Academic Highlights 2009 

Executive Summary | Vision and Mission | About NTU | Strong Research Impetus | Ensuring Quality Control | Undergraduate Education | Postgraduate Education | Research Intensity and Competitivity | Research Centres of Excellence (RCEs) | Innovation | International Networking | University Strategic Initiatives | Research Infrastructure

Executive Summary

  • In pursuit of its vision and mission to become a great global university founded on science and technology, NTU has been taking many new initiatives in order to achieve this goal. Now we are internationally recognised as a modern research-intensive university, with strong technological base and traditions, and a highly rated business school. NTU is one of the biggest engineering Colleges in the World and we are becoming more comprehensive as we rapidly build up our reputation in advanced natural sciences together with an innovative Arts and Humanities capabilities, something rarely found in association with science and technology.

  • We are an international university in all respects recruiting both undergraduate and graduate students from many countries, not only in S E Asia and in terms of faculty recruitment we have people from well over 40 countries.

  • We are highly ranked in both World and Asian terms and are currently ranked 14 in Asia and our Business School is ranked 24 in the World by the Financial Times in respect to our MBA programme.

  • Over the past few years the University has been re-structured into four major Colleges and a series of autonomous institutes.

  • We are a residential university operating on a multi-campus basis.

  • Currently, we are in advanced discussions to establish a Medical School at NTU which will bring together medical science and education alongside our strength in engineering.

  • There has been a renewed impetus given to research, stimulated in part by the recruitment of leading scientists and technologists from across the World. These leading figures will nucleate advanced research groups in forefront area.

  • The university is fully committed to the development of multidisciplinary research in many areas of research endeavour. This is aided by our own Institute of Advanced Studies which can form the core of such work, especially in the area of complexity research.

  • We do not neglect quality control which is essential to ensure that what we do is always benchmarked against the best international standards.

  • We have established our own high level international advisory body – the NTUR ‘Research Council’, all our major projects are expected to have high level international advisory panels and our Appointments, Promotion and Tenure process for faculty is extremely rigorous.

  • In undergraduate education, we have seen a rise in the qualifications of the students admitted to NTU.

  • We have reviewed our undergraduate education system to ensure that it can provide a new basis for learning centred around small group learning and with a broad educational base, without neglecting the high standards expected of a World leading university. This is an ongoing project which will also make use of the latest pedagogic approaches supported by technology. The aim is to broaden the choice available to our students including overseas exchange and also the potential to carry out research within one’s undergraduate programme.

  • We have dramatically increased our graduate student enrolment especially for PhDs and are now recruiting students from a wide variety of countries beyond our local region, China and India. Our aim is to have an annual intake of 600 doctoral students each year.

  • We are now able to offer joint PhD programmes with Imperial College London, the Technical University of Munich, KAIST and other agreements are being negotiated. In the case of Imperial College, this is the first ever such joint PhD agreement that it has signed with an overseas university and is a significant mark of confidence in NTU.

  • We are becoming increasingly competitive in winning research funding, not only in Singapore but also internationally.

  • We have introduced a highly competitive junior faculty recruitment scheme, the Nanyang Assistant Professorships and this have attracted several hundred very bright candidates from some of the leading institutions in the World.

  • In the National Research Foundation’s prestigious Research Fellowship programme (in which the selected candidates receive a start up grant of $US 1.5 million) we have been outstandingly successful with 5 out of 10 award holders in the first year and 8 out of 10 in the second year choosing NTU as their host institution.

  • Together with the NAPs, this means that we have recruited nearly 30 additional top notch young faculty to our ranks over the past two years.

  • We have gained one Research Centre of Excellence in the Call for proposals for these major investments of $S150 million over 10 years. The RCE is in earth sciences -  the Earth Observatory of Singapore –  directed by some of the World’s leading Earth scientists in earthquake studies, tectonics and volcanology.

  • In innovation, we have established the first Kauffman campus for entrepreneurship education in Asia and continue to develop our educational programmes in this area.

  • Recently, we have been recently awarded $S 6.5 million to establish new innovation opportunities and we encourage and develop a wide variety of start-up companies.

  • We are a partner of choice for many leading technologically based multi-national companies based in or relocating to Singapore.

  • We strongly believe in the international networking of universities and have led the creation of the Global Alliance of Technological Universities bringing together major intuitions from Asia, Europe and North America.

  • We have led the establishment of the EU Centre for Singapore which is hosted at our One North campus.

  • We are continuing to develop partnerships across the globe with many World leading institutions.

  • We are creating many new strategic research initiatives, the most prominent being the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI), the Institute of Media Innovation (IMI) and the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N). We also have new initiatives in structural biology and in Environmental Life Sciences and Engineering.

  • To support the new research ‘push, we are committed to provide some of the best research infrastructures available to a university. These include High Performance Computing, Structural Genomics facility, a NanoFabrication Centre and a major analytical and characterisation facility.

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Vision and Mission:

Vision: To be a great global university founded on science and technology
 
Mission: Nurturing creative and entrepreneurial leaders through a broad education in diverse disciplines

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About NTU:

Recognition

    • We are internationally recognised as a modern research-intensive university, with strong technological base and traditions, and a highly rated business school.

One of biggest engineering Colleges in the World now becoming a more comprehensive university

    • NTU is  one of the biggest engineering Colleges in the World and we are becoming more comprehensive as we rapidly build up our reputation in advanced natural sciences together with an innovative Arts and Humanities capabilities, something rarely found in association with science and technology. In addition, we have one of the region’s leading Business Schools and Singapore’s only School of Communicationa and Information (media and journalism)

An international university

    • Our undergraduate student body is predominantly drawn from Singaporean citizens and Permanent Residents, as befits a leading national university, but it also welcomes students from many other countries, especially from the ASEAN region and other parts of Asia.
    • At the postgraduate level, the majority of our students come from outside Singapore and we have an international intake of research students
    • Our faculty are drawn from over 40 countries worldwide and this produces a diversity of views, backgrounds and cultures , all adding up to a vibrant and stimulating campus

Highly ranked overall as 14 in Asia and 24 worldwide in Business Schools
    • NTU is ranked 14th in the first ranking of Asian universities made by the compilers of the Times Higher Education (THE) - QS World University Rankings. In addition, the Nanyang Business School's  (NBS)MBA programme has jumped more than 20 places to be ranked 24th among the top MBA programmes worldwide in the Financial Times 2009 Global MBA Rankings, the highest achieved by a Singapore institution so far. This year's ranking places NBS in the league of the elite business schools worldwide.

New Structures
    • Since 2007, under President Su Guaning, NTU has adopted a Provost system for the management of academic matters. The first Provost of NTU is Professor Bertil Andersson, a world leading biochemist and formerly Chief Executive of the Euroopean Science Foundation and Rector of Linköping University in Sweden. He is a currently a Trustee of the Nobel Foundation and former Chair of its Chemistry Committee.
    • Provost Andersson is supported by two Associate Provosts, Professor Er Meng Hwa, Senior Associate Provost in charge of undergraduate education, and Professor Lam Khin Yong, who looks after graduate education and special projects.
    • The university is structured under four broadly based Colleges:
Alongside them we have the autonomous institutes:

New pan-university strategic platforms have also been created

Multi-campus University
    • The main campus for NTU is the Yunnan Garden Campus, a beautiful semi-rural and tropical setting in the west of  Singapore Island, donated by the Hokkien Clan Association. This more than 200 hectare campus is home not only to the academic complex of the university but also to our students, as we are a largely residential university, as well as many of our staff. NTU also has campus at One North, Singapore’s research hub containing Biopolis and Fusionopolis of the A*Star institutes. Additional NTU laboratoies are also being based in Biopolis and NTU will also have a presence in the future CREATE campus. At One North, the campus houses that Confucius Institute, the EU Centre in Singapore and the NTU Centre for Continuing Education (lifelong learning).

Medical School
    • After many months of intensive work, a proposal for a Medical School at NTU, in collaboration with the Tan Tock Seng Hospital as its clinical base, and in response to a request from the Ministry of Education, has been formally submitted it to the Ministry. The proposal was prepared by a Task Force, led by Professor Jan Carlstedt-Duke, former Dean at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, who is the Director of the Medical School Project. Our proposed international partners are Imperial College London (UK), the University of Sydney (Australia), the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and the University of Warwick (UK).

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Strong Research Impetus

New Research Focus
    • Research and education are the raison d’être of a university and go together hand in hand. We have made huge strides in revving up our research in recent years. This parallels the immense strides of Singapore in turning itself into a knowledge-based economy. Research and teaching are intimately linked and we know that the best researchers are usually the best teachers inspiring their students with the enthusiasm for forefront knowledge that they themselves have.

Attracting Top Faculty to NTU
    • It is the norm that the leading professors act as nuclei for the aggregation of other researchers and especially the brightest post-doctoral fellows and research students. We already have an excellent faculty and are strengthening this further by bringing top calibre people from around the World, in keeping with our strong international persona. We are rapidly building up leading research groups in many of our core strategic areas. Bringing such ‘big elephants’ is a rapid means of creating such nuclei of research excellence. Examples of some of these key recruitments are listed below:
    • Professor Maria Michel-Beyerle, from the Technical University of Münich, now in the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences working on electron transfer mechanisms especially in protein and similar molecules;
    • Professor Kang Jun-Koo, formerly the MSU Federal Credit Union Endowed Chair in Financial Institutions and Investments at Michigan State University in the Nanyang Business School;
    • Professor Pär Nordlund from the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, who will be responsible for establishing a new structural  genomics laboratory around which we shall create a Graduate School in Life Sciences;
    • Professor Staffan Kjelleberg from the University of New South Wales and Professor Yehuda Cohen from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, both World leaders in environmental life sciences, who will be developing a new laboratory in environmental bio-technology;
    • Professor Bo Liedberg, Linköping University, Sweden, who has been at the forefront of the development of the BioCore approach and will be developing a new bio-sensors activity at NTU;
    • Professor Nadia Thalmann, Univ. of Geneva, Switzerland , who founded the MIRALab  which works on the electronic representation of the human form and its movements;
    • Professor Kerry Sieh, California Institute of Technology, USA, a leading earthquake geologist who has worked extensively in the Banda-Ach region of Indonesia;
    • Professor Chris Newhall, ex US Geological Survey, USA, who studies volcanic processes, with a focus on pre-eruption processes that control whether, when, and how explosively a volcano will erupt and who has previously developed the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI);
    • Professor Paul Tapponnier, Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris France, is the most influential and accomplished neo-tectonicist of his generation responsible for major discoveries in Tibet;
    • Professor Chiu Chi-yue, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, research focuses on cultures as knowledge traditions and the social, cognitive, and motivational processes that mediate the construction and evolution of social consensus. He also studies the dynamic interactions of cultural identification and cultural knowledge traditions and their implications for cultural competence and intercultural relations.
    • Professor Hong Ying-yi, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, research interests include culture and cognition, self, identity, and intergroup relations;
    • A/Professor Christos Panagopoulos, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University, UK, focuses on condensed matter systems with spontaneous tendencies toward complex electronic pattern formation at a range of temperatures especially close to absolute zero;
    • Professor Rudy Marcus, California Institute of Technology, USA, Nobel Chemistry Prize-winner for electron transfer.

New Interdisciplinary Approaches
    • New structures and policies have been introduced to encourage and foster inter- and multi-disciplinary research activity and to create critical mass. The juxtapositioning of arts and humanities alongside business, the natural sciences and engineering brings fresh perspectives and the scope for really interdisciplinary and novel research. This is especially important in interactive digital media, energy research, environmental and water technologies, risk management and maritime studies, to mention just a few exciting areas. They build on and leverage areas where NTU is at the forefront of scholarship, and encourage the Colleges and autonomous institutes to bring their expertise into new inter-disciplinary activities.
    • To this end NTU has also created the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), headed by Professor K K Phua. The IAS provides support to bring leading researchers and Nobel Prizewinners to NTU and who can interact with both staff and students. Through the Lee Kong Chan bequest, we are able to invite Nobel Prizewinners to NTU. For the future, this will be developed in a more systematic way covering the whole range of the Nobel Prizes, including Economics, Literature and Peace. IAS also partners other eminent institutions including the  Physics Summer School of Les Houches, France.
    • As part of the drive to encourage inter-disciplinarity, NTU has held an advanced workshop on complexity to celebrate the 80th Birthday of Professor John Holland (University of Michigan), the ‘father’ of genetic algorithms. This conference was held in partnership with the Santa Fe Institute in the USA and the Institute Para Limes in Europe. It is hoped that one outcome will be the further development of complexity studies in NTU and an ongoing partnership with Santa Fe and Para Limes.

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Ensuring Quality Control:

Internal NTU ‘Research Council’
    • All academic organizations need a system of independent peer review to uphold standards. Within NTU, a Research Council (NTURC: NTU Research Council), together with a system of disciplinary sub-committees, has been formed to function as the independent peer review structure for the university.  The NTURC comprises the Chair, Professor Bengt Nordén (Chair of the Department of Chemistry, Chalmers University and recent past Chair of the Nobel Chemistry Committee), and the 6 Chairs of the respective sub-committees.  The NTURC is the final authority in deciding the technical merits of research proposals for short-listing and in making recommendations to the Provost.

Click here to view Structure of the NTU Research Council

International independent review of research centres

    • The Inter-School Research Centres in NTU were established since 1981 and the number of such Centres has grown from an initial 7 to the current 43 centres. Over the years, as the University has moved towards a research intensive environment, the Centres have also evolved.  It is thus an opportune time for the Management to conduct a comprehensive review of these Centres to ascertain their viability and to determine if the Centres should continue to operate in its current mode.
    • The review will be conducted in 5 groups, classified based on their disciplines. Please click here for details on the groupings.

International advisory groups for major activities
    • All our major research activities are encouraged to have top level international advice from World leading researchers in guiding and steering the research.

Rigorous APT process
    • The change of faculty tenure from age 55 to 65 has enabled a very comprehensive review of all our faculty members. This commenced in 2007 further tranche of cases being dealt with from late 2008 into 2009. This major change in faculty employment policy has enabled the university to conduct a thorough review of its major intellectual capital based on the best international practice. This is a complex, lengthy, rigorous and transparent process which ends with recommendations to the Board’s Academic Advisory Committee. The review has created the capacity for new recruitment, especially bright young academics and more senior people, with established and substantial research and teaching achievements.

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Undergraduate Education:

Numbers
    • Our undergraduate enrolment has grown more than 40% in the last five years but is expected to stabilise in the coming years. For this Academic Year 08/09, we received a record number of applications for undergraduate studies and there was a healthy growth in the subscription rate. There is also a strong improvement in the intake quality of ‘A’ Level and Polytechnic diploma holders. In addition, good responses were received from top students to the new programmes that have been introduced.

Click here to view Overall Applications AY2006 to AY2008
Click here to view Subscription Rate for AY2006 to AY2008

Blue Ribbon Commission on Undergraduate Education (BRC)

    • A review of undergraduate education has been conducted by a Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Undergraduate Education appointed by NTU President.  Chaired by Professor Haresh Shah, Emeritus Professor of Stanford University and a member of NTU Board of Trustees, the Commission carried out a bottom-up review of undergraduate education philosophy for NTU undergraduate programmes, to develop guiding principles and guidelines for revamping our undergraduate curriculum as well as developing future programmes. The Commission, comprising faculty, alumni and members of Board of Trustees, spent eight months on its work, and submitted its final report in April 2008. It undertook exhaustive background research, reviewing relevant studies in North America and a study tour to European universities.  Extensive consultations have taken place, both formal and informal, with faculty, students, alumni and senior government officials. The University has accepted the report and has now moved into an implementation phase for the recommendations of the Commission.  The BRC has recommended that we again look at the breadth of education offered together with a reduction of Academic Units required so that students will have more time for a broader learning experience. This will be linked to small group teaching plus new and substantial investment in new technologies and pedagogies for teaching.

Improving teaching standards
    • This latest review of undergraduate education follows the successful implementation of the New Undergraduate Experience (NUE) since 2003. The NUE has provided breadth and choice for our students. With the development of overseas student exchanges, Global Immersion Programme and the University Research on Campus (URECA) programme, many students have benefited from the broadening and new skills acquired as well as the experience in research and overseas exposure.
    • Three new, inter-disciplinary undergraduate programmes were introduced during the year: a double degree in Engineering and Economics, a double degree in Accountancy and Business, and a degree programme in Linguistics and Multilingual Studies.  Our current programmes have also been updated and refreshed to ensure they remain relevant to needs in the industry. For example, the Applied Physics programme now includes instruction in innovation and technopreneurship, which will equip students with entrepreneurship skills to supplement their strong technical know-how. The Nanyang Business School added Business (IT) majors to its curriculum, positioning future graduates for the increasing demand for business-IT skills in the financial services sector. In addition, students are also encouraged to choose from a wide range of minors outside their areas of specialisation. A recent addition is the Minor in Chinese Herbal Medicine.

‘Cool campus’

    • “Cool Campus” is a technologically advanced campus environment for students, faculty and staff. For students, learning and collaboration with professors and fellow students takes place anytime anywhere on a high speed broadband wireless network and IT infrastructure. They can download lectures and learning material, conduct interactive discussions and stays connected with friends anytime. For professors, it allows them to achieve teaching in the most effective manner and makes most effective use of their time in their academic pursuits. For staff, it provides them with the means to deliver the best administrative services in support of the university goals. Together “Cool Campus” aims to create a vibrant campus that will create a competitive advantage for the university. The initiative is already  underway with an a Cool Campus essay contest and with several focus group sessions amongst students being held to identify what in students see as constituting a ‘Cool Campus’. The project team is in the process of consolidating and refining the ideas as well as seeking technology inputs and proposals from technology vendors. Within a renewed emphasis on e learning, we are always seeking improvements and the most recent development has been in the widespread deployment of ‘Clickers’ to improve interactivity, especially within the larger classes. This has been welcomed by teachers and students alike. For more information on technology based educational development, please click here.

      For more information on Undergraduate Admissions, please click here.

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Postgraduate Education:

Increasing numbers especially PhDs - Numbers and ambition
    • Graduate education is important with the greater emphasis being placed on research and upgrading at the national level. To support growing research activities, we are align our postgraduate programmes, especially at the PhD level,  with our research directions and priorities.
    • We are concurrently phasing out Masters by research programme as a terminal degree. We will also need to review the breadth, quality and cost-effectiveness of our Masters by coursework programmes, which are geared towards the needs of industry and business.
    • We aim to double PhD enrolment from just less than 2,000 now a new steady state of 2400 eventually aiming to reach 4,000 by 2012.This will bring the ratio of PhDs to undergraduates to levels comparable to those of leading American and European research universities.
    • We are especially concerned to provide for our own citizens and, during 2008, we have introduced the prestigious Nanyang President’s Graduate Scholarship for graduates and final-year students to read PhD at NTU. These scholarships, aimed principally at attracting Singaporean students to pursue a research career, are bond-free and carry a higher stipend than other scholarships together with other benefits and are restricted to those graduating with First Class Honours.
    • In addition, through our undergraduate research programme, URECA (Undergraduate Research Experience on Campus), undergraduate students are able to undertake research projects and produce publications or patents. This is one way of cultivating interest in a research career.

      For more information of Graduate Admissions, please click here.

Open to worldwide recruitment
    • NTU is particularly proud of its ability to attract students from many parts of the World, and not just from S. E. Asia, China and India. Through the SINGA scheme, we have attracted students from Eastern Europe and Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere. 90 students on this scheme joined us in Academic Year 2008.
       Joint and Double PhDs.
    • NTU is the research partner of choice in many universities and this is now also being reflected in the development of Joint and Double PhD programmes. These involve co-supervision between faculty members in the two universities concerned with the student spending substantial time at each institution. Recently we have signed Joint PhD agreements with Imperial College London, the Technical University of Munich and with KAIST in Korea. In the case of Imperial College, this is the first agreement signed with an overseas university and we are proud of the confidence shown in NTU by this move.

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Research Intensity and Competitivity:

Increased success in competitive funding in Singapore
    • We are becoming increasingly competitive in gaining external grants and we have become the leading institutional recipient of awards in some funding competitions. This includes success in the National Research Foundations prestigious Competitive Research Programme awards where grants of up to $10M are made. Recently, out of 13 grants awarded in the NRF-IDM-MDA July 2008 Grant Call, we gained 10 of these awards. We are confident that we can continue to maintain this trend.  In the Research Centre of Excellence competition, and following on from the success of the Earth Observatory of Singapore award in 2007/08, we had one of the three proposals short-listed in 2008 and have been invited to re-submit this proposal in 2009. This is all very encouraging and shows the inherent skills and aptitude of our faculty in a competitive environment.

      This competitivity is demonstrated in the attached tables.

      Click here to view Competitive Grants Awards
      Click here to view FY 2008 & 2007 Competitive Grants Awards

Gaining grants from overseas

    • In addition to success in gaining awards from Singaporean grant agencies, we have also had success in overseas competitions. Especially in advanced technology, our faculty members have been able to secure very competitive grants from US DARPA.

Nanyang Assistant Professorships (NAPs)

    • In 2007, we introduced the Nanyang Assistant Professorships (NAPs) as a means of recruiting bright young faculty to NTU from all over the World. These are in addition to our normal recruitment (which now always includes a substantial start-up grant – SUG). However, in the NAPs case, we offer up to $1M as the SUG coupled with research studentships.
    • In the first year we made available 10 awards from a field of nearly 400 candidates and this year we have been able to offer a further 10 Assistant Professorships with an application field of over 700 candidates. This demonstrates the attractiveness of NTU as a place for young researchers making their way as top class researchers, coming from some of the best universities in the World. Such a high level of interest in NTU is extremely gratifying.

      For more information on NAPs, please click here.

Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowships 
    • The very prestigious competition NRF scheme has just completed its second year and we are pleased that so many successful candidates choose to hold their fellowships at NTU. Selected from a large number of outstanding graduates from around the world, these outstanding young researchers will also bring start-up grants of US$1.5 million and be the nucleus of future leading research groups.

      In the first year, we had 5 out of the 10 ‘winners’ choosing NTU (with 4 with NUS and one in the Temasek Laboratory). This year we have done even better with an amazing 8 out of 10 choosing NTU. This shows that we are a really attractive research venue as well as providing excellent working and living conditions for our new colleagues.
    • Through NAPs and NRF, we have gained nearly 30 new colleagues over the past two years who can be expected to make a major contribution to NTU in the future.

      For more information on NRF Research Fellowships, please click here.

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Research Centres of Excellence (RCEs)
The Ministry of Education together with the NRF have promoted a scheme to develop World leading research centres within Singapore’s universities. An award of $150M over up to 10 years is available with only a few awards (at most 2) being granted for each Call. The RCEs are based on forefront research, having a strategic benefit for Singapore and are built around top researchers in their fields coming to Singapore to lead the RCEs. But these are not just one person ‘shows’ but should be seen as team efforts bringing in many other star researchers to work alongside our own faculty. NTU makes a big effort to attract such leading researchers and have thus been able to build up excellent research teams in many areas.

Success with EOS
    • In AY 2007/08, NTU was awarded the Research Centre of Excellence (RCE) for the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS). Its significance lies not just in the recognition of NTU as a University that will host such a centre of research excellence, but it has enabled us to bring top quality earth and environmental sciences to Singapore and to the NTU portfolio, enhancing the wide range of the natural sciences at our University. EOS is a leading world institution for understanding and addressing several of civilisations most serious environmental threats – including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and climate change. It aims to do this through understanding and forecasting natural hazards in ways that are useful to governments, communities and businesses in Southeast Asia.
    • Kerry Sieh and the dream team: Following the award, Professor Kerry Sieh from Caltech, one of the foremost seismologists and tectonicists in the world, has been appointed as the Director of EOS. Professor Sieh has assembled a group of some of the most talented earth scientists to work in EOS, including Paul Tapponnier from Paris and Chris Newhall, from the US Geological Survey. 

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Innovation:
Innovation and entrepreneurship have traditionally been a focus for the University and continue to be an integral part of the University’s strategy.   

Kauffman Campus
    • NTU has also been awarded the status of the first Kauffmann campus for innovation and entrepreneurship in Asia. The Kauffman Foundation exists to promote entrepreneurship through education and this new status acknowledges our efforts to stimulate and inculcate an environment which encourages entrepreneurship.

Industrial Partnerships

    • Our collaborations with industry players, especially such leading companies as the Bosch Group, Rolls Royce, EADS, ST Micro, Infineon, Siemens and THALES, to name but a few, are very much a part of our commercialisation, innovation and entrepreneurship thrust.  They bring about two-way technology transfer and the cross-fertilisation of ideas between the University and the industry, which are instrumental in driving more industry-relevant research. 

Start ups
    • One achievement is the joint development of ReeTrakt with California-based Insightra Medical Inc.  ReeTrakt is a new generation of disposable soft-tissue surgical retractor systems designed to minimise tissue trauma, optimise retraction force and lower risk of infection. ReeTrakt has now been launched commercially in 20 countries worldwide. Separately, Nanofrontier Pte Ltd, an NTU wholly-owned R&D company, collaborated actively with overseas start-up companies such as Analytical Nanotechnologies (UK) PLC and Roar Particles Ltd (PLC), and is attracting such companies to carry out their R&D in Singapore.
    • NTU Ventures Pte Ltd launched an incubation scheme to assist and promote the formation of NTU start-up and spin-off companies, leveraging two government funding schemes, Spring Singapore’s Entrepreneurial Talent Development Fund and the Media Development Authority’s Microfunding Scheme.  Through the incubation scheme, NTU Ventures is able to play a more proactive mentoring role in business incubation to expedite the exploitation of NTU technologies.  The scheme has assisted in the formation of seven start-up companies.
    • Among the start-up companies are two that were formed by faculty to commercialise the technologies they have developed:  one is a service company based on software for modelling the spread of infectious diseases within a hospital environment and the other is an animation company providing software for computer-assisted cell animation.
    • Beyond these achievements, the University has also been actively engaging companies on their interest in licensing its technologies. Recently, it has signed commercialisation agreements for technologies in the areas of medical devices, software, fingerprint recognition technology and microfluidic sensors.
      For more information, please click here.

New Innovation Award
    • NTU has received $6.5m from the National Research Foundation (NRF)'s new University Innovation Fund (UIF) to boost its innovation and enterprise activities. The UIF, an initiative under the National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise, aims to catalyse innovation and facilitate the creation of high-tech start-up companies to bring R&D results from the laboratory to the market.

Entrepreneurship education
    • The University continues to strengthen its education programmes in innovation and entrepreneurship through the Nanyang Technopreneurship Center. A new track in innovation and technopreneurship was introduced into the Applied Physics programme, allowing students to supplement their strong technical know-how acquired from their core programme with entrepreneurial skills for the technology marketplace. 
    • The Masters of Science in Technopreneurship & Innovation Programme continues to groom entrepreneurs and talent for enterprises.  Among those who graduated from the programme in July 2008, 51 percent joined small and medium enterprises to help grow and develop such ventures and 27 percent started businesses.

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International Networking:
The University continued to establish strategic alliances with leading institutions and with the industry, at both the multilateral and bilateral level. 

Global Alliance of Technological Universities
    • We have led the creation of the Global Alliance of Technological Universities, a global grouping of leading technologically-based universities that serves an advocacy role for the place of technology in the world.  These issues include biomedicine and health care, sustainability and global environmental change, security of energy, water and food supplies, security, and changing demographics/ population.

      The seven founding universities are
      1. California Institute of Technology (United States of America)
      2. Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH) (Switzerland)
      3. Georgia Institute of Technology (United States of America)
      4. Imperial College London (United Kingdom)
      5. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India)
      6. Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
      7. Shanghai Jiao Tong University (People’s Republic of China)

      Formally launched in April 2009 at NTU, the Alliance will be organising high level scientific workshops addressing Society’s grand challenges.

      For more information on the Alliance, visit www.GlobalTechAlliance.org .

EU Centre in collaboration with the National University of Singapore and the European Commission 

    • The EU Centre in which NTU and NUS are the principal stakeholders, together with the European Commission, has been in operation since mid 2008, hosted by NTU and located at our One-North campus It concentrates on policy research as a means of raising the level of knowledge about the EU, one of Singapore’s major trading partners and the largest inward investor in the country in Singapore and the ASEAN region. The aim is to integrate modules of EU studies into postgraduate courses run by the Nanyang Business School and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. This will also serve in strengthening the political science and economics disciplines in NTU. Through a research affiliates scheme, the Centre will conduct research in order to produce high quality policy briefings for decision makers in Singapore and the region.

      For 2009, NTU will again host the ‘Discover Europe Event’ for which the EU Centre will organize a major discussion session.

Partnerships with Fraunhofer and CNRS
    • We are in advanced negotiations to establish joint laboratories with overseas national research institutions wishing to come to Singapore. These include the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft   (Germany) and the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique – CNRS (France).The latter will lead to the establishment of a Unité Mixte Internationale at NTU which will also include Thales.

Warwick Neuroscience partnership
    • We are in negotiations for the development of a formal research partnership with the University of Warwick (UK) in the area of advanced neuroscience. This will be sited in one of the A*Star institutes in Biopolis.

CREATE partners 
    • We are working closely with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and others in the CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise) initiative.  We will have an active research collaboration with these partners and a physical presence in the new CREATE campus. However, before that comes on stream in 2011, NTU will house both of these CREATE entities on its campus.

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University Strategic Initiatives:
As part of our aim of focusing effort as well as encouraging a bottom up approach, the Provost has established or strengthened a number of pan-university and key strategic initiatives either developing new activities at a recognised high intellectual level or by bringing existing activities together in a multi-disciplinary and coordinated way. These are the top level priorities for the university and financial provision has been made within the strategic part of the NTU budget. They also complement such activities as those of EOS.

Energy Research at NTU (ERIAN)
    • The Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N) has been created to bring together several existing groups of researchers working on different aspects of renewable energy generation technologies including fuel cells, photovoltaics, wind energy etc to provide technological solutions to combat the global climate change. In these areas, we have important industrial partnerships with Rolls-Royce, Robert Bosch, Vestas, and others. At the same time as we research technological solutions, this has to be coupled with an understanding of the environmental impacts, as well as business and economic models, legislation and societal acceptance. Again, this is a truly multi-disciplinary activity founded very much in the College of Engineering but reaching out to all the Colleges. Our activities in this area have been such that they have impressed other universities and links are now being established with UC Berkeley, ETH, Imperial College London and many others. Worldwide, we are now seeing an increasing commitment of research funding o energy related issues.

Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute (NEWRI)
    • NEWRI may be best described as a ‘ecosystem’ to sustain a wide range of environmental and water technologies research including work on membrane technology, reclamation and remediation, bioreactors, sensor technology and photocatalysis. It not only conducts top level research in close liaison with industry but it also provides a hub for education, especially supporting a large number of graduate students.

Structural Biology

    • We have established a structural biology group at NTU, linked closely to A*Star and being located in the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at One North. This will be the core group at the heart of the first Graduate School (see below) that is being created and has attracted a World leading research group from Sweden. This initiative also raises the importance of creating a close synergy for mutual benefit between NTU researchers and their colleagues in the A*Star institute

Institute for Media Innovation (IMI)

    • The Institute for Media Innovation (IMI), launched in 2008 to bring together all the various IDM related research activities within NTU, including NIE. In fact, it terms of IDM, the education thrust is very important and could lead to substantial economic advantages for Singapore building on the excellent reputation which we have in the education sphere. This adds to the important spin-offs that arise from advanced gaming and similar activities. IMI is truly multi-disciplinary and university-wide with faculty involved from all four Colleges and NIE. For example, all PhD studentships awarded under IMI have to have two co-supervisors from different Schools in order to have a practical means of developing inter-disciplinarity. It will bring together the various groups involved in interactive digital media from across the university including those of GameLab under Professor Seah Hock Soon

Environmental Life Sciences and Engineering

    • We have also established new research areas in life and environmental sciences and engineering bridging the life sciences and technology in the water area. Funds has been set aside to attract World leading scientists to establish this activity at NTU which should ultimately lead to the creation of a new discipline in bio-films. In addition to the leaders of the project, Professors Kjelleberg and Cohen (see section above), other key figures involved in this activity are Craig Venter (of the Human Genome fame) and Alexander Zehnder, on the World’s top environmental scientists in water studies.

New Initiatives in the Pipeline

    • In addition to these major initiatives, we need to develop strategic focus areas in which NTU and its faculty have established a reputation for themselves internationally in the forefront of the relevant research areas. Some examples are in Cryptography, Structural Biology, Infectious Diseases (Malaria/ Dengue), Chemical Synthesis and Catalysis, Device Physics – Single Molecule Devices, Engineering Medicine, Complex Systems in Science and Society, Engineering and Society, Behavioural Sciences, Photonics

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Research Infrastructure:
One key to research success is to ensure that our laboratories and other facilities are well equipped with the latest instrumentation and that, across the campus, we have the wherewithal in terms of such facilities and also computing facilities which are of vital importance. In order to avoid undue duplication and to maximise the use of our investments a strategic approach is now being taken to research infrastructure provision. In this way, we are able to use our resources in such a way as to promote our research priorities and also provide general facilities for the university.

Structural genomics

    • A priority for the research infrastructure investment is for the establishment of a protein production platform for structural genomics. Prof Pär Nordlund, one of Europe’s most influential structural biologists will head this structural genomics laboratory to be located at One-North. The setup of this world-class protein production platform will serve as a partner for research groups at NTU and other Singapore researchers.  

HPCC

    • The investment in High Performance Computing is to allow for the support of advanced modelling in a wide variety of disciplines but especially in bio-informatics, seismic and climate modelling in relation to EOS, development of better interactive digital modelling as well as supporting research across the university.

Facility for Analysis, Characterisation, Testing and Simulation (FACTS)

    • One of the strong points of our School of Material Sciences and Engineering (MSE) is its excellent analytical facilities that form the core of the analytical and characterisation facilities at NTU and represent a very major investment in research infrastructure. Its role is to provide research support and advanced facilities for staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students in the areas of electron microscopy and microanalysis, as well as x-ray diffraction analysis. This central facility is also open to scientists and engineers from other universities, private companies and A*Star research institutes. It includes Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence).  We are now seeking to add an electron microprobe analyser to our range of instruments available.

Nanyang Nanofabrication Centre (N2FC)

    • The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering is one of the largest and most eminent Schools of its type. One key aspect of its work and of others across the university is in nanofabrication. The Centre comprises very extensive clean room facilities at Class 100 fully equipped for nanofabrication with evaporators, etchers, plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition etc representing a substantial university investment. The Centre serves the university and also external users, including companies.

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