Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has established the first centre within CREATE known as the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre. The SMART Centre will be MIT’s first such research centre of its kind outside its home campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts and MIT’s largest international research endeavour ever. MIT’s decision to partner with NRF in this new venture reflects tremendous interest and enthusiasm on the part of MIT’s faculty.
The SMART Centre will serve as an intellectual hub for interactions between MIT and global researchers in Singapore at exciting frontier areas of science and technology. The SMART Centre will allow faculty, researchers and graduate students from MIT to collaborate with their counterparts from universities, polytechnics, research institutes and industry in Singapore and Asia. There will be a continuous cohort of MIT professors, post-doctorates and PhD students at the SMART Centre. Major research interactions will involve groups of post doctoral fellows and PhD students from MIT as well as affiliated researchers from other institutions working side by side in the SMART Centre. At steady state, we anticipate that the Centre will house five to six inter-disciplinary research groups, which together will consist of several hundred people.
“The SMART Centre will offer participants from MIT and Singapore unique opportunities to advance research agendas that will shape the development of science and technology in the coming decades,” MIT President Susan Hockfield said. “It also represents a new way for MIT to engage in research on topics of great societal importance and presents new mechanisms for MIT’s engagement in this important region of the world.”
Prof Tom Magnanti, Professor of Engineering and MIT Institute Professor, is the founding Director of the SMART Centre. Prof Magnanti recently stepped down as Dean of the School of Engineering in MIT. He has been actively involved in MIT’s Singapore educational programmes from the beginning of MIT’s large-scale institutional collaboration with Singapore in 1997 through the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) programmes.
Inter-disciplinary Research Groups
The first inter-disciplinary research group (IRG) in the Centre is on Infectious Diseases. It has started operations on temporary premises in the National University of Singapore (NUS) Centre for Life Science building on 1 July 2007. The IRG on Infectious Diseases aims to develop an integrated, cutting-edge research programme to study pathogen-host interactions of infectious diseases of prevalence to Singapore, Asia and the world. These diseases are respiratory syncytial virus, influenza, tuberculosis and malaria.
The IRG is led by Prof Jianzhu Chen, Cottrell Professor of Immunology and Professor of Biology at MIT. The IRG involves eight senior MIT faculty members and 17 Singapore collaborators from NUS, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory and A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) research institutes. It is an inter-disciplinary endeavour with expertise from biology, engineering, medicine and computing.
The second research group identified is a Centre for Environmental Sensing and Modelling or CENSAM. The objective of CENSAM is to develop a model of the natural and built environment of Singapore that would seamlessly transition between different scales, from a single building to the entire country, including the surrounding oceans. This “virtual Singapore” model will integrate data sources and allows an understanding of how changes at any scale impacts the overall system. This will be an invaluable tool in areas such as urban planning, environmental forecasting and environment impact assessment.
The Centre is led by Prof Andrew Whittle, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. The IRG involves 15 senior MIT faculty members and Singapore collaborators from NUS, NTU, the Tropical Marine Science Institute and the Public Utilities Board. It is an inter-disciplinary endeavour with expertise from engineering, earth and atmospheric sciences, architecture and computing.
The guiding tenet for the third IRG is that accelerated progress in biology and medicine will depend upon the development of modern analytic methods and tools that will provide a deep understanding of diseases at the molecular, cellular and organ levels. The BioSystem and Mircomechanics (BioSyM) IRG aims to develop new technologies that will address critical medical and biological questions applicable to a variety of diseases and to provide a constant source of new technologies to the broader Singapore research infrastructure. Further development of these technologies will also provide novel solutions for the healthcare industry.
BioSyM is led by Prof Roger Kamm, Professor of Mechanical and Biological Engineering at MIT. The IRG involves 13 MIT faculty members and 15 Singapore collaborators from NUS, NTU and A*STAR research institutes.
