Michael Haughey

 

 

This prestigious scholarship is now part of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan program and is available to UTS undergraduate students. 

 

“Even before I started studying at UTS, studying overseas and potentially even working overseas, is something that I have always wanted to do. This scholarship definitely made it happen.

 

I chose Singapore as there’s a very high standard of living, everyone speaks English, there’s lots of big company headquarters, and very reputable universities – Nanyang Technological University (NTU) being one.

 

NTU is very international, so making friends was easy. There were lots of exchange students from all over the place like Canada, America, a few Australians and a lot of people from China. I made some friends through my classes, but mostly where I was living on campus. 

 

All my lecturers were great; I think one of them even won an international teaching award. My teachers were all leaders in their field, and they all spoke very good English. I studied a range of subjects, some engineering and some science subjects. 

 

I completed my internship with ABB. I worked on a prototype of an energy intelligent system, which monitored energy and industrial applications. I built the prototype, wrote up software requirement specifications and engaged with lots of software developers, which was all new to me since my background was electrical engineering. There was one day where I got to visit the tourist island, Sentosa, and quote for the installation of a series of measurement stations all around the island.   

 

While I was at ABB I made a lot of good friends. I also interacted with lots of different companies and met senior employees of other companies. I also happened to meet the CEO of Siemens, and he mentored me in some ways. I made of lot of good contacts. Without the scholarship I wouldn’t have had these opportunities to network as much.  

 

Having international experience looks really impressive to employers and it has already benefited me. Not long after returning to Australia I was offered a position with CSIRO. They’re looking to internationalise a lot more now, so having that overseas experience definitely looks good. 

 

There’s lots of collaboration between Australia and Asia, with many companies headquartered in the Asia Pacific and headquartered in Singapore. So there’s a lot of strong cooperation between Australia and Asia. Even the collaboration between UTS and NTU has amplified, which may not have happened without this scholarship. 

 

I would definitely consider going back to Singapore in the future, possibly working over there and utilising some of my networks. I definitely encourage students to go to Singapore.” 

 

You can read more about Michael’s experience studying in Singapore on the UTS Global Exchange Blog.