Student Profile: The Deep Specialist, Ravin Raj

When Ravin entered NUS, he knew he wanted to study Physics. Even when he was a freshman, Ravin was always interested in natural phenomena and investigating in a lab setting. “I geared myself to try and explore as many subfields as possible, to try out as many opportunities for research as possible,” recalled Ravin. And that was what eventually drew him to the Special Programme in Science (SPS), where he found his interest in optics and microscope techniques - and he hasn’t looked back since.

Throughout his time at SPS, Ravin mentored fellow students and fine tuned his problem assessment, critical thinking and problem solving skills. Today, Ravin is planning for a PhD in Physics, and is a Graduate Research Assistant at the Centre for Quantum Technologies, where he and his team are building an experimental platform for cooling atomic strontium.

At the new College of Humanities and Sciences, Ravin is a Deep Specialist through and through - but that is not to say that an interdisciplinary approach to learning does not add value to his work. “In a very humble sense, any solution that I come up with is going to be very naive and narrow minded because I’m a specialist in my field. More often than not, a specialist will know how to take care of shortcomings in their own field. But it’s quite rare for someone to know how to build a truly multi prong approach outside of their field unless they consult someone. Usually when I speak to my friends and I get their knowledge that extends out of my field, I will come up with a far more different solution.”