During November 2007, Prof. Alex C. Kot and his team from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) had successfully won additional research grant award from the Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) Mobile Computing in Education (MCE) Invitation for Proposal. The team’s efforts highlighted the technological development of the digital data format, the advantages of such a format in the future of the educational world, but also detailed a new method of securing of digital ink data.

The introduction of new data hiding method – ‘signature with signature’ - helps to prevent tampering in documents. In addition to the initial MSRA research grant, Prof. Kot and his team, together with his colleagues went on to secure further grants worth more than USD 240,000 on Interactive Teaching and Learning jointly funded by the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE), NTU and the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE). Recognising the team’s innovation and its importance, John Warren from the Microsoft Research Asia University Relations awarded a further research grant extension to ensure continuation of the research project.