In 2002 at Singapore, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) was established under the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) to integrate the country's national research institutes into a single organization, eliminate unnecessary duplication of research in each institute, and promote efficient joint research among institutes.
Under the A*STAR Singapore umbrella, there are eight science and engineering research institutes with six centers, and nine biomedical research institutes with two centers, which focus on social implementation of research results with an emphasis on industry-academia collaboration.
The research quality of A*STAR Singapore is very high, and A*STAR's field-weighted citation impact (FWCI) is 1.8 (according to SciVal analysis).
This FWCI value indicates that A*STAR is a world-class research institution representing Singapore.
In addition, A*STAR Singapore offers financial support program for graduate students from the National University of Singapore, and other tie-up universities in Singapore to conduct research at the research institutes of A*STAR Singapore and obtain a Ph.D. degree. Since the international students can also receive this support, A*STAR Singapore is actively fostering young human resources by accepting international students from 60 countries around the world.
Through the exchange of views with the research delegation team, NIMS was able to share the good understanding that new joint research between the two institutes has the high potential to produce fruitful research results, given their very similar policies on international academic collaboration activities, young human resources development, and social implementation of research results. Therefore, a contact person at NIMS was nominated by NIMS president, and through online match-make workshop which is scheduled to be held in October and followed by individual online meetings, the action for making plans of more specific joint research projects will be started soon.
It is expected that active joint research projects will be promoted between the two institutions and that fruitful research results will be achieved.
