Dive Brief:
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has five new laboratories funded by Singapore, housed in the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise tower at the National University of Singapore.
- During the school year, MIT foots the bill for the labs’ faculty salaries.
- While MIT has the largest lab program at the national university, 10 other universities from Britain, China, France, Germany, Israel, and Switzerland are also involved in the $3.1 billion per year Singapore program, the New York Times reports.
Dive Insight:
MIT has been working in partnership with Singapore for 15 years. Among the projects MIT is working on in the Asian nation: Driverless cars, stingray-like robots to fight algae, infectious disease cures, drug screening solutions, and power conservation. The Singapore collaboration also helps create startup companies based on the research, with 13 companies launched — of which 10 have survived — and 27 incubating. MIT’s biggest project in the country is the Singapore University of Technology, or MIT 2.0, which involves 100 MIT professors, or 10% of its faculty.