Maximising potential

Dr Luu The Loi’s NUS PhD in computer science motivated him to kickstart his own company

Jan 10, 2019

It takes a special type of motivation to complete a PhD while managing a company, and Dr Luu The Loi has it.

The 27-year-old completed his PhD in computer science in 2017 at the National University of Singapore (NUS)
School of Computing, under the President’s Graduate Fellowship.

Prior to this, he graduated as the salutatorian from the Vietnam National University with a degree in
computer science.

Dr Luu is also the chief executive officer and co-founder of Kyber Network, a decentralised exchange that is housed on blockchain.

In his last semester, he completed his PhD part-time so he could start his company and focus on growing it.

Dr Luu shares his views on what drives him:

How did you first become interested in computer science?

I have been interested in programming, particularly algorithms, data structure and competitive programming since high school.

Back in the early 2000s, computer programming was something extremely new for a high school student in Vietnam, and hence I was interested in learning about it despite not knowing its potential.

What made you pursue a PhD?

Before completing my undergraduate studies, I had a chance to attend a short research internship at NUS in my third year at college and I totally loved the research environment at a top university.

As I found myself getting more involved in the cryptocurrency research and developer community, I decided to pursue PhD studies to spend more time working with other researchers and developers in the industry.

What plans do you have for the future?

Currently, I am fully focused on growing the decentralised ecosystem with Kyber Network and increasing adoption of our protocol.

Together with my team, I want to further enable decentralised payments and finance, and help create a world where any token is usable anywhere.