CREATE is a Singapore research campus that brought together 1,000+ researchers from 40+ countries to work across disciplines. Ten years in, they've built projects in biomedical repurposing, autonomous vehicles, waste-to-energy systems, and AI for cutting industrial emissions.
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Create. It's a simple word, but it's full of possibilities. It means coming up with ideas, building solutions and bringing ideas to life. It's also the name of a place where all that happens. Create is the campus for research excellence and technological enterprise. Not one lab, but several, forming what they call a CO laboratory. It's a network of research institutions bringing together more than a thousand researchers from over 40 countries.
By simple virtue of being in close proximity to each other. Researchers start talking, they start exchanging ideas, exchange knowledge and collaboration happens. More and more innovation is happening when researchers from different fields come together.
What is really impressive in Singapore is the strong partnership between scientists and governmental agencies and scientists in industry, local and international.
The beauty of these close relationships is that the city behaves like a living laboratory in which ideas just born can be tested right away.
CREATE was formed in 2007 by the National Research Foundation. It brought together leading global universities including the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.
The vision for CREATE was to build a research hub in Singapore, just as we have built a financial hub in Singapore. To do this, we have to bring in the renowned experienced researchers from all over the world. The research will not only be frontline, cutting edge, multidisciplinary, but relate to real life problems with impact not only for Singapore, but for the whole world.
The scientists at CREATE focus on four key research areas.
Our scientists at SHARE have discovered that commercial medication called asparaginase which is used for leukemia patients is very effective for treatment of the flesh eating bacteria. At the moment there is no cure for the flesh eating bacteria. So with this scientific breakthrough, tens of thousands of people will be cured.
We've designed a car called Scott. It's a self driving vehicle. In the future we will have cars like Scott and manually driven cars driving side by side each other. When that happens, we will have cars communicating with each other, providing look ahead information to each other. And that would mean safe navigation, less congestion and more efficient efficiency in the system.
We have developed an anaerobic digester that converts food and animal waste into biogas. And these digesters work more efficiently than the conventional ones. They are also compact enough to be placed within communities so that waste management can be decentralized and a cities waste disposal and fewer needs can be better served.
It's a virtual representation of industries and refineries in Singapore. It uses methods from artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data to simulate and optimize the operations on Jurong Island. The grand vision of our program is to reduce CO2 emissions. And if we can do it here in Singapore, we can also do it worldwide.
Besides the partnerships within campus, CREATE has now evolved to include a network of multilateral collaborations involving entities within CREATE and government agencies.
We want to make a map of where it is warm, and we want to know what the causes are, to assess all of the many different options that are available that might help reduce this effect, and then to work with policymakers in a task force to come up with suggestions which are practically possible for Singapore.
CREATE will leverage on this global network.
To identify critical and emerging issues, as well as find the synergies that will allow us to translate research capabilities into innovation and enterprise.
