Spotlight - Singapore 2010  

A Smart Approach

As a new strain of H1N1 virus, or “swine flu,” circled the globe in the summer of 2009, an international research group took action. The group included researchers at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), which was launched in 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF). Ram Sasisekharan, an MIT expert on pathogen-host interactions, and his team—supported by the SMART framework—discovered a genetic variation that explained why the virus was spreading less rapidly than expected. “This could become a prototype for global collaborative research,” he says. “We need to bridge East and West instead of saying, ‘these are diseases of this or that country.’”

Today, about 50 MIT faculty members and their lab teams spend large chunks of time halfway around the world working alongside counterparts from Singapore and other parts of Asia. “Of course, 12,000 miles and 12 time zones adds to the challenge of making it happen,” says Thomas Magnanti, SMART’s founding director until March 2009. “But it’s been very exciting, and many MIT faculty find their time there quite productive.”

What benefits does the arrangement offer that aren’t available in regular academic exchanges? Rohan Abeyaratne, the present director of SMART, ticks off a list: working with talented colleagues from across the region, many with complementary expertise; access to unique field and clinical data; and a chance to pursue different, often complex problems from those back home. “The structure fosters a very high level of interdisciplinary collaboration, far more readily than in a traditional departmental structure on campus,” says Abeyaratne. “Bringing together a diverse team and spending undistracted time together leads to innovative ideas.”

Interdisciplinary projects are underway in three areas: infectious diseases; environmental sensing and modeling; and biosystems and micromechanics. Nearly 500 researchers currently participate. A fourth research group, in urban transportation, was recently established.

Now based temporarily at the National University of Singapore, the SMART Centre is due to move in 2011 to new facilities that will also house other university, corporate and government labs. “This will lead to added collaborations,” Abeyaratne notes. The Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), a $255 million complex being built on a former golf course, is one of a flurry of R&D initiatives Singapore has been putting in place since mid-decade. “It is important that we bring in our connections with the rest of the world, other top research centers,” says Teo Chee Hean, Singapore’s deputy prime minister and the deputy chairman of NRF. “This is another way in which we can build an economy in Singapore that is based on knowledge.”