Contact Singapore

Research

Singapore is the world’s most prolific research location based on output per capita.

In terms of funding, Singapore tops the world in spending on science and technology, with a budget of SGD 13.5 billion. Some of the factors contributing to Singapore’s ideal position in grooming research expertise is the adoption of English as the language of instruction coupled with an Asian language – an excellent combination for driving strategic collaborations and innovations in the region – and a rigorous system for the protection of intellectual property.

The infrastructure for research is cutting-edge and purpose-built, from biomedical sciences research complexes to research centres within university campuses. Biopolis, for instance, is a symbol of Singapore’s biomedical research strength. Housing private and public sector research institutions under one roof, Biopolis is a nucleus of state-of-the-art facilities where the community of researchers may embark on the development and testbedding of niche research areas before bringing them to market. Its sister development, the Fusionopolis - completed in 2008 - serves the same purpose for science and engineering research, co-locating research institutes in the fields of manufacturing technology, high performance computing and communications.

Both our universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) are top ranked tertiary institutions that are also positioned as research universities.

A number of notable research breakthroughs have been made in Singapore. For instance, a team of scientists from the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) discovered a complex of three proteins that directly regulates the myosin network within a cell. This finding has widespread implications in the fields of cancer growth and spread, wound-healing, learning and memory, and developmental biology. More recently, researchers at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) have developed a method for comparing two different samples of human speech reliably via a Gaussian mixture model. The ultimate goal is to be able to create a unique vocal “fingerprint” for each individual, and use this to prevent future identity fraud.

With a superlative scientific community and excellent intellectual property (IP) protection laws, Singapore provides the ideal platform for scientific discovery.