We want to do first-class research. We want to understand the world better. And we want to contribute to some of the pressing problems facing mankind – in particular, global warming.
- Markus Kraft, Director of CARES
The Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) was established in 2007, with funding from Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), to allow research-intensive institutions from all over the world to set up research centres in Singapore and establish research partnerships with local universities.
Today, CREATE supports collaborations between four Singaporean universities – the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the Singapore Management University (SMU) – and seven international partners – ETH Zurich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical University of Munich, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of California, Berkeley, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Cambridge.
To mark its 10th anniversary, CREATE held an international symposium attended by university leaders as well as Singapore's former president, Dr Tony Tan.
Speaking at the event on 1 December, Mr Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s Minister for Finance and Deputy Chairman of the NRF said:
“We designed CREATE to encourage interaction not just across a range of disciplines and cultures, but also of perspectives – from dreamers to researchers, designers and users – thereby fuelling exchanges between the spheres of research and innovation.”
“By bringing together researchers, policy makers and end users, CREATE enables serendipitous interactions and discovery. It creates a research environment that is richer than the sum of its parts, allowing researchers to innovate and provide solutions to real world problems.”
“Today,” he added, “CREATE is an international research hub, built on strong institutional partnerships, involving almost 1,100 people from over 40 countries. CREATE’s projects are relevant to Singapore and impactful on the global level.”
CARES: a hub for research collaboration
The Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Cambridge, was set up as one of CREATE’s collaborative initiatives in April 2013. It hosts a number of research collaborations between the University of Cambridge, NTU, NUS and industrial partners in Singapore and elsewhere.
Representing CARES at the event, its Director, Prof. Markus Kraft, explained: “CARES creates and fosters cutting-edge science in the area of energy efficiency in chemical technologies. We want to do first class research, world-leading research. We want to understand the world better. And we want to contribute to some of the pressing problems facing mankind – in particular, global warming."
Prof. Gehan Amaratunga, Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, was involved in CARES from its inception: “CARES is driven by the Cambridge attitude to research: to think about things deeply, and to deliver results that are significant and worthwhile. But that is coupled with the Singapore culture of hard work, and results-driven research. The mixture of those two research cultures under the CARES umbrella generates a unique symbiosis.”
He adds: “It is worth noting that CARES was the first time that the University of Cambridge had established anything under its name outside of Cambridge. The Singaporean government has put resources into research, and is keen for international researchers to come and work in Singapore. From the Cambridge perspective, it gives us an opportunity to globalise our research by engaging in a location that is an Asian hub, directly in between Asia’s two largest population centres – India and China. Singapore is a melting pot where researchers from the entire region are present. The impact of what we do in Singapore will be felt all over Asia.”
Image credit: CREATE tower, Singapore
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge