From Digital Trust to Responsible AI and AI Safety

With the evolution of our digital society and economy from digitization, digitalization to digital transformation, there has been an increasing demand for digital trust and AI safety. In this talk, the Digital Trust Centre (Singapore) (DTC) and Singapore AI Safety Institute (AISI) are introduced as the national research centre to tackle this challenge. Positioning TrustTech as the enablers to realize digital trust, responsible AI and AI safety, the strategic TrustTech plan for DTC and AISI will be presented. Research projects in the centre were discussed, with open discussion for research and collaboration with UTS's AAII.

Presenters

• Professor Kwok Yan Lam, Associated Vice President (Strategy and Partnerships) and Executive Director of the National Centre for Research in Digital Trust (DTC), Nanyang Technological University
• Dr Chi Hung Chi, Senior Principal Research Scientist, National Centre for Research in Digital Trust, Nanyang Technological University

Bio of presenters

Professor Kwok Yan Lam is the Associate Vice President (Strategy and Partnerships) and Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Professor Lam Kwok Yan is a renowned Cyber Security researcher and practitioner. Professor Lam has collaborated extensively with law enforcement agencies, government regulators, telecommunication operators and financial institutions in various aspects of Infocomm and Cyber Security in the region. He is currently also the Executive Director of the National Centre for Research in Digital Trust (DTC), Director of the Strategic Centre for Research in Privacy-Preserving Technologies and Systems (SCRiPTS), and Director of NTU’s SPIRIT Smart Nation Research Centre. From August 2020 to August 2023, Professor Lam was also on part-time secondment to the INTERPOL as a Consultant at Cyber and New Technology Innovation. He served as the Director of the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center 2019-2022, and as Program Chair (Secure Community) of the Graduate College at NTU 2017-2019. Professor Lam has been a Professor of the Tsinghua University, PR China (2002-2010) and a faculty member of the National University of Singapore and the University of London since 1990. He was a visiting scientist at the Isaac Newton Institute of the Cambridge University and a visiting professor at the European Institute for Systems Security. In 2018, Professor Lam founded TAU Express Pte Ltd, an NTU start-up that specializes in AI and Data Analytics technologies for Smart Cities applications. TAU is a spin-off of the Intelligent Case Retrieval System project, a collaboration between NTU and the Singapore Supreme Court. In 1997, he founded PrivyLink International Ltd, a spin-off company of the National University of Singapore, specializing in e-security technologies for homeland security and financial systems. In 2012, he co-founded Soda Pte Ltd which won the Most Innovative Start Up Award at the RSA 2015 Conference. In 1998, he received the Singapore Foundation Award from the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in recognition of his R&D achievement in Information Security in Singapore.  Prof Lam received his B.Sc. (First Class Honours) from the University of London in 1987 and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1990. His research interests include Distributed Systems, IoT Security Infrastructure and Cyber-Physical System Security, Distributed Protocols for Blockchain, Biometric Cryptography, Quantum Computing, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity. In 2020, he authored a Technical Report on the “Application of Quantum Computers for Law Enforcement and Security Communications” for a Singapore Government ministry. Professor Lam is the recipient of the 2022 Singapore Cybersecurity Hall of Fame Award.

Dr Chi Hung Chi is currently a Senior Principal Research Scientist at Digital Trust Centre Singapore at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He obtained his PhD degree from Purdue University, USA. Before he joined NTU, he has worked in industry (Philips Research and IBM Poughkeepsie), universities (Chinese University of Hong Kong, National University of Singapore, and Tsinghua University), and national research centre (CSIRO, Australia) for more than 30 years. Dr. Chi has been active in basic science research and technology development and deployment. He has published more than 300 papers in international conferences and journals, 10 edited books, and he holds 6 U.S patents. He was program/general chair of more than 16 international conferences and workshops and keynote/invited speakers for more than 30 events. Technologies he developed have also been transferred into the industry successfully as startup companies. His current research areas include digital trust, AI safety, security and privacy preserving, data engineering and science, knowledge modelling, behaviour and cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Internet-of-Things (IoT), service and cloud computing. In recent years, he has been focusing on technology research and translation into real use case solutions for economic and social problem solving.