University of California, Berkeley and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore have just agreed to pursue a research alliance collaboration to focus on the three research areas which are synthetic biology, stem cells and energy efficiency in order to achieve in new peaks in research excellence.

Last March 23-24, 2009, a joint workshop was held which allowed NTU and UC Berkeley faculty to have a face-to-face discussions and the opportunity to get to know the latest research and developments in the three key research areas.

It was agreed that faculty from the two universities will be working on joint research projects on an equal footing which includes the bringing in resources and funding. It is expected the colleagues from Schools outside of NTU’s College of Engineering will likewise participate as the research on these three areas are multidisciplinary.

The first research area which is synthetic biology, which is an emerging multidisciplinary field, actually combines science and engineering to design and build or “synthesize” novel and biological functions and systems. This may be a new area in biological research but it holds a great potential for answering problems in biomedicine, energy supply and environmental remediation.

The second research area is Stem Cell research and it is greatly important to the future of biomedical research as it has major implications for treating and preventing devastating human diseases. In Singapore, there is a critical mass of stem cell researchers working on embryonic including adult stem cells which was built up.

The area of energy fills up the third research area and the important issue in this field is the impact of energy use on climate change and global warming. In order for the adverse impact of climate change be mitigated, energy efficiency needs improvement as it is one strategy to ensure that the economy will grow in an environmentally sustainable manner.

NT President Dr. Su Guaning said “Within the University, we have developed peaks of excellence in energy research and we hope to develop our capabilities further including in collaboration with Berkeley especially in the area of energy efficiency for tropical buildings.” He further stated that the university is widely seen as the best public university in the United States and that Berkeley leads in cross-disciplinary research including in the area of bioengineering and clean energy.

“We are excited to work with Berkeley to tap complementary capabilities in the defined topical areas to achieve new peaks in research excellence. I am confident our collaboration will generate innovative solutions to the global research challenges in the three focus areas, creating positive contributions to the welfare of humankind and deepening our collaboration,” Dr Su continued.