MIT To Make S'pore Its Second Home

Source : The Business Times, January 24, 2008

It could send 400 faculty and students here by 2010 for joint projects

Singapore is set to become the largest international research base for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), enabling the Republic to benefit from the American institution's illustrious track record of marrying teaching and research with innovation and entrepreneurship.

A tie-up with the National Research Foundation (NRF), in a research partnership called the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Smart), could see MIT send as many as 400 faculty staff and students to Singapore to work in local laboratories by 2010.

Smart was officially launched yesterday by NRF chairman Tony Tan at the Singapore-MIT Alliance International Conference 2008 and fifth International Symposium on Nanomanufacturing.

First announced in 2006, it is part of NRF's billion-dollar Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (Create) project, which was set up in that same year to enhance research know-how in Singapore through joint activities with research agencies worldwide.

Besides MIT, the Swiss research agency ETH Domain and Israel's Technion Institute of Technology have also been brought in under the Create programme.

MIT is no stranger to Singapore. In 1998, it established an academic exchange partnership here called the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) that helped advance Singapore's life sciences and biomedical economic thrusts. The level of partnership has now been heightened.

Dr Tan said: 'If the companies founded by MIT graduates and faculty formed an independent nation, the revenues produced by the companies would make the nation the 24th largest economy in the world.'

This showed the contribution that research universities could bring to the economy.

Smart will kick off with two 'inter-disciplinary research groups', or IRGs, to conduct research on infectious diseases, and environmental sensing and modelling. These research disciplines were chosen because they are areas where both Singapore and MIT can add unique value.

For instance, in the study of infectious diseases, Singapore can provide access to pathogenic bacteria samples that cannot be found in the US. In environmental sensing and modelling, Singapore's well-developed urban and toll policies will add insight for researchers.

Besides the IRGs, Smart will also create a new innovation centre linked to the Deshpande Centre for Technological Innovation at MIT, which helps take emerging technologies from the labs to the market.

Intellectual property from the joint research work in Smart could materialise in three or four years' time, said Thomas Magnanti, dean of the School of Engineering at MIT.

Prof Magnanti, who is also the director of Smart, added that three more IRGs will be mooted next year, with all five to be operational by 2010.

'Singapore will be a second home to MIT,' said Prof Magnanti.