Students now benefit from professor’s childhood fascination with building blocks

2002 McCook High School graduate Clayton Miller, PhD, is now a professor at National University of Singapore.

NUSNews

SINGAPORE — A McCook High School graduate and Fulbright Scholar is helping bridge the gap between arcane academics and real-world applications.

“It all started in my childhood, with Lego blocks,” said Clayton Miller, PhD., assistant professor at National University of Singapore. “I’ve always liked to build things.”

Today, he’s sharing that building-block approach with students who will put their computer coding knowledge to work in the manufacturing and building industry.

After graduating from MHS in 2002, Miller earned a degree in architectural engineering from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a master’s from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He worked for an engineering firm in Omaha before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to the National University of Singapore, studied in Zurich, Switzerland and received a master’s and a doctorate in engineering.

He is the son of Mel and Jerry Miller of McCook and recently married Tessa Tham of Singapore.

“There were so many sensors, models and 3D representations of buildings and just so much data generated in the industry, which people were really not utilizing. I felt they needed to pick up the skills necessary to leverage all this data, so I started giving workshops and transitioned into teaching,” recounts Dr Miller, adding that it was the free spirit of inquiry accorded by academia that drove him to pursue a Fulbright scholarship and a doctorate.

Read a complete article about Dr. Miller’s work here.