Recipients of the inaugural HTX Undaunted Student Award. (Photo: HTX/Nicole Lim)
- Five STEM students win the inaugural HTX Undaunted Student Award
- Award is given out to those who “fail forward” and learn from their setbacks
- Award includes a scholarship award, an internship offer and opportunities to participate in upcoming HTX activities
Failure can be a tough pill to swallow, especially if we grow up conditioned to think of it purely as a bad thing that must be avoided at all costs.
But HTX is aiming to flip this narrative with the HTX Undaunted Student Award, which was conferred on five young STEM talents in August and September.
The premise behind this award is the same as the agency’s own Undaunted Award, which recognises Xponents who bravely overcome setbacks and learn from the failures in their journey to building solutions that keep Singapore safe.
“As the Science and Technology arm of the Home Team, HTX is cognisant of the fact that failure is merely part and parcel of the innovation process and isn’t something to be ashamed of,” said HTX Human Resource Director Lim Puay Sze.
“We introduced this new award for students because promoting such a mindset would benefit the development of the next generation of STEM talents in Singapore. When you openly talk about failure and what you learned, you help someone else not to go down that same path.”
The students with HTX Chief Executive Chan Tsan and HR Director Lim Puay Sze. (Photo: HTX/Nicole Lim)
Five students – Aneesh Bondugula and Neo Xuan Che from NUS High School of Math and Science, Shavonne Tok and Kenric Tan from Nanyang Junior College, and Dylan Ngyuen from the School of Science and Technology – picked up the HTX Undaunted Student Award, which comprises a scholarship award, an internship offer and opportunities to participate in upcoming HTX activities.
Applications for the first run were open to graduating students of three pilot secondary schools and junior colleges (JC), and the submissions showed how the applicants dreamt big, challenged boundaries, tackled obstacles and learnt from failures – all to advance science and technology.
We spoke to three of the award winners:
Neo Xuan Che
NUS High School of Math & Science
Neo Xuan Che. (Photo: HTX/Nicole Lim)
For three days, Neo Xuan Che found himself stuck. A simple sign error in his research on identifying small unknown interstellar fragments, or "ordinary meteors", had unravelled weeks of analysis. But the setback didn't faze the young explorer.
"I try to treat failure as information rather than a verdict," he said.
"The collapsed candidates and the sign error were, on hindsight, the most useful things that happened, because they exposed weaknesses that a clean run would have hidden."
He later rebuilt his methodology and added automated checks, version control, and tests on 20,000 synthetic trajectories before applying it to real data. He even consulted researchers from Russia, Spain, Thailand and the USA to review his approach.
Xuan Che (third from right) strikes the quintessential HTX pose with HTX’s Human Resource team and Director, xDigital Joseph Tan (second from right), who presented the award earlier. (Photo: HTX)
His hard work paid off – the project earned recognition on regional stages, including a Gold Award at the Thai Astronomical Conference.
“Most awards credit you for what you’ve achieved, but the HTX Undaunted Student Award acknowledges the times the project fell apart – something that almost never makes it into the final paper,” Xuan Che mused.
“That’s what makes this award so special.”
Kenric Christopher Tan Wei Zhi
Nanyang Junior College
JC2 student, Kenric Christopher Tan (right) – seen here at the award ceremony on 20 August 2026 with HTX Director, Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives (CBRNE) Centre of Expertise May Ong (centre) and fellow recipient Shavonne Tok – is recognised for his persistence in his research on cyanobacteria growth. (Photo: HTX)
As an individual interested in ways to conserve the environment, Kenric embarked on a project to study how different aeration methods would affect the growth of Synechococcus, a type of cyanobacteria that can potentially be used as biocatalyst in the production of clean energy.
Despite running into various challenges, such as a drop in water pH levels which put his collected data at risk, and difficulties in measuring the sizes of the bubbles generated, Kenric hardly panicked and swiftly took measures to address the problems.
A view of Kenric’s science project. (Photo: Kenric Christopher Tan)
He also kept an open mind and sought inputs from his mentor and peers, keenly aware that different perspectives are necessary in the quest for objectivity.
Undertaking the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT) also taught him a thing or two about failure. Though he did not fail the test, Kenric admitted that he had scored “significantly lower” than he had hoped for.
“This experience taught me that hard work does not always translate into the outcome we desire. More importantly, I learned the importance of accepting my limitations honestly, rather than allowing disappointment to prevent me from seeing things objectively,” he said.
“I realised that failure does not necessarily mean that my efforts were wasted, nor does it define my potential. Rather, it gives me an opportunity to recognise where I currently stand, understand the areas in which I fall short, and make more informed decisions about how to move forward.”
Dylan Nguyen Dang Khoa
School of Science and Technology, Singapore
Dylan Ngyuen (left), the only secondary school winner of the HTX Undaunted Student Award, receives the honour from HTX Chief, Disruptive Technologies Office Dr Jonathan Pan on 16 September 2026. (Photo: HTX)
To some 16-year-olds, the concept of failure may seem foreign. But to Dylan – the youngest of the HTX Undaunted Student Award winners – he’s all too familiar with situations when things don’t go as planned.
He recalled he once felt crushed after he was rejected from his school’s student leadership board. But he later discovered that there’s never just one fixed path to the goal as he could still lead in other areas of the school community. This lesson carried him through his research on thermoelectric chips – tiny devices that generate electricity from a temperature difference and can turn heat into usable energy – and turned what started as a single valid voltage reading in the physics lab into a complete set of usable data.
The journey was an uphill climb: an ambitious topic way beyond his physics syllabus that required weeks of self-learning, a custom measuring tool that kept failing, and making do with outdated lab equipment.
Dylan spent weeks troubleshooting when his initial set-up with an Arduino microcontroller to measure temperature, voltage, and current concurrently failed. He then switched to using a datalogger instead. (Photo: Dylan Ngyuen)
“But I was motivated to keep going by the feeling I knew I’d get once I could understand the concepts, get things working and achieve a breakthrough,” he shared.
His determination did not go unnoticed – it was recognised with the HTX Undaunted Student Award.
“To be the only secondary school student who received the award is a big honour,” he quipped.
Read the stories of the other two HTX Undaunted Award recipients here.
