Ng Keng Meng

Ng Keng Meng
Division of Mathematical Sciences, School of Physical & Mathematical Sciences
Nanyang Technological University, SPMS-MAS-03-01, 21 Nanyang Link, Singapore

Biography

Dr Ng Keng Meng obtained B.Sc (1st class Honours) and M.Sc degrees from the National University of Singapore. He went on to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand where he received his Ph.D degree in mathematics in 2009. Dr Ng then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. He is currently Assistant Professor at the Division of Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Research Interest

Dr Ng’s main research interest lies in the theory of computation, particularly in descriptive and algorithmic complexity. His work strives to unravel the interaction between theory of computation and related applied logic topics. Dr Ng’s research revolves around understanding and classifying strings by their Kolmogorov complexity. A string can be classified as either random if it is incompressible, or trivial if it is highly compressible. Information which lies in between these two extremes can be analyzed using algorithmic dimension. To facilitate the development of methods to overcome problems in practice, Dr. Ng’s work explores different effective statistical tests. This involves understanding incompressibility and randomness, and exploring the relationships between triviality and computational power as well as algorithmic dimension and Kolmogorv complexity. He has also made contributions to the study of the degrees of unsolvability, effectively closed sets and the logical strength of the theory of enumeration degrees.