CNRS Undertake Collaborative Projects in Singapore

The Centre national de la recherché scientifique (CNRS), Paris, has announced the establishment of its first overseas subsidiary in Singapore, CNRS@CREATE, which will be focused on managing collaborative research activities as part of the Singaporean ecosystem. The agreement was formalised on 13 July 2018 by Karin Ong, Deputy Chief of mission at Singaporean Embassy in France and Antoine Petit, CEO of the CNRS, in the presence of French Minister of Higher education, Research and Innovation Frédérique Vidal and Singaporean Minister of Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing.

The subsidiary will be a non-profit “Company Limited by Guarantee” under Singaporean law and will be housed in the CREATE Tower where researchers from seven overseas partner universities are based. The CNRS is the first research organisation to join the programme.

With 2018 declared the France-Singapore Year of Innovation, researchers at CREATE (Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise) will work on highly interdisciplinary projects to tackle challenges that are both relevant to Singapore and globally significant.

The first project proposed by the CNRS, entitled SILVER (Singapore Innovative Living Environment), plans to build upon the work of the International Joint research unit IPAL*, and will seek to address the challenges of an aging population bringing together expertise in health, human and social sciences and information technologies.

*Image and Pervasive Access Lab which brings together the CNRS, National University of Singapore, Université Grenoble Alpes, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Institut Mines-Telecom and Université de la Sorbonne