Internship at Center for Maritime Studies – National University of Singapore
An Internship Report
I recently concluded my PhD internship, one of the requirements in the Integrated
Graduate Program that I belong to. I had the opportunity to have it at Center for Maritime Studies(CMS) in NUS from November 5, 2012 to February 1, 2013. It was the best place for me to conduct
my internship to meet my objectives being the following: (1) Widen knowledge about the field ofMaritime Transport, (2) Work under Professor Qiang Meng, one of the track leaders in the center
who is an expert in my field of research, maritime network design (2) gather research inputs fromother researchers and experts in my field.
Introduction to CMS
CMS is a research center specializing in maritime affairs, undertaking researches in areasof relevance to the industry. The center caters consultancy services to private companies and entities
seeking maritime knowledge and expertise. The center meets these demands by hiring researchers
most having PhD degrees in maritime fields from NUS and other notable universities, andsupervised by the NUS professor themselves. CMS receives its funding from both the NUS anddonations from the maritime community, which is one of the busiest and having the most advanced
port facilities in the world. Singapore has the busiest transshipment port in the world, being the2nd busiest in terms of total shipping tonnage.
The projects handled in the center are categorized into (1) Maritime Policy andManagement and (2) Maritime Operations and Modeling. Several projects are currently beingconducted, some of which related to policy forstowaways,

container

supportingIT

establishment

portsystems,
foroperations
andthroughput

anddatabaseandport

characteristics in East and South East Asia. Eachproject is led by a track leader and worked on by
one or two researchers.
The CMS building is a rather peculiar
one inside the campus, it perhaps the only
blue-colored, located at 12 Prince George's Park.
Activities during internshipTo achieve the objectives set for my internship I did the following:(1) Widening of knowledge about maritime transport by interacting with fellow researcher and staff
Since most of the researchers are of my age, it was easy to talk to them and discuss the projects
they were working on. I learned an overview in the projection of throughput in ports, in datacollation of port features and throughput, and design of transportation networks, among others, fromthem. I also attended the CMS seminar held every week of January, and learned more about what
the CMS projects are about.
One interaction that is very relevant to my research is with Mr. Hiroyuki Nishijima, a seniorproject leader and serving as a Managing Director of Japan Marina and Beach Association. He haspractical knowledge in port management thus I gathered from him good advices, and evenexplanations of basic maritime terms, giving me a good picture of how the shipping industry andports work. He gave me a contact working in JICA Philippines that could help me once I visit thePhilippines and conduct interview and survey in the ports.

The young researchers in CMS
During one of the discussion withNishijima-san(2) Research progress reporting to Professor Meng
Professor Meng includes me in his weekly meeting with the students he supervises. He calls a
meeting every week if possible, when he does not have any commitment overseas. The meeting is
conducted 30mins to an hour where he checks ones research progress, and sometimes a groupmeeting is held to facilitate discussion within students of the same research interest.
I am thankful I had the opportunity to be guided by Professor Meng since he gave me good input
and ideas to make my research unique. He had been a very good research motivator.
(3) Research presentation with the CMS staff as audience
I am very thankful to be given a time to present myresearch in the CMS seminar. I presented my research
entitled “Hub-and-Spoke Network for the Philippines”. Insummary, I aim to model a hub-and-spoke network for thePhilippines. I am going to use a cost minimization objectivefunction to locate the optimal location of hub ports.
Among the helpful suggestions I gathered are toconsider fixed cost in establishing a hub port in a certain
port location, and ideas in the programming softwares touse (e.g. CPLEX, Lingo).

Research Progress during the internship(1) Formulation of objective function – I drafted 2 cost minimization functions for my hub location
problem. The simpler one considers only single allocation (cargo flows from nodes are only
allocated to one hub port) and another one considering multiple allocation (flows in a node canbe allocated to more than one node). Other consideration in the function are use intermodaltransport (container vessels and roll-on roll-off vessels), variable discounts for the hub-to-hub
cargo flow, and serviceability (travel time). The models are adapted from the papers of
Skorin-Kapov et al. (1996) and Ebery et. Al. (2000), respectively.
(2) Use of Lagrangian relaxation – one of the techniques used in simplifying hub location problems
is by using Lagrangian relaxation to separate an objective function to two simpler objectivefunctions. I studied this technique and intends to implement this in my research.
(3) Programming with Matlab – I finally started working with Matlab and was able to make asimple program that could locate hub ports based on the first model mentioned in item 1 above.
However, this program does not work when the needed number of ports (29 ports) is used. Thus,
currently, I am working on the programming with Lagrangian relaxation to simplify the problem.
But the simple program previously made served a good practice in programming with Matlab.
Recreations during Internship(1) I enrolled in a yoga class.
(2) Toured Singapore and visited their tourist spots (i.e. Sentosa, Marina Bay Sands, Zoo)
Summary
The internship was a very fruitful experience for me. I am really thankful to be given suchopportunity, thankful to the CMS director Fwa Tien Fang for approving my stay and to Professor
Meng for the guidance, and to CMS staffs for being very welcoming.
I learned what other researches are being pursued in my field, which are more on the practical use
and in demand by the maritime community. I gathered good inputs from a network modeling expert
and other maritime researchers. And, I enjoyed learning the Singaporean culture and even myeveryday life in Singapore. It had been quite an experience.