Excellence

Professor Lily Kong, President of SMU, has been elected as a Foreign Fellow of the esteemed Geographical Society of China, in recognition of her exceptional contributions to geographical research, particularly in urban transformation and social cohesion within Asia.

In a remarkable display of innovation and technical prowess, three second-year Computer Science students from SMU clinched the top prize at the prestigious Alibaba International Global E-Commerce Challenge, held at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou on 4 September.

In the 2025 QS Global Master’s Rankings, SMU's Master of Science in Wealth Management (MWM) and Master of IT in Business (MITB) programmes have been ranked among the best in the world.

SMU’s business case club, Team Cognitare, has continued its strong track record, this time clinching the title of Global Champions for the second consecutive year at the prestigious International Case Competition @ Maastricht (ICC@M).

SMU President Professor Lily Kong has been conferred the highly prestigious Royal Geographical Society Victoria Medal 2024 for conspicuous merit in social and cultural geography and in urban research.

Assistant Professor Andree Hartanto from the SMU School of Social Sciences has been recognised as a “Rising Star” by the Association for Psychological Science (APS). APS presents the Rising Star Award to outstanding APS members in the earliest stages of their research career post-PhD and recognises researchers whose innovative work has already advanced the field and signals great potential for their continued contributions.

Team Cognitare – SMU’s business case club – won the title of Global Champions at the prestigious Champions Trophy Case Competition organised by the University of Auckland in New Zealand, which exclusively invites winners of other high-profile international case competitions. This year saw Team Cognitare pitted against 11 other teams from around the world.

SMU Professor David Lo has been honoured as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM Fellows represent the most prestigious member grade in ACM, the largest professional organisation for computing, which boasts a global membership of 110,000.

SMU’s Industry Project-Based Experiential Learning (INDEX) programme, also referred to as SMU-X, won Gold and Silver at the prestigious international awards.

As a university, SMU has showed continued commitment to creating meaningful impact by engaging with the community and conducting research with direct societal impact. One of the most important considerations for multi-racial and multi-religious Singapore is to ensure that the diverse population lives harmoniously together – an area which overlaps with SMU Assistant Professor of Psychology Jacinth Tan’s research interests in social status and inequality.