Singapore Government, Private Industries Investing in Innovation

Three major announcements were made in Singapore last month focusing on R&D of new technologies and educating the workforce to produce specialized graduates in upcoming fields.

 

Development plans for Asia’s first zero-energy building (ZEB) were released by the Parliamentary Secretary for National Development. The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) will retrofit an existing building that will both house classrooms and offices and serve as a testbed for green technology research. Slated for completion in 2009, the ZEB is expected to be 60 percent more energy efficient than an average commercial building. The building will create a highly efficient complex that produces as much energy as it consumes from renewable resources.

 

The National University of Singapore will use the facilities for testing technologies that come out of the university’s research laboratories. The project is jointly funded by the Ministry of National Development and the MND Research Fund for the Built Environment. The BCA also is stepping up its efforts in industry training and will offer a new Diploma program next year in mechanical engineering, with an emphasis on green building technologies, according to a BCA press release. More information is available from the BCA at http://www.bca.gov.sg/.

 

Two private industry partnerships also were among the announcements in Singapore last month. In collaboration with Singapore institutes of higher education, IBM Corporation will offer a new multidisciplinary research and academic track through Singapore’s universities. The Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) discipline integrates aspects of computer science, operations research, engineering, management sciences, business strategy, social and cognitive sciences, and legal sciences.

 

SSME graduates will likely enter the field as solution designers, consultants, engineers, scientists and managers. With employment projections expected to be concentrated in the service-providing sector of the economy, the goal is to make productivity, quality, sustainability, learning rates and innovation rates more predictable across this sector, according to IBM. Further details regarding curriculum will be announced by the participating universities in March. More information on the SSME discipline is available from IBM at http://www.ibm.com/university/ssme.

 

Finally, Indiana-based Hillenbrand Industries Inc., specializing in medical technologies, recently announced that Singapore will be the site of its Asia-Pacific Innovation Center. The center will focus on R&D projects for global applications and will become a center of excellence for microelectronics embedded in software products. Singapore’s increasingly knowledge-based economy, technical talent and sophisticated healthcare institutions were cited as factors in the decision process. The announcement is available at: http://ir.hillenbrand.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=276277