From the Lab to the Home (Without Leaving the Building)
Singapore’s Fusionopolis: R&D at Warp Speed
SOURCE: Fusionopolis
As different as Singapore is from America politically and culturally, the way it is tackling its economic challenges through big investments in science and technology deserves attention from Washington insiders and the American public.
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Weiss’s Notebook
CAP Senior Fellow Rick Weiss covered science and medicine for The Washington Post for 15 years, and now he brings his investigative eye to science policy. From cloning and stem cells to agricultural biotechnology and nanotechnology, Weiss examines the issues at the intersection of cutting edge research and public policy.
Looking for a scientific good time this weekend? Consider joining the festivities at Fusionopolis, the futuristic research complex that’s having a week-long grand opening celebration on the tropical island of Singapore.
Fusionopolis is more than a place to work. It is a planned community for scientists, complete with high-tech research labs, high-rise apartments, and high-end entertainment venues, including a rooftop swimming pool and fitness center, restaurants, experimental theater, and 13 elevated “sky gardens.” Visitors to the spanking new complex this weekend will find themselves entertained by dancing robots, wind-turbine displays and cool chemistry demonstrations—all honoring Singapore’s latest step toward fulfilling its ambition of becoming an economic powerhouse through science, technology and innovation.
Singapore, of course, is a very different place than the United States, with a much higher degree of central control over science priorities and economic strategy. Fusionopoli are not likely to sprout like ethanol refineries in the U.S. Midwest, even though they would look pretty cool there.
But the island nation’s development goals are actually very similar to those that scholars and domestic policy advisors around the United States are espousing here at home: to support the development of novel technologies that can solve our energy, environment, telecom, and infrastructure problems while simultaneously jumpstarting the economy with a new wave of “green collar” jobs.
So as different as the place may be from America politically and culturally, there is something about the way Singapore is tackling its economic challenges through big investments in science and technology that deserves attention from Washington insiders and the American public.
Crumbling are the walls between basic and applied research, public and private research, and even (for better or worse) recreation and work.
The science buildings at Fusionopolis house government-funded as well as corporate labs that focus on materials science, communications technologies, microelectronics, and high-performance computing and manufacturing. Architects designed the structures explicitly to facilitate interactions among the 800 researchers who will initially be working in them (a number that’s expected to grow to 2,400 by 2012, when additional construction is complete). Among the initial corporate tenants are Vestas, a leading wind turbine company; Ubisoft, one of Europe’s largest electronic game publishers; Linden Lab, the creator of the popular virtual universe Second Life; and Nitto Denko, the Japanese electronics and advanced materials company. Also among the tenants are two government-sponsored engineering research institutes and the “Advanced Digital Sciences Center,” the first overseas research center to be launched by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But the theme of advancement through collaboration goes well beyond the corridors and catwalks connecting those public, private and university labs. The community itself, including the living quarters and public spaces, were designed to be “test beds” for some of the new technologies being developed in those labs—all part of the “work-play-live-learn” environment that Fusionopolis strives to be.
The supermarket chain Cold Storage, for example, plans to test its “intelligent shopping cart” at its Fusionopolis outlet. Chips embedded in the carts can identify the shopper and his or her programmed preferences and, based on that shopper’s location in the store, will project targeted ads on a cart-mounted monitor and guide the shopper to desired products.
Even the homes are set to become research labs of sorts, where novel wireless security and entertainment systems will be installed for real-life beta testing.
Moreover, the complex is just half a mile from Singapore’s Biopolis, a similarly Flash Gordon-like complex of labs and living spaces focused on biomedical, rather than engineering, research. I had the opportunity to visit the Biopolis a few years ago, where hundreds of scientists in more than a dozen publicly and privately funded laboratories work and live an intellectually and entrepreneurially intense—if somewhat nerdy—existence. The idea, in part, is that if you concentrate enough of a nation’s greatest minds in a few rather sterile but well-funded acres, some of the best solutions to the next century’s problems may emerge from chance encounters at the local Starbucks or sandwich stand.
Late last week I got in touch with Charles Zukoski, a professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Illinois, who also chairs the Science and Engineering Research Council of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research. I reached Zukoski in Singapore, where he was attending some of the celebratory events (which included, to the organizers’ great credit, fun science events for families and kids), and I asked him to describe the scene at Fusionopolis.
“There are a lot of people in the elevators and in the research facilities,” he said. “The computer facility is up and fully operational as are the visualization facilities of the institute of High Performance Computing.” All of the corporate spaces have been rented out, he said, and “you can hear the clank of construction” nearby, where the second phase of the complex is under construction.
“There is a lot of science going on,” Zukoski said. “My sense is one of great excitement and expectation.”
The Science and Engineering Research Council that Zukoski chairs oversees a number of government research institutes focusing on various areas of engineering and technology. Unlike the system in this country, in which most of the government’s research expenditures are funneled through academic centers, these major research initiatives are not related to that nation’s Ministry of Education. Rather they are explicitly geared toward growing the Singapore economy.
“We look at ourselves as being placed between universities and the private sector,” Zukoski said. “We harvest and develop ideas that will lead to commercial products and develop these ideas into commercializable units on our own, or in collaboration with the private sector.”
The approach goes far beyond the trend toward “multidisciplinary research” that has started to become popular in the United States. Not only are the old “silos” that once separated various research specialties being broken down. Also crumbling are the walls between basic and applied research, public and private research, and even (for better or worse) recreation and work.
“The opening of the Fusionopolis represents the physical embodiment of a new approach to doing research,” Zukoski said.
Again, it is not an approach appropriate for direct transplant to the United States. Compared to New York and Los Angeles, Washington’s suburbs are already a little short on culture and rife with people out of step with fashion. All Bethesda needs is to have its restaurants and concerts attended by people in lab coats and pocket protectors.
But how refreshing it would be if, in our own American way, we as a nation also focused on investment in technological innovation as a central strategy for reversing our economic decline. Consider this: Singapore’s $4.2 billion investment in research and development in 2007 was 26 percent higher than it was in 2006, and twice the amount invested in 2000. The nation is quickly approaching its goal of having R&D expenditures amount to fully 3 percent of it gross domestic product by 2011.
By contrast, R&D spending in the United States has been flat for years, at just 2.6 percent of GDP. That’s higher than the European Union (1.8 percent) and China (1.4 percent), but embarrassingly less than Japan (3.4 percent) and South Korea (3.3 percent) according to figures compiled by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In fact, as of this year, it appears that Singapore has surpassed the U.S. in R&D spending as a percentage of GDP. Singapore has said very plainly that it is betting its future on growing “a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy.”
We in the United States could do worse.
Rick Weiss is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and Science Progress.
Comments on this article
This article is really where it is at concerning future growth. The future needs a vision which includes cross-vocational learning, coupled with mass transit in a vertical city environment. Human expansion into our shrinking available lands needs to slow dramatically.
October 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 pmThis type of growth will also aid in space exploration, which if the world would focus on it, there would be less time for war.