By Lim Weng Khong
Bachelor of Computer Science (Hons),
Class of August 2005

Cambridge to me has always been a mystical place where scientific greats and literary thinkers expound their world-changing views.

This was my perception before arriving here and it still holds, but I have come to appreciate the other facets of Cambridge that may not be so apparent to an outsider.

For one, there is a strong intellectual atmosphere that pervades throughout the university no matter where you are. Everyone here is passionate about their respective fields and will not hesitate to talk about what they do over dinner. I have had many pleasant exchanges with academics working on fields as diverse as ancient Greek and theoretical physics.

The other thing that one will find in Cambridge is a more formal and ritualised environment. Colleges have formal dinners known as "formal halls" on a weekly basis (some have daily formals) where students wear formal attire and are served multi-course dinners by waiters.

Now try beating that for a college dining experience! In Cambridge, you will find that academic gowns are worn more often than just for convocations as they are also worn during formal halls.

What impressed me most, though, was the fact that most colleges have student-run bars serving alcoholic beverages.

One advice that I would give to anyone heading to Cambridge is to take part in a sport. The university takes sports very seriously. It was only after I took up rowing during my final term that I finally felt I was part of Cambridge. Other sports that are big in Cambridge include rugby and cricket.

Of course, there are other things to enjoy in Cambridge; the beautiful architecture of the college and university buildings, the immaculate gardens, the small-town atmosphere and a leisurely punt down the river Cam.

As a relatively small town compared to London, Cambridge suffers much less congestion; both in terms of people and vehicles. This makes it, in my opinion, a much nicer place to live and work in.

Besides, if one really needs to experience city life, London is only a 50-minute train ride away. So it is like having the best of both worlds.

I took the SPM in the year 2000 and proceeded to Tunku Abdul Rahman College where I took the Diploma in Science (Computer Science) course. After completing the course, I enrolled in UTAR for the Bachelor in Computer Science (Hons) course and graduated in 2005.

I then worked at a semiconductor manufacturing company in Penang before proceeding to Cambridge for my MPhil in Computational Biology in 2006. At the end of this year, I will be returning to Cambridge where I will undertake my PhD research in the field of genetics.

I started applying to Cambridge when I was in the final year of my undergraduate studies in UTAR. As with most other students, I had this impression that Cambridge was a very difficult university to get admitted to, especially considering the fact that I was in the first batch of students to graduate from a relatively unknown university.

Despite that, I proceeded with my application and received much appreciated support from several faculty staff including Dr. Robert Elok Tee and Dr. Tay Yong Haur, both of whom wrote references backing my application.

I received an offer to begin my MPhil in Computational Biology in October 2005 but as I missed the application deadline for funding, I was not able to go to Cambridge that year and had to defer my admission. I continued working in the semiconductor company in Penang,

I applied for funding in early 2006 and received a Cambridge Commonwealth Shared Scholarship. This scholarship covered both fees and living expenses in Cambridge and, thus, I was able to commence my studies in October 2006.

Coming from a background in Computer Science, my primary interest is the application of computational methods in solving real-world problems.

Over the past two decades, there has been a deluge of biological data, mostly due to the advent of high throughput gene sequencing and gene expression profiling methods.

This has far outpaced traditional biological analytical methods, and computer science has since increasingly become a vital component of biological research.

During my MPhil studies, I was attached to GlaxoSmithKline for my summer research project. I was able to work on developing new methods to analyse gene expression data with the aim of being able to link microRNAs to diseases.

This project was interesting to me because it involved equal parts of writing computer code and interpreting biological data.

For my PhD research, I will be continuing my research on microRNAs and hope to unravel the role that they play in gene regulatory networks and to explain how their aberrant expression can lead to diseases.

All in all, I am excited to be able to contribute my skills as a computer scientist in solving some of the most important questions in biology today. I hope that my research will yield new insights into how deadly diseases are triggered and how they can be prevented and treated.

On the whole, my experience in Cambridge has been a really positive one and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to work on cutting edge research and interact with some of the famous thinkers of our time.

Life outside of the academic world is not lacking either and I thoroughly enjoyed the various events that were held throughout the year such as musical performances, film screenings, museum open days and summer festivals.

If you are in doubt as to whether you will be accepted by the university or not, the only way to find out is to actually apply! You will find that the odds are not really stacked against you as long as you can demonstrate a suitable level of academic achievement and passion for the subject that you are studying.

The writer