Page 62 - Scholarship Guide Feb 2020

60 Wilson Chua Wei Cheng

are used to gain deeper insights and make
better planning decisions for a more liveable
environment. Knowing that my work will be
used well by others is enough to spark joy in
me.

Now then, what about you?

My group mates and I posing with the BrickPi rover that we built for a course project.

experience gained while working at URA is URA Scholarship
comprehensive and covers a great number of Wilson Chua Wei Cheng
subject matters (i.e. literally the full stack).
Age
In public service, developers can concentrate 22
on developing stable and meaningful systems,
and not worry about profi t margins. Indeed, Now
as an engineer, I would prefer to produce Bachelor of Engineering in Computing,
well-polished products. Driving a project and Year 2 Imperial College London, UK
seeing it come to fruition smoothly does leave
a great sense of satisfaction, after all. From
Springtime in Kew Gardens, with my family. NUS High School
Work at URA is fulfi lling in many ways. As
a software engineer, I fi nd the work highly
summer schools and external internships at diverse and dynamic. There are plenty
other fi rms during summer breaks is an aspect of varied spatial datasets, complex web
of the URA Scholarship that I fully appreciate.
applications, and intricate databases that
all require highly diverse technical skill sets
During last summer, I returned to Singapore
to embark on a training attachment at URA. to wrangle with. Software development
at URA naturally requires a deeper level of
Many might wonder about what kinds understanding on how urban planners work,
of ICT work URA has to offer (I know this as close interactions with end-users are
because I have been asked many times). necessary to continually improve projects.
URA’s Information Systems and Geospatial
Group specialises in bringing many of URA’s Compared to school projects where you will
be happy if you pass the automated code
systems to life. Some of these include public tests, now you are trying to make other
facing web applications such as URA SPACE, people happy. Challenging, isn’t it?
to internal tools that empower our planners.
Many of the experienced system analysts at
URA have deep knowledge and skill sets in Speaking about school projects, at the Imperial
College London, my fi rst year programming
different kinds of software, providing me with project theme was “making the world a
many opportunities to learn from them.
better place.'' We built and programmed a
rover that can be scheduled to move about
The challenges that system analysts face in
URA are quite alike most typical large ICT and do things, so we might have gone a little
off-topic. That however spurred me on to
businesses out there. It is diffi cult to develop consider the outcomes of what I will create.
applications that cater towards the user
experience, while maintaining large system As a future developer, I will be part of a team
architectures that have to deal with issues
such as scaling. As a result, the technical that creates digital tools for planners, which