Singapore has geared up to address global challenges with the launch of three new research programmes at Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) today. The programmes aim to tackle global challenges of urban food production, antimicrobial resistance and security of cyber-physical systems.
Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Finance in Singapore, announced the launch of these programmes at a symposium to commemorate the 10th anniversary of CREATE. It is an international research hub built on institutional partnerships together with seven overseas universities – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of California Berkeley, Cambridge University, ETH Zurich, Technical University of Munich, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
One of the programme aims to solve the challenges related to urban food and nutrient production. Called Disruptive and Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision, it seeks to develop nanosensor-based detection technologies to be applied in precision agriculture.
This technology will help discover new plant biosynthetic pathways as well as optimise them for improved yields in production. The project will begin in January 2018 for an initial period of five years. This project is part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
The second programme will deal with the global challenge of drug-resistant microbes. While working to identify new antimicrobial drug resistant mechanisms, it also looks to develop new therapeutics diagnostics and drug delivery technologies and approaches.
This programme will start in January, 2018 and formed by SMART, in partnership with Singapore’s universities and research institutions.
The third programme concerns issues in trust and security of cyber-physical systems – which integrate computational, networking, and physical processes.
The programme, which commenced in September, examines the reliability and security of cyber-physical systems in existing critical infrastructure. It will run for an initial period of five years.