New UK-Singapore Universities Alliance

Both the UK and Singapore are strongly committed to investing in R&D, innovation and enterprise, and recognise the importance of collaborating internationally in these areas to support economic growth.

Kara Owen

The UK and Singapore have launched a new UK-Singapore Universities Alliance for Entrepreneurship and Innovation bringing together 16 universities from both countries to enable new collaborations in entrepreneurship and innovation.

This bilateral partnership aims to:

• Facilitate, cooperate and share knowledge between the members in the areas of technology transfer and commercialisation through active engagement with government and industry.

• Develop cross-border licensing of technologies and human capacity development and support and encourage innovation.

• Act as the catalyst for commercialisation activities.

• Actively support and enable collaboration between universities, public research institutes, government and industry stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem in both countries

The partnership was officially signed during the online ceremony on 8 April 2021hosted by British High Commissioner to Singapore Kara Owen and Lim Thuan Kuan, Singapore High Commissioner to the UK.

Kara Owen said: “Both the UK and Singapore are strongly committed to investing in R&D, innovation and enterprise, and recognise the importance of collaborating internationally in these areas to support economic growth.”

Lim Thuan Kuan reminded that since the signing of the Singapore-UK Innovation & Research Partnership Agreement in 2014, the collaboration on research, innovation and enterprise between the countries has been growing.

UKSAEI unites together world-leading universities from the UK – Bath, Cranfield, Coventry, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, King’s College London, Newcastle, Nottingham, Manchester and Strathclyde and from Singapore – Nanyang Technological University Singapore, National University of Singapore, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore Management University, and Singapore University of Technology and Design.

The University of Bath joined the UKSAEI as Steering Committee attributing it to the university’s existing links with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and recent partnerships with A*STAR and Singapore companies in the field of sustainable food technologies.

Professor Jeremy Bradshaw, Pro-Vice-Chancellor who signed the Alliance agreement on behalf of the University, said: “Building on our strong existing links in Singapore, engagement with UKSAEI will enable us to further raise our international profile and reputation, develop new collaborations with leading universities across the UK and Singapore, and create new opportunities for our students and staff for industry engagement and innovation partnerships.”