students from the top schools. For example, my colleague and good friend Poh Boon was from what you would call a ‘neighbourhood school’,” he explains.

“I feel that if I can give young students a very positive experience, then it would impact their lives. They would look back to DSO and remember it as the cradle for their scientific growth and appreciation. They would be our future defence scientists and engineers. Why? Because there was that somebody from DSO who mentored them when they were very young.”

Dr Lim Yuan Liang
Senior Member of Technical Staff
Applied Physics Laboratory,
Emerging Systems Division
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